Review: Smartisan T1

Today, October 30, Chinese smartphone start-up Smartisan releases the T1, the front line of the company's entry into the smartphone market. Smartisan's newness to the scene gives it an edge over competitors as well as a disadvantage: like other pretenders in industries of high technology, products without big names to back them can fall under consumer radars, and must compete against standards established by the most powerful and popular.

Conversely, if the hardware and software hold up, the marketing is strong and the company's approach unique enough to draw attention in an overcrowded market, the lack of history can be a boon, can impress and make waves, can appeal to consumers' intrigue over their expectations. With this in mind, Smartisan's success may hinge on one key question: does it hold up to the competition?

Artisanal Crafting

Smartisan won design points before I turned the phone on. The T1 came in a mysterious black box with a few minimal compartments—it was something you’d expect James Bond to get as a care package from Q. Demonstrating the artisanship of its design, the box had a mini screwdriver and tiny screws to put the phone together with after popping in a micro sim card. Having a soft spot for Marx, this unabashed bourgeois mockery of labour was maddening, though admittedly Smartisan made the process feel classy and fun.

The T1 has a hard plastic body, and is one new smartphone that definitely won’t bend out of shape. Its weight and thick edges elided the feel of cheap material. The phone is smooth. In fact, I found it too smooth. On any hard surface that wasn’t perfectly flat, the T1 frequently slid down and fell off. It was so aggravating to hear expensive-sounding crashes from my room and realise I’d once again failed to barricade the phone in a seismic-safe box or in a spider’s web of hockey tape, which placing the T1 anywhere seemed to demand.

Racing in expecting to find the phone in pieces, however, the two-and-a-half foot falls from my desk left neither scratch nor dent. This slippage could of course be resolved by using a phone case, of which several are already available online, but a complete product should be able to sustain itself without accessories. Moreover, I found myself hard-pressed to consider adding any more girth to the phone, bringing me to my next point.

The T1 is big. It measures at 141mm or just over 5.5 inches in length and around 68mm or 2 & 2/3 inches in width. A hammer logo may adorn the back, but at times it was more like a brick. Walking and texting like I know I shouldn’t, the screen took up a sizable chunk of my forward vision. My real complaint about its size is I couldn’t find anywhere convenient to keep it on the go. Noticeably uncomfortable in front pockets and just barely fitting in back pockets, I typically resorted to stowing it in a backpack. The T1 is simply going with the status quo with regard to its size: its dimensions are almost identical to the iPhone 6 (T1: 141mm x 68mm x 8.2mm; iPhone 6: 138mm x 67mm x 6.9 mm). It seems newer generations of smartphones are all going bigger, so if anything I should critique industry standards...

Attention Smartphone Industry: your phones are too big, where the hell do you expect us to put them? Pls fix this. Thx.

Audio/Video

Where the size makes the difference for the better is streaming films and shows. The polished JDI Pixel Eyes display is 4.5 inches wide and looks good. Watching raging action scenes is when I want my forward vision wholly taken over, and the T1 gladly obliges.

I’m a pixel snob when it comes to my films; I refuse to watch anything rendered in less than 720p. Reviewing the T1, whose screen has full 1080p res, I had to admit I was impressed by how cleanly cut were all the edges and how full and crisp were the colours. Another point I’m quick to mark down either film or screen quality for is the ability to render black truly, and the T1 also passes this test. I had no problem and no lags streaming a high frame-rate, high definition action film with the Youku app.

While content looks great on the T1, it doesn’t sound nearly as good. Presumably Smartisan is banking on users plugging in headphones or an auxiliary line to speakers. This would explain why mediocre sound emits from two tiny, on-board speakers at the bottom of the phone. These notionally accommodate a range of bass and treble, but the speakers don’t produce softer sounds well, which are often totally lost. Frankly, the analogue sound is awkward. A confusing design choice over all.

Given how neatly and capably the T1’s buttons and cameras are tucked away, it’s too bad one speaker didn’t make its way to the top of the phone for stereo sound. No doubt most users will resort to headphones and external speakers, because in this area Smartisan falls short. However minor this design flaw and popular the alternatives, there's no denying that increasingly people use their phones to watch shows on their commutes, in cafes, at home, wherever, and that younger generations prefer smartphones to TVs or computers for watching shows. The lack of stereo sound seems to ignore a painfully obvious trend in how smartphones are being used. 

