TCL Pride T500L review – Snapdragon 615 powered

Pride T500L is a new handset launched by a well known brand – TCL. The TCL Pride T500L is another qualcomm snapdragon 1.5GHz octa core powered smartphone running lollipop with 2GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage. This handset is priced at 10,499 available exclusively on Snapdeal.com.

Box pack
Content : Handset, travel charger (rating unknown) , data cable, good quality earphone, user guide and warranty card. SAR value : 0.533 W/kg head and 0.723 W/kg body.

Design
TCL Pride T500L handset is slim (dimensions – 69.77 x 139.80 x 8.36) , light weight – 130 grams with built in battery. Body is made of plastic, grey coloured with matte finish and shiny silver parallel borders on the sides.

Handset is extremely comfortable to hold and operate. Power button and volume rocker is on the right side, audio jack is on the top and mic, micro USB and speaker out vent are at the bottom. The rear side is grey colored with circular textures that begins from the camera and moves all the way down. This not only gives an elegant, unique look but also helps get a good grip.

This is a dual SIM handset, there are 2x micro SIM slots and a 1x micro SD card slot. 4G/3G/2G works on SIM Slot 1 and SIM slot 2 supports 2G only.

There is LED notification but the LED lights up only when handset is connected to a power source.

T500L is loaded with accelerometer, light, proximity, gyro and magnetic sensors.

Display
TCL Pride T500L sports a 5 inch IPS screen with 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution. Colour reproduction, viewing angles and touch response are good.

Memory, Storage and OS
There is 2GB RAM and 16GB storage. On the first boot you will get around 11GB free space and about 1.2GB free RAM. Apps by default are getting installed on external storage. OTG is supported.

64 bit Android 5.0.2 is running out of the box with customized UI. The UI needs more polishing to make the handset perform even better. Some unwanted apps does come pre-installed, but you can remove them easily.

Performance
Handset is powered by qualcomm snapdragon 615 64 bit octa core chipset clocked at 1.5GHz coupled with Adreno 405 GPU. I did not find any major issues, performance was smooth, though very occasionally there was a mild lag – as mentioned the UI needs more tweaking.

Benchmark

  • Quadrant – 12300
  • Antutu (32 bit) – 1st time 27352, 2nd time 26637
  • Nenamark 2 – 57.1fps
  • Internal storage Speed – Read (91 MB/s), Write (12 MB/s)
  • Multi Touch – 5 Point.

Gaming
Asphalt 8 got installed on external storage. I tried playing in high visual quality mode, game was playable but at higher levels you will find it lagging a bit, the game played well in medium visual quality mode.

Camera
There is 13MP primary camera with LED flash on the rear and a 8MP camera on the front. QR scanner comes built in. Rear camera can shoot FHD videos at 20fps (check the sample at bottom). Camera quality is average there is scope of improvement (software). Do check the sample images and videos shot using this handset at the end of this review.

Others
The TCP Pride T500L also comes with a new Eye-D security feature that scans your eyes and will use it as an input to unlock this smartphone. To register you will need to scan your eyes for first time – the front camera will switch on and you will need to look at the screen and place you face (your eyes) within the rectangle box. You will need to get your face at about 20 to 25 cms nearer to the front camera for better results.

This option works even in dark environments as the display will light up your face and eye. It is a good option, but it takes time computing and gets a bit boring after sometime, so users would ultimately move back to the traditional unlocking method.

Speaker sound is loud and clear, no issues found with in-call sound quality. Network signal was stable – 4G, WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth worked well.

Battery
This handset houses a 3050 mAh non-removable battery. The battery performance is good you can expect about 4 to 6 hours of continuous moderate to heavy usage on a single charge. I got almost 2 days of battery backup with mixed usage. Handset heat up is also under control max temp encountered was 41 degrees.

Battery Performance

  • Ran Benchmark for 19 minutes battery % dropped by 6 and battery temp was 41 degrees.
  • Played Asphalt 8 for 22 minutes battery dropped by 9% and temp was 41 degrees.
  • Watched FHD video with full brightness (WiFi on) for 23 minutes battery dropped by 6% and temp was 38 degrees.
  • Handset charging (wall charge) 4 hours 20 minutes from 0% to 100%.

Verdict
The TCL Pride T500L is another Snapdragon 615 octa core powered smartphone with decent specs. The main attraction is that the handset is light weight and comfortable to hold. Performance is smooth, though a mild laggy at times (needs software tweak) and it does take time to charge the battery.

A good option for ₹10,499.

Rating [3.5 out of 5] cannot use decimals in rating box below.

TCL Pride T500L is available exclusively on Snpadeal.com.

Image Gallery

Rear Camera Sample

Front Camera Sample

Video Review