Smartron t.phone P – Review

Smartron is back in the market with a new mobile: t.phone P. This is a budget-friendly device promising a long lasting battery life. For the uninitiated, Smartron is a Hyderabad based startup specializing in the field of IoT and Smart products, including smartphones. Their first mobile, the t.phone has an iconic design and their next mobile SRT Phone is a mobile designed for the fans of iconic sports legend, Sachin Tendulkar, who is also a stakeholder in Smartron. Now we have t.phone P which is priced at Rs 7999 and has a promising hardware specification.

In the Box

• t.phone P
• 5V 2.1A Charger
• micro USB cable
• SIM Ejector Pin
• User Manuals

Design

Smartron is known to be adventurous and flamboyant with their product design. But with the t.phone, it has been mellowed down. The design looks like any other mobile in the market, in that segment. It has a metal body design. The micro USB port and the speaker grills are at the bottom. The 3.5 mm audio jack is on the top. The primary camera, LED flash and the fingerprint sensor are the back. The front has a 5.2-inch display. Above the display is the 5 MP camera and the off-screen capacitive navigation keys below are back-lit.  The power button on the side has a texture to differentiate it from the volume button. The buttons have good tactile feedback. The mobile has a solid feel in the hand. It is easy to hold and handle. It has a good ergonomic grip and even weight distribution. Though the design isn’t unique or flamboyant like the other Smartron phones, it is a sensibly designed phone. I would call it a practical design that is designed to last long.

Display

Smartron t.phone P has a 5.2 inch IPS LCD Panel and the display supports 720p resolution. The display gives you about 290 ppi of pixel density. It has good brightness and contrast. The colors are a bit faded and as it is a 720p display you may not be able to see crisp text and images on the screen. But that is me nitpicking and most users would not find the experience different from an FHD screen. The display has good viewing angles. The brightness and contrast are really good under direct sunlight as well. Considering the fact that this mobile is priced at under Rs 8000, the display performance is as good as it can get for that cost.

Camera

Smartron t.phone P has 13 MP primary camera and a 5 MP selfie camera. Both these lenses have a single LED flash.  The camera UI is very simple and easy to use. It shows no signs of lag and it does not slow down between shots. It also has a manual mode apart from panorama, beautify, multiple exposure and time-lapse modes. The shots from the camera have good sharpness and they retain good details. It has good color reproduction and exposure levels are spot on. Focusing is fast and accurate and it can focus on macro subjects at a very close range. Under low light conditions, the colors are a bit faded and noise creeps in. But considering the price tag, the camera performance on the t.Phone P is commendable, both on the front and rear camera. 
Check out a few camera samples below.

Hardware and Performance

It is powered by a Snapdragon 435 processor with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage. It has a gyroscope, but not magnetic and orientation sensor. It supports FM radio and also OTG. During my test period, I have installed about 45 applications including 5 resource heavy games. The mobile was able to handle them without any problems. It did not show any signs of lag and the experience was smooth. Resource heavy games took a while to load, but once loaded, these apps ran smoothly. It did not heat up beyond 8 degrees, even after continual gaming of over 30 minutes. I have nothing but good things to say about the performance of the mobile.

The fingerprint sensor is fast and accurate. The speaker is loud and it registered a max of 101.6 dbA during my test.

Software

Smartron t.phone P runs on Android Nougat 7.1.1. It does not have any skin on top, but it has a few applications from Smartron like t-care, t-cloud and t-store. TronX Cloud service gives 1000 GB of cloud storage free for t.Phone P users. It does not have any bloatware. The UI is fast and smooth. It has no unnecessary transition animations. It feels blazingly fast to use this mobile and at times, I keep forgetting that this is an entry-level mobile priced at under Rs 8000.

Battery

The battery is the killer feature of this mobile. It has 5000 mAh battery. Coupled with a low powered processor and HD display, this mobile is tuned to run for more than two days on a single charge. I have been using the mobile for a week and in this one week, I have recharged it only twice. It takes little more than 2:45 min to charge the mobile from 20 to 100%. It can give a screen time of over 10 hours of continuous usage. t.phone P is a battery beast and it also supports reverse charging to power up other mobiles.

Verdict

The Smartron t.phone P is a clear winner in this price segment. Right from design to battery, I hardly find anything to complain about this mobile. Smartron has nailed it across all department. It competes against Xiaomi Redmi 4 and 10.or E. But the Smartron t.phone P has the biggest battery of these mobiles. Given that all these mobiles have a 16:9 aspect ratio display, if only t.phone P had a full vision display, it would have given Redmi 5 a run for the money, even before it was launched in India. That is me being a bit ambitious, but with what we have in hand, I would recommend the t.phone P over the competitors. I have been using this mobile as my dependable secondary companion mobile over the last few days and it has never disappointed me.

Buy Smartron t Phone P from Flipkart