It’s an Indian company that is trying to make it big in the IoT space, they have begun their journey with two devices – the t.phone and the t.book. I believe very firmly that this is very good news for India. We have long been stuck in a rut of the services model and become notorious for the winding queues at the US Consulate offices for visas. Smartron is definitely looking to change that.
The first device they launched, the t.book is unlike the other hybrids I have seen from Indian makers, it has been conceptualized, designed and crafted with maturity. There are no parts that look cheap. The dual tone messaging is a clear indication that the brand is here to make an identity. They have given the machine enough power to easily give entry level business laptops a run for their hide. All along, the memory of the machine is adequate and so is the on-board storage. The makers have ditched the temptation to run with the Atom family processors from Intel and still managed a fan-less architecture that does not overtly heat up on use. The way the machine sits on your table makes you think that they are taking aim at the Surface Pro family that is like the big daddy of hybrid productivity machines. While they are a tad bit far away from there, full marks for taking the shot. Not many have the conviction or gumption to do that. And they are Indian, so three cheers for that.
Coming to the t.phone, the device is above average in all aspects. The prominent brand scheme with dual tone is very pronounced here too and one can’t miss that. The company has tried to make phone that is a good productivity addition to a users lifestyle and in large part come out with flying colors on this front. The memory is 4 GB and if you ask me, that is more than enough RAM for even heavy use. While we are in an age of 6 GB and 8 GB RAM, we should note that there are very few times that devices actually need or even use that much memory. The internal storage of the t.phone is 64 GB and can be expanded further. The key element with this device is that it packs all this in one of the lightest frames that I have seen so far. That sits well with people like me who carry it in their pockets and do not want them sagging all the time. Yes there have been issues with the camera that were reported, the company has been listening carefully and actually fixing them. The fact that they decoupled the camera app and gve it separate updates through the faster Google Play route is testament enough that they are keen to innovate or iterate and get to the top rung.
While we have been speaking about the devices all along, the cloud back end that they give their devices where the users get unlimited storage that they can use to keep all the files that matter to them is very critical. This means that users are effectively free from lugging around heavy storage when they move and they get seamless sharing between the t.book and the t.phone.
What I see is an Indian startup taking aim at the biggies and trying to shoot at the stars. They may currently be hitting the tree tops, but it sure looks like they are setting their sights higher. This is very good news for the Indian Startup scene which has been trying hard to break the services based rut and get into a innovation based and product driven mode. I am sure that they are the flag bearers of the bold future that awaits us and will be following them very keenly henceforth.
