Itel Zeno 10

The itel Zeno 10 features a basic camera system with an 8MP rear camera and a 5MP selfie lens. It is designed for simple point-and-shoot photography and prioritises utility over style. Daylight shots tend to be somewhat bland, with washed-out colours, soft textures, and noticeable noise. While you can capture decent pictures with some effort, it's best to manage expectations.In low light, the cameras struggle significantly, with images showing a lot of noise and lacking detail. The selfie camera faces similar challenges, producing soft images in daylight, though the colours appear slightly better. I compared its camera performance to its competitor, the POCO C61. Let's take a look.DaylightIn daylight, the POCO C61 takes sharper shots, but it falls through since it overexposes the image and blows out the shadows. The Itel Zeno 10, instead, maintains a good contrast and preserves the shadows, which makes the shot look more appealing. SelfieBoth the POCO C61 and Itel Zeno 10 fail to capture facial details in their selfies, although the latter's image is comparatively sharper. However, the POCO C61 has a better colour balance, as the Itel's image appears washed out.Low-light In low light, both phones struggle, which is expected given their small sensors. The phones fail to capture sufficient light, resulting in underexposed images with soft details. Without a dedicated night mode for long-exposure shots, this is the best they can manage. The Itel Zeno 10 performs slightly better and captures more detail and sharper images compared to the POCO C61.

The itel Zeno 10 uses a modest Unisoc T603 chipset, paired with up to 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. I reviewed the 3GB RAM variant, and overall, I'm fairly satisfied with its performance. As expected for a phone in this price range, day-to-day usage does have lag, whether you're scrolling through apps or browsing social media. Although this is a common limitation across most budget smartphones and not unique to the Itel phone.Here are some benchmarks against the Moto g04 (review), a closely priced rival with a slightly better processor. We also tried pitting Zeno 10 against the POCO C61, but the latter couldn't run the benchmarking apps.  We even tested its gaming capabilities, and while it's suitable for casual games, don't expect it to handle BGMI at a playable frame rate. Regular, less demanding games run smoothly enough for casual play. For software, the phone uses itelOS 14 based on Android 14 Go.The OS is fairly basic and works well enough, with a dynamic bar feature that emulates the iPhone's dynamic island. It pops up whenever there is a notification for at-a-glance information like charging animation, low battery reminder, and charge completion reminder, among other things. Pre-installed appsSoftware updates Itel Zeno 10412 years security POCO C61NA2 years OS + 3 years security Moto g0445NA

The phone comes with a standard 5,000mAh battery with only 10W fast charging support. The phone's PCMark score is a little low for its price bracket, although the battery does have good endurance and will last a day for most users. In our lab tests, which last roughly 2 hours and include YouTube streaming and gaming, the phone's battery dropped an aggregate of 26 percent, which is on par with the price segment. The charging speed is slow, as the phone takes approximately 3 hours to go from 20 to 100 percent. This makes it essential that the device charges overnight since it may disrupt active usage during the day. Battery size Charging time Itel Zeno 10 5000 mAh 170 minutes (10W)POCO C615000 mAh 145 minutes (10W)Moto g045000 mAh 131 minutes (10W)