Taking on Chinese smartphone players who have captured the budget market in India, Hyderabad-based Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) Smartron has launched an affordable "tphone P" for Rs 7,999.
Housing a big 5,000mAh battery and offering basic Android experience (with minimal bloatware), the device gives tough competition to the Rs 8,999 Xiaomi Redmi 4 (3GB RAM+32GB variant) that comes with 4,100mAh battery.
Let us see what works for the device that offers 1,000 GB free "tcloud" storage.
The unibody device with metallic body and plastic sides comes with 5.2-inch HD display that has 1,280x720 screen ratio, making it perfect for reading and watching videos.
It has fingerprint sensor at the back, power and volume toggles on the right, a hybrid dual-SIM card slot on the left and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top.
The company claims that tphone P's battery lasts for more than two days on a single charge and also gives the option to charge other devices such as smartphones, smartbands and speakers via OTG support.
On a rigourous usage that included gaming, all-day 4G connectivity, frequent camera usage and video consumption, the battery lasted for more than a day for us.
The "Reverse Charge Technology" worked well but one needs to either have a connector to use the feature or a cable that has USB 2.0 ports (or Type-C) on both ends.
"tphone P" is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 Octa Core Chipset processor coupled with 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage that is expandable by up to 128GB.
This is the same configuration that Xiaomi uses in its Redmi 4 device. However, the difference comes in the bloatware.
While tphone P runs the basic Android 7.1 Nougat operating system (OS) with a handful of its own custom software, Redmi 4 has MIUI 9 atop Android N that offers more features and customisations but draws more charge -- giving an advantage to the Smartron device.
Not only that, with Internet of Things (IoT) "tronX" platform integration, users can also take advantage of Smartron's connected ecosystem that currently has a few laptops and other smartphones.
On the camera front, the device offers a 13MP rear camera with autofocus and 5MP front camera with low light flash and beautification modes. The "Multi-Exposure" lets users take photos by overlapping one frame over another.
The photos clicked in day-light and well-lit conditions came out well from the rear camera. Photos with flash had a yellowish tone to them.
What doesn't work?
Expecting too much detail and clarity from both the shooters will disappoint you. The low-light photography was average.
The device is a bit bulky, heavy and the design of the device is too common.
Conclusion: tphone P is for users who look for a massive battery in a smartphone that comes at a pocket-friendly price and this device is Rs 1,000 less than Xiaomi Redmi 4 with almost similar hardware.
(Vivek Singh Chauhan can be contacted at vivek.c@ians.in)
