Smartron t.phone P Review: Goes On, And On, And On

Smartron is an Indian brand that has grown slowly and steadily into a force in the smartphone space. They have been incrementally getting better and now have come with the t.phone P. We have spent a good amount of time with this device and here is our review of this phone that promises extraordinary battery life and a smooth android experience.

Let us start with the key specifications of the device and then go from there.

You guessed it right. The key feature of this phone is the big 5000 mAH battery and the company says that it has enough juice to go on and on and on with just a single charge. We will talk in details about this later.

In The Box

The Smartron t.phone P has a pretty neat and straightforward package that does not have anything earth breaking, the contents of the box are simple and neat, including:

• t.phone P (Black, 32GB)
• Micro-USB Cable
• 5V/2A Charging Brick
• SIM Ejector tool
• Quick Start Guide

Let us start talking about the look and feel of this phone. There is nothing that stands out or jumps at you in the design department. Smartron had famously created waves with the dual tone design language with their t.phone and t.book. But this time they have stayed simple and we are not complaining. The device is not a design breakthrough, it is a practical budget phone. It looks and feels good. Easy to grip and work with using a single hand. The black metal back is good. The left side has SIM tray that has one SIM and one hybrid slot. The right side has the volume  rocker and the power button. The top has the 3.5 inch headphone socket and the bottom houses the speaker grill and the micro USB charging point. One of the grills actually has the speaker and the other one is there just for aesthetics we guess. To sum it up, nothing stands out, nothing is an eyesore, everything is practical.

The t.phone P comes with a 5.2-inch IPS LCD with a display resolution of 1280*720. This is a tad bit on the smaller side than the 5.5-inch standard found in most other devices in this price range and due to this, the phone has a better pixel density which results in a sharper display quality and the color reproduction is saturated and punchy. Serves its purpose very well we must say. Good outdoor legibility and viewing angles with no edge distortion. Very nifty given the price that the device sells at.

The UI and the software on the phone is based on Android 7.1, and the phone comes with the December 2017 Android security patch. The interface and menus are dual-layered and designed to look close to stock-Android Nougat, which does help in using the device smoothly and without hitches. It’s an approach that makes the phone particularly easy to use.

We like the fact that Smartron has kept bloatware out and has gone with just their tronX suite that is supposed to tie in all devices on their platform. The platform itself is now in the nascent stages and evolving, we look forward to seeing this work. To the end user, the tronX cloud gives 1000 GB of free storage. That’s good thing. What could have been avoided is the addition of Microsoft app stubs, that really should be left to the user. Hopefully they will be gone in the next iteration.

With the Snapdragon 435 powering it and getting support from 3GB RAM, the phone manages to easily zip through day to day operations without any hint of lag or stutter. We loaded 40 apps on the phone and it was able to take the load very easily. The phone also runs cold and does not heat up much. We threw a lot of games at it and they all were handled fine. The heavy duty games took a bit to load but after that they went very smooth. Overall on the performance side, there are absolutely no issues with this phone. Smartron seems to be making this their forte off late and this one fits in very well there. Ticks all boxes on performance

The 13 MP rear camera with single LED flash is par for the course and churns out acceptable pictures consistently. Low light does bring out a bit of noise in the images and that is true for almost all the devices in this segment and we are definitely not complaining there. The 5 MP from camera gives you okay pictures and gives out decent selfies. Here are some pictures we took with the phone

Let us talk about the battery. The 5000 mAH battery is clearly the hero of the device and sure does stand out. One a single charge with above average usage that involved a mix of 4G and WiFi with social media, video streaming and gaming, we were able to get more than 32 hours out of this phone and that is simply outstanding given the price at which this device comes. We pushed it harder with heavy gaming and a video loop and we were able to get a solid two days. So the battery does indeed go on and on and on. This will be good for people on the move and young ones who need juice to power their work or entertainment needs with the phone. One trick that the company has missed is giving out a fast charger with the package. That would have definitely been the icing on the cake, but then again, we are not complaining. The value for money with this device is quite high.

The speakers could have been better, but they do okay. The call quality was good and there were no call drops. The phone supports both Jio and Airtel VoLTE calls and we had no issues with both. The bluetooth, wifi and other connectivity options are present. The phone supports FM Radio and OTG too.

Verdict

At a price of INR 7,999/- the t.phone P definitely makes our recommendation list and does indeed go on and on with the 5000 mAH battery. We impressed with the device and it looks like the budget segment just got more competitive. Good to see Smartron back with a sensible and useful offering after a bit of a break after the srt.phone. We will be watching them very closely with interest. They are improving by leaps and bounds with every device.