Smartisan T2
Smartisan has been on the market for less
than three years, but has attracted a loyal following in China. As you've already
guessed, Smartisan has finally come out with a successor of its flagship, and
it sure is a looker!
A contemporary glass-and-metal sandwich,
the design of the Smartisan T2 speaks of the minimalist culture at the company. Smartisan says it has finally
cracked the antenna bands conundrum with metal frames, delivering a single
piece of metal for the T2. Nothing interrupts the flow, and it looks beautiful.
This design philosophy extends to the SIM card slot, which is integrated into
the volume rocker, delivering a more uniform look.
As before, there's a secondary button on
the side, identical to the volume rocker, which controls the brightness of the
T2 by default, but is re-programmable and can be coded to, for example, launch
the camera. Indeed, the highly customized Smartisan OS 2.5 software (based on
Android 5.1 Lollipop) is among the biggest reasons to go for the T2, with
hundreds of ease-of-use and "OCD" settings available for users to get
their phone just the way they like it.
Regardless, the phone is still a competent high-end.
We're looking at a JDI-made, Gorilla Glass 3-covered, 4.95-inch display with a
resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, or a density of 445 ppi. The
device is powered by a hexa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor (available
with the likes of the LG G4) and 3 GB of LPDDR3 RAM. There are two storage
options available: 16 GB or 32 GB, neither of which offers support for a microSD
card.
On the imaging front, Smartisan is
making use of a Sony Exmor RS 13-megapixel rear camera with wide, f/2.0 lens
and optical image stabilization. The unit is capable of 4K UHD video and 120
FPS slow-moes. Up front, there's a 5-megapixel selfie snapper. To at least
seemingly better the audio experience, Smartisan went with an NXP TFA9890 and
Texas Instruments OPA1612 amplifier chips for the loudspeaker and headphones,
respectively. Keeping the lights on is a 2,670 mAh cell.
Smartisan isn't your typical Chinese
company selling its wares on the cheap, but the T2 isn't exactly expensive by
Western standards. Sold locally right now, it fetches a price equivalent of US$ 380 and US$ 395 for the 16 GB/32 GB models, respectively.
