Indigenising 5G Communication With Optimus Rhino 5G

Defence startup OptimusLogic Methods, primarily based in Bengaluru, is making waves throughout all bands of the 5G spectrum with their indigenously designed 5G cell phone

Throngs of individuals and the telecom behemoths bore witness on October 1, 2022, as India was ushered into a brand new period of technological developments with the inauguration of the 5G band, on the sixth Version of India Cell Congress 2022, at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. On this momentous event, a small however enterprising group of people unveiled India’s first indigenously manufactured 5G smartphone—Optimus Rhino 5G.

The team at OptimusLogic Systems with their founder Chandra Kumar Chettiar (centre) — The group at OptimusLogic Methods with their founder Chandra Kumar Chettiar (centre)

Based in 2013 by Chandra Kumar Chettiar as a startup that constructed units and subsystems for defence PSUs comparable to BEL and DRDO, OptimusLogic Methods Pvt Ltd started their journey with an preliminary funding of ₹20 million. As a Digital Communication Innovation Sq. (DCIS) scheme grantee, and with the help of the Division of Telecommunications (DoT), the corporate has been in a position to manufacture a 5G smartphone that may help all of the 5G bands in a really small kind issue.

The cellphone is at the moment out there in three completely different fashions—Optimus Rhino 5G 1, Optimus Rhino 5G 2, and Optimus Rhino 5G 4 (rugged MIL-810G/IP68).

Out of the entire smartphone base of about 600 million in India, solely 50-60 million handsets are estimated to be 5G smartphones, whilst the primary 5G smartphone was unveiled in 2020. The Optimus Rhino 5G is an indigenous product of the Voice of Indian Communication Expertise Enterprises (VoICE) consortium, which requested a number of know-how and R&D gamers to arrange a 5G primarily based cell communication community within the 82km Palwal-Mathura sector of the Indian Railways on 700MHz band.

“A lot of the telephones manufactured by a client model help the N78 (3500MHz) frequency band. In case you take a number of use circumstances for the military and the railways, they’ve been allotted the 5MHz spectrum within the 700MHz band, as a result of the decrease the frequency, the upper the vary. Optimus Rhino 5G helps all these bands and world community bands of main international locations,” explains Chettiar.

The Optimus Rhino 5G 1 comes with a big storage capability of 8GB RAM, 128GB flash drive, and a quad digicam setup at a modest value of `20,000. Shoppers even have the choice of getting a reduction of ₹2,000 in the event that they select to assemble the cellphone on their very own and order the meeting equipment.

It has an octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 900 processor and an ARM Mali-G68 graphics processing unit. It helps 17 5G bands ranging from B1 to N78. The cellphone can join with a 5G community anyplace throughout the globe in standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) modes.

With a 17cm (6.7-inch) in-cell show and an FHD+ decision (1080×2460 pixels), the cellphone helps 120Hz refresh fee for smoother animations and scrolling expertise. The Android 12 cell phone runs on a 5000mAh lithium-polymer battery with a standby time of 200 hours. It comes with a built-in NFC; the later fashions will use the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite tv for pc System (IRNSS) navigation system NavIC.

The designing of the cellphone started in 2020 when the world was grappling with Covid. As a consequence of their affiliation with the defence sector, the corporate labored all through the pandemic, with wage cuts to generate funds for designing and growing the cellphone.

Chettiar and his group are at the moment readying themselves to market the product and showcase it in numerous exhibitions. “We’re already operating a check run throughout the federal government departments, the place about 10,000 telephones might be examined for working in India. As soon as we cross that we will be prepared for mass manufacturing,” says Chettiar.

Whereas the PCB was designed in-house, the outsourced parts have been assembled of their workplace. The group intends to focus on the patron market and defence PSUs within the preliminary advertising and marketing stage. It’s at the moment in talks with VVDN Applied sciences for a industrial manufacturing facility for the cellphone. The corporate plans to subsequently white-label the PCB design for various platforms and promote it to different corporations.

The group outlined the corporate’s imaginative and prescient with the prospect of approaching enterprise capitalists to arrange their manufacturing unit. “Our imaginative and prescient is to be a world authentic design producer (ODM) and design units for the world. As our clientele will increase, we are going to goal to arrange a general-purpose manufacturing unit, which is not going to be focused particularly to a specific system however help any embedded system design,” the group informed EFY.