Smartron t.Phone Review : best smartphone from India

In April this year, when Smartron was launched, backed by Sachin Tendulkar, we didn’t give it much of a thought. But then, we got a chance to try out the Smartron t.Book and we had an interaction with the engineering head and sales head and we understood that we finally have an ‘Indian’ brand that can start a revolution. In this post, we take a look at the t.Phone, the debut smartphone from Smartron.

If you are wondering what Smartron is,

Smartron India Private Limited was founded with a vision to build India’s first global technology product brand by designing, engineering, sourcing, and marketing world class IoT (“Internet of TronsTM”) devices and systems with tightly integrated services and care targeting consumer, enterprise, industrial and infrastructure markets.

Smartron is taking the approach of some new brands where the brand does not want to limit itself being associated with just one or two device lineups (phone, notebook). While these new brands went with low margin and great price approach, this has caused serious support and service issues. Smartron is taking a more mainstream approach where the more units they sell, the better equipped they will be to create better end-to-end structure (design to sales to service).

Here are the key features that differentiate Smartron from other Indian smartphone brands

1. Cloud : unlimited cloud storage when you purchase t.Phone or t.Book
2. Store : IoT marketplace
3. x and hubtron : service that makes all Smartron devices sync with each other
4. In-house designs

Key Specification

• 5.5″FullHD AMOLED display
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1
• 4GB of RAM, 64GB onboard storage
• Dual SIM – Micro + Nano SIM (slot shared with Micro SD card)
• Android Marshmallow, v6.0.1
• 3000mAh battery, quick charge 2.0
• 13mp rear camera, 4mp front camera
• Sunrise Orange, Classic Grey, Metallic Pink, Steel Blue
• USB Type-C port

In the box

• 1 Smartron tphone Device
• 1 Quick Charge 2.0 18W Adapter
• 1 USB Type C Cable
• 1 Earplug set
• 1 SIM Tray Ejection Tool
• 1 Quick Start Guide

Unboxing and preview

Design

The ‘Sunrise Orange’ color aluminum frame looks really good on the phone. We did like the color on the t.Book but the color is perfect for this phone. The phone is like a rectangular brick with totally flat front and back. The sides are slightly curved and makes it easy for you to pick up the phone from the table. The rear panel looks clean, thanks to the orange color and the glossy Smartron logo.

The feel that you get when you hold the phone is very good. The phone feels light but is not slippery like the OnePlus 3 or iPhone 6. The top and bottom plastic panels house sensors, antennae, cameras, microphones. Smartron should’ve gone with a full aluminum block. The mix of plastic and aluminum has resulted in not-so uniform panel gaps. Don’t worry as you won’t be able to notice this unless you look for it closely.

While the back view is good, the front side feels pretty average. The phone has a 5.5” display but the phone is as big as the Nexus 6 which comes with a 6” display. But the lighter body weight makes it easier to hold and carry. We hate to see black borders on phones and here, the borders are too big, the top and bottom bezels are massive. At first, we thought that the bottom black bar holds capacitive touch controls but it’s just a big ugly  black bezel.

The 3.5 mm headphone jack is at the top and the chrome ring is a nice touch (Indians and their love for Chome). The bottom of the phone house single speaker and USB Type-C port. The left side has a SIM card tray (Micro SIM + hybrid SIM slot). The hybrid SIM card slot takes either a Nano SIM or a microSD card. Given that most phones come with Micro SIM, this is good thinking.

The right side has volume rocker and power keys. One of the design flaws is that the placement of keys is awkward and all three keys are identical. Why can’t we have the volume rocker on left side and power key on right. Only the top of the keys are painted with Orange and when you look at the phone from a side angle, there is odd chrome look to the keys that does not fit with the frame.

As with most aluminium body phones, the battery cannot be changed by the user but given that the phone charges super fast, there is no need to carry an extra battery.

When you compare the t.Phone with phones like OnePlus 3, Samsung A series, the phone does not feel as premium but it can definitely stand tall when you compare the phone with any other sub-25k phones. And thanks to the aluminum build and colorful frames, the phone can even stand up against Xiaomi Mi5.

One test that few sites/vloggers are doing is ‘will it crack’. The tPhone feel lightweight and fragile and it may crack with right amount of pressure. The t.Phone flexes a bit on apply some pressure and this could be a good thing as the frame does not resist pressure and crack. However tempting it is, we decided not to try these things as there is no real world scenario to apply this to.

Display

The 5.5” AMOLED display is bright and colors are vibrant. The sunlight visibility is good too though this is an AMOLED display. The touch response is good but sometimes, when typing there is a delay. Actions like swipe, pinch are smooth.  One issue that I noticed is that the auto brightness adjustment is not so smooth. It takes some time to adjust the brightness when we move from a bright location to a dark location. You can actually see a delay. After few seconds, the adjustment starts and you can notice every step of change in brightness.

