Few years ago, a fresh and independent smartphone company – Smartisan has emerged in China with a concept of idealism. Instead of marketing their phones with high price-performance ratio like Xiaomi, their smartphone doesn’t priced cheap as each is uniquely designed and crafted to a masterpiece. The release of Smartisan T1 has created an impact and established a new perspective from the not-so-casual consumer, but their response isn’t overwhelmingly positive due to its pricing. With some compromisation between quality and price, the Smartisan U1 was born and it comes with a cheaper price tag from its brother T1. But how is the Smartisan U1 an outlier of all smartphone? Read on below.
Unboxing
The box design of the Smartisan UI has no surprise from other smartphone box such as the Apple iPhone. The Smartisan ‘坚果’ logo was printed on the side with a clean and minimalist font on top of simple white box.
So goes the design of the smartphone printed on the top of the box, which is roughly the identical size of the phone.
Upon lifting the cover, the smartphone was placed with the rear cover facing up from the box. This sort of arrangement rarely existed on other smartphone brands such as Samsung, HTC and even Apple as the screen is always facing the top at default.
It comes with user manual, charging adapter and data cable all packed within the white box.
One thing to note is the data cable is packed with a coiled arrangement around a circular box instead of wrapped within the plastic. This create a good impression on the Smartisan smartphone that focus not just in the smartphone itself, but the arrangement of other accessories.
Design Outlook
One of the highlight of the Smartisan U1 is the rear cover design and the material. The plain light blue cover creates a uniform and a clean look on the smartphone that is certainly appealing.
Instead of highlight the logo with a distinct and reflective colour, the Smartisan logo was embedded with protrusion as user can feel the existence of the Smartisan logo when holding the smartphone. It also seems like the Smartisan shows a low key attitude for their products with non-highlighted logo.
The 13MP camera with f/2.2 aperture is rested on the top left corner of the smartphone with the LED flash on the right. Although it does not come with the trendy dual tone LED flash, the flash should be sufficient in the recovery of brightness when taking photographs in low light environment.
Nevertheless, we have no idea on the presence of a small hole on the left of the smartphone. Is it a gimmick?
The rear cover is elevated in a slight manner that provides a better grip for the user.
Lifting off the removable back cover, users can insert microSD slots and 2 SIM slots. Unfortunately, the 2900mAh battery is non-removable.
Speakers grills are positioned evenly on the left and the right of the smartphone with the microUSB port on the middle.
The 5.5 inches Full HD display was just position in the center of the smartphone with the front camera beside the in-call speaker.
Even the navigation key design was super simplistic and minimalist. There isn’t any back, home or menu logo instead of a pale grey white dot. It might takes some time to learn for inexperienced user.
The buttons on the side of the Smartisan U1 is well balanced. To achieve this concept, Smartisan has placed the volume rocker on the left while brightness control button is placed on the right. Although it is rare for a Android smartphone to have a hardware brightness control, this key is definitely useful for those who like to adjust brightness manually in different environment.
Apart from the power button that sits on the top right hand corner, the 3.5mm audio jack is also positioned on the left.
Conclusion
With a unique Baby Skin like body material, the smartphone surface appears as smooth as silk. However, don’t be worried about the slippery surface because the evenly textured rear panel got you covered. In short, the Smartisan U1 is defined as a smartphone that focused on the minimalist design along with cool-looking feature from the customized Smartisan OS itself. Will the Smartisan U1 suffices our daily needs of other smartphone? Stay tuned on Zing Gadget.
We express our sincere gratitude for AKAFONE for providing this smartphone unit for review. Akafone is a online platform targeting Euope and Asia regions that distribute quality smartphone for reasonable price. Use the code “”STAYAWESOME” for 5% discount when you shop at www.akafone.com”
Also check out the Smartisan from AKAfone online store here
