For how many of you have felt the need of an alternate SIM while travelling? The roaming charges have burnt the roof and getting a cheaper alternative is a painstaking process. In the midst of all the drama, a Hong Kong-based Tink Labs suggests a better alternative. It has come up with a designated mobile device especially for hotel rooms that the travellers can use it for free. As we speak of the benefits, Tink Labs has raised a whopping $125 million to boom the idea in hotels worldwide.

This round was sponsored by a current financier and a manufacturing giant Foxconn(via its FIH Mobile unit) with participation from Sinovation Ventures, the investment firm from ex-Google China head Kaifu Lee, and Cai Wensheng, a prolific angel investor who is Chairman of popular Chinese photo service Meitu.

Tink Labs CEO, Terence Kwok hinted the company’s valuation to be around $500 million which would place it to be the highest-valued tech start-up in Hong Kong, and certainly one of the mist notable in Asia. Kwok is determined to remain discreet and focused on business.

“We’re not a unicorn yet, but are more than halfway there. We’ve kept a low profile even though there’s a consumer element to the product,” he said.

The Labs had begun as a device rental service that targeted travellers at airports but now has moved its focus towards hotels where they generated a humungous amount of traction, raising over $170 million from investors to date. They have said to be working with Starwood, Accor, Shangri-la, and Meila.

The technology that they are raving about is their flagship product Handy which is a smartphone for hotel guests. The features are pretty much the same as any normal cellular phone with calling and messaging capacity, it also includes the amenities provided by the hotel and the nearby activities.

The two-way model is a win-win for both the parties; guests get a free device and service where the hotel gets a powerful channel through which they can engage their guests.

Tink Labs is right now dependent on Foxconn to produce their devices but they are turning things up by introducing phones that they have designed themselves. The company is ready to roll out their bespoke devices next year in April that wouldn’t have to rely on a heavy OS like Android and at the same time do things like control TV set in a hotel room, and more.

The current market of Handy stands at 100 hotels with nearly one million travellers using it every month. It started off focused on Asia with nearly half the hotels of Singapore using them plus 25 percent of London.

Handy makes the hoteliers realise their dream of retaining loyalty customer who generates serious revenues.

Source: Techcrunch

The post Tink Labs raises $125 million to put their freebie smartphones in hotels globally appeared first on TravHQ.

Sometimes having too much control can make things worse. Take cameras for example. Any traveller with a point and shoot camera would simply press the shutter key on spotting a good frame while someone travelling with a DSLR would probably need much more time to set up according to the frame. Sure the extra time and effort is clearly reflected in the end result but it is easy to mess up the settings for a picture or two when you don’t have enough time to get the settings right. At times you will feel that you could have clicked a better image if you used a narrower aperture or different focal length.

We recently came across a smart camera that breaks out of the conventional camera design and takes a different approach. The camera in question is called L16 and has been developed by a company called Light. The Light L16 claims to offer DSLR quality images while being able to fit in your pocket.

The Light L16 has got 16 camera lens modules on its face with 13 megapixel sensors sitting behind each one of them. When you shoot a picture, 10 of them fire simultaneously and capture the image at multiple fixed focal lengths. These images are then processed to create a final high quality image that can have a resolution of upto 52 megapixels. It runs a powerful Qualcomm chipset to take care of the heavy processing job. The display is a touchscreen making it easy to edit the photos right away and then they can be shared on social platforms using the inbuilt Wi-Fi. It can also record videos in 4K which use a single sensor only.

The list of features doesn’t end there. The focal length can be varied from 35 mm to 150 mm to get the right scene. As the image has been captured using multiple sensors, the camera has a better sense of depth and more image data to make changes. You can choose to select a different point of focus or use a shallower or deeper depth of field. The end result can be equivalent to an image captured at f/1.2. The same can be used to create better results in low light as well.

While we have seen some of the features like the ability to refocus or using multiple images for better low light photos on different devices in the past, the Light L16 packages them nicely while adding lot more to the mix.

Light was founded in 2013 by Dave Grannan and Dr. Rajiv Laroia. Dave has held leadership roles for major brands like Nokia, Sprint PCS and Geoworks. He holds an MBA from University of California, Berkeley. Rajiv previously founded Flarion Technologies which was later acquired by Qualcomm. He holds Ph.D. and Master’s Degree from University of Maryland, College Park and Bachelors from IIT Delhi.

The camera will be built by Foxconn. Foxconn was also an investor in Light’s $25 million Series B round announced earlier this year. The device can be reserved for $199 on their website. You can also browse some sample pictures here.

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