Introducing TechRadar India Awards 2019

We’ve often talked about how great a market India is for tech products, especially smartphones. Every brand is racing to win the hearts of consumers by bringing innovation to never seen before price segments. That effort has made India the most lucrative market for many manufacturers, owing to the overall potential.

We, at TechRadar India, feel privileged to be able to witness this shift from the front seat and share our thoughts about these products as they enter the market. The Indian smartphone scene needs little introduction, and most of you would know how competitive and exciting the market has become. With multiple new smartphones and gadgets populating the market, we’re spoilt for choice. However, these options also often confuse consumers prior to their purchase.

In a sea of gadgets, there are a few pearls that stayed in our memories for a long time… gadgets that we have a hard time parting with. After having gone through dozens of them, we thought it would only be fair if we could somehow give the due recognition to these products and acknowledge the teams behind them.

The year 2019 was great for smartphones in particular. We got our first wave of foldable smartphones giving us a glimpse at the future, cameras grew in terms of number as well as abilities, fast charging became common across all price segments, USB Type-C became standard in a way it was destined to and manufacturers finally started understanding the importance of great software experience. Of course, some devices did a better job than others, but unarguably, the segment moved in the right direction.

To commemorate those which did the best job, we’re bringing TechRadar Awards to India. With great excitement, we introduce to you the TechRadar India Awards 2019.

For the first edition, here are the categories that we will be crowning winners for:

•  Super-snapper: Best camera phone
•  OG (Optimum Gaming): Best gaming phone 
•  Made for India: Best budget smartphone under Rs 15,000 
•  Daily driver material: Best value for money smartphone
•  THE Phone: Best smartphone (overall) 
•  Popular choice: The favorite smartphone of the jury and readers
•  Innovation award: Special mentions for products that did something out-of-the-box
•  Expert choice award: Jury's most memorable tech of 2019
•  Brand experience award: Readers select which brand they had the best experience with, right from launch and purchase to after-sales service

• Vote for the Most Popular Smartphone of 2019
• Vote for the Best Brand of 2019

Nominations were selected based on our proprietary scoring system for each smartphone, that was developed through the year to add a layer of objectivity to the awards. 

Two categories-- Popular Choice and Brand Experience require you to vote for your favourite product/brand and get them to claim the crown.

Winners for the rest of the categories will be decided by the TechRadar India editorial team as well as our versatile jury members who have expertise and experience in the Indian consumer technology space. We’re humbled to have the following panellists assisting us for TechRadar India Awards 2019:

• Abhishek Baxi, Technology Journalist and Digital Consultant
• Abhishek Bhatnagar, Gadgets To Use
• Ashwin Sundar, Technology Jock
• Dhananjay Bhosale, YouTube Reviewer
• Ershad Kaleebullah, The Mr Phone
• Raju PP, TechPP   
• Tushar Mehta, XDA Developers  
• Varun Krishnan, FoneArena 
  
  TechRadar India editorial team:
  
• Sudhanshu Singh, Siddharth Chauhan, Aakash Jhaveri

The TechRadar India team, along with the panellists is already in the process of finalizing the winners by revisiting our experiences with all the nominated products. The final results will be announced post-December 25 on our YouTube channel, and here on the website. 

Let’s get started!