There is no tap to wake gesture and lack of fingerprint reader too means that you have to click on power and then unlock the phone. If you want to check notifications, you can lift the phone and you will see the notifications (feature that first came in Motorola Moto X). There is no setting to adjust the color too (like how we get in Galaxy phones). Some of us prefer color accuracy over saturation color output and there is no way we can adjust that in tPhone. Smartron used Gorilla Glass 3 to protect the display from scratches and occasional drops (from a reasonable height).

Software

A big thanks to Smartron for not trying to reinvent Android. The UI is stock Android and Smartron has added few applications (like TronX) that enhance the experience. There are no capacitive keys and you have to rely on onscreen navigation bar.

There is nothing much to talk about here. If you are going to use this phone, do make sure that you register with TronX and avail free cloud storage. It really helps having cloud storage backup.

Performance

Thanks to Snapdragon 810, 4GB of RAM and optimized Android without any bloatware, the tPhone is a snappy performer. Switching between applications is super fast, games resume well after firing up from background. Thanks to the optimization and clean build, the tPhone can stand up against the phones with Snapdragon 820 chip when it comes to normal day to day use. There is 64GB of onboard storage so you do not have to worry about storage space and if you want more, you can insert a microSD card in the hybrid slot.

Coming to heat dissipation, the phone did not heat up while playing games or while charging (using QuickCharge), even though it is powered by Snapdragon 810. If you play really graphic intensive games, you will notice heating up in top half of the phone. But otherwise, the phone remains cold.

Benchmarks

Audio

We have tried playing audio over Sony headphones and the audio quality turned out to be quite good. The best part is the earpiece of the phone. The call quality was absolutely clean without any distortion when we took calls using the phone. We can say that this one is one of the best ones (under 30k phones). The loud speaker is above average. Do not expect the loud speaker to work like that on Nexus 6 or HTC boom sound while in noisy environment. The four microphones does the job well in capturing voice and eliminating external noise.

Camera

The camera UI is pretty basic and it has recieved many updates since I have started using the mobile. The UI design and controls are very similar to Cyanogen camera UI. The the functionality of the app is limited. Even the manual mode does not offer you full fledged manual controls. The picture quality is above average. The image quality is decent under ample light conditions. It gives sharp images with good amount of detail. The color reproduction is accurate and it has improved a lot after the updates. The background bokeh is smooth and buttery. The camera struggles really bad under low light. Everything about the camera is not right under low light conditions. The focusing is not accurate, the exposure values are not right, colors are faded and noisy images. But good news is that, Smartron is tirelessly working to improve the camera. They are committed to improve the experience and have promised to rectify these issues with OTA updates.

Battery

On moderate use, the battery will easily last from sunrise till sunset. Thanks to QuickCharge 2, recharge is very fast. It is not recommended to do overnight recharge anymore as it only takes an hour to recharge the battery from 0 to 100%. We comment the phone to wall charger when the battery falls below 30% and in no time,  the battery hits 75%.

One of the main reasons for good battery life is 1080p AMOLED display. AMOLED panels are well known own for battery friendly . another reason is that we do not always keep Facebook whatsapp etc running in the background.  This not only increases battery life, it enhances our productivity.

Verdict

Europe and USA used to dominate the  mobile phone industry, until Samsung came along and took an unassailable lead in mobile phone sales (hardware). When everyone thought that Samsung is going to run un-opposed, brands like Oppo, Huawei, Lenovo stepped in and started taking over the industry. Such was the intensity of these brands that even Samsung had to completely change their way of making smartphones.

Where does India stand in this smartphone war? We are still stuck at ‘consumption’ level. There are quite a few Indian brands that sell smartphones but all that these brands do is rebrand a Chinese phone and sell it as their own. And most of these phones come with woeful optimization, buggy OS and to make it worse, the brands rarely update the software on these phones.  There is serious lack of R&D among  Indian OEMs. Is there a solution to this problem? We do believe that the solution is Smartron.

Smartron tPhone is a great phone when it is not compared with other phones in same price point. Smartron t.Book has a form factor that is fresh and when launched, it did not have real competition at that price point. The t.Phone on the other has lot of competition.  Phones like Le Max 2 and OnePlus 3 offer more for similar price and they come with more powerful SD820. We can vouch that t.Phone is snappy and lag free.

When it comes to Android, consumers fall for ‘more specs for less price’ and the competition is very strong. If you are looking for a new phone and not interested in going the Chinese way, t.Phone is one of the best phones under 25k rupees. If you need the best phone under 30k and you don’t care about brand’s origins an support etc, Smartron t.Phone falls short.

The good

• Made by Indian brand
• AMOLED display
• Striking colors and great looking back panel
• Powerful processor, 64GB onboard storage
• Superb call quality
• Battery life and fast charging
• USB Type-C
• TronX ecosystem
• Unlimited cloud storage
• Comes with stock Marshmallow

The bad

• Ugly bezels
• Average camera performance
• No VoLTE
• Lack of accessories from reputed brands
• Service coverage outside of metros and ‘B’ cities