Smart, but needs to get smarter

Smartron’s t.phone is a very Indian smartphone. The mid-range gadget’s saffron backpanel states it’s designed and engineered in India, and the company’s website waxes eloquent about its plans to become a premier global IoT convergence brand, by ‘uniquely accelerating’ expertise locally and internationally to bring a range of products for the home as well as the global markets.

The t.phone looks classy and cool. It is slim and light, not slippery, and sports curvy edges and flowing ridges.

The body has a dual-tone scheme (saffron and grey for the review unit on our test bench). T.phone’s matte metal body is offered in four finishes — grey, pink, blue and saffron-tinted orange. The Gorilla Glass 3 screen seems strong enough to withstand moderate ‘mishandling’, and its finish feels smooth on the surface.

It has a 5.5-inch screen with Super Amoled display which gives rich, bright visuals. The adaptive brightness feature, however, turned out to be a laggard. Granted, this hiccup is visible in many premium phones today, but that’s is not an excuse for a company aiming to make the cut in the international market.

The t.phone has 64GB inbuilt memory, which is expandable via SD card. Also, Smartron offers unlimited storage at its t.cloud service, which is quite useful for those who want to save almost everything they click or shoot. The phone’s solid hardware, backed by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 v2.1 Octacore chipset and a 4GB ram, allows for seamless multitasking.

The phone’s operating system is Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow.

The T.phone’s 13 MP rear camera with a six-element lens and ‘zero’ shutter lag is not impressive enough. Even though the images come out natural and suitably saturated, the absence of tweaking features makes the camera app an average affair.

The HDR images also lack depth. The front camera too lacks features. Smartron must have added, at least, some beautification features, which is a given even in many budget phones today. The company claims the Superfine Pixel front camera works well in low-light, but our experience suggest this is another area where the phone has to raise its bars considerably higher.

T.phone’s call quality can equal even premium phones. That said, the review unit’s top-front speaker seemed to have malfunctioned, affecting the quality of all incoming calls.

This issue disappeared when one plugs in the headset, supplied with the box.

The phone doesn’t have a built-in call record button. T.phone plays videos hassle-free, and the audio output is lucid enough thanks to a sound chamber with DTS Premium Sound and DTS PlayFi.

Smartron has fitted the t.phone with a 3,000 mAh battery, which is a big let down.

The type C quick charger works super fast; the phone gets fully charged in a matter of minutes, but the juice flows out as fast as it goes in.

With WiFi connected and with moderate browsing, the battery barely lasts 5-6 hours. If you are a gamer or you prefer long hours of media consumption streaming video, audio or web surfing — you should look elsewhere.

Over all, Smartron has put together impressive hardware and software to deliver a decent smartphone performance, but the price tag places it in a category that sees intense competition. Here players belt out cutting-edge features and spotless performance to win consumer loyalty. OnePlus is a good example of this.

So, to make its presence felt, Smartron needs to make smarter moves going forward.

If you are a patriot looking for a phone conceived in India with decent features, here’s your buy.

Price: ₹22,999

Love: Thin metal body, Rich display, Processor

Hate: Battery life, Average camera

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