Speaking of trends of phone use...from selfies to home videos, Snap Chats, conference calls and travel photos, image and video continue to dominate the way we share, communicate, work and play. Any competitive smart phone needs a powerful camera to accommodate a range of multifarious projects and purposes. The T1's 12 megapixel camera is but a tiny speck on the top-left of the phone's back, yet takes quality pictures with an alluring range of colour and detail. With an ƒ 2.4 aperture and 1.4 micron-sized pixels, the T1’s Shikyou lens ably locks horns with the iPhone 6's (ƒ 2.2 aperture, 1.5 micron pixels; 8MP). The front-facing camera sometimes takes grainier shots in poorer light settings, but this is a minor quip and the secondary camera is more than passable.

(above: a shot with the main camera) 

Despite the quality of the Shikyou, an abysmal selection of tools to compose a shot obsolesces the Smartisan native camera app. The in-house app offers eight basic functions: HD recording, grid-lines, QR code scan, panorama, timer (5 and 10 second delay), night shots, location data and mute. Functional, but hardly a plethora and sorely lacking. Nowhere could I find settings just to change the resolution, you know, for when I want to take a small snapshot to send to friends instead of a bulky, 1.2 megabyte photo. I found myself resorting to the Camera360 app because it had many more filters, features and customisable light and colour settings.

(below: a shot with the front-facing camera)

Similarly, video recording works well, and the maximum 30 minutes of high-def you can record at one time look as great as you'd expect, but again there are no features, effects, or options to customise. Smartisan may be relying on the many, many film and filter apps that can enable T1 users to take pictures and videos just the way they want, but a lack of options hurts the T1’s photo and video package despite its quality lenses.

Interfacing

Disclaimer: I have been working through the English language setting—a manageable feat, but the T1 was clearly intended for Chinese customers. I ran into some troubles trying to switch between English and Chinese for texting, until a friend helped me locate a language setting solution that was only available in the Chinese system settings. Once able to type English and Chinese, the T1 worked like a charm. For English and especially Chinese, the predictive text is spot on. You can type pinyin, radicals, or draw characters on the screen—the T1 was able to decipher my poor Chinese script 9 times out of 10.

The interface itself is sleek and pretty. It drew many “oohs” and “ahhs” from friends and colleagues. The native Smartisan OS, based on Android 4.0, runs smoothly, and the Pixel Eyes display screen makes everything look good. Edges are sharp, curves are soft, tints, hues, shadows and textures are all excellently well-rendered. Apps are laid out in grids, with Phone, Browser and Messages locked to the bottom as your mains. By pressing and holding an app icon, you can move its position nimbly from grid to grid. Rarely, the T1’s operations got stuck or lagged—apps I wanted to move would stay glued to their spots. Other times, as with LeTV, apps would freeze during use. This didn’t happen often, and pressing the middle Home/Exit button almost always resolved the issue.

Another point relevant for English-speaking users of the T1 in China is that while you can change the system settings to English, some things will forever be in Chinese. This was most noticeable and prohibitive using the Market, Smartisan’s App Store. Without knowing exactly what I wanted to find, or without Chinese friends to guide me, I was quickly lost in categories and search options that remained in Chinese even after changing to an English interface. A few apps, like Evernote, I found by searching the English name. For most I had to find out the Chinese names for the apps I wanted, as searching in English yielded few, irrelevant or no results.

In terms of use over time, enabling data or connecting to wi-fi for longer periods, watching films or playing games will noticeably drain the T1. However, regular use of the phone won't deplete the battery for at least two days, and the T1 typically lasted up to four or five days before needing to recharge.

Comparatively speaking…

The T1 is available for between RMB 3k and RMB 3.5k. A 3G, 16GB T1 hits the lowest selling point at 3,000 kuai, however you can double that RAM to 32 GB for a paltry RMB 150 (ergo, a 3G, 32GB phone costs RMB 3,150). Smartisan seemed to realise this inconsequential RAM price difference, and so the 4G T1 is only available with 32 gigs of RAM and is priced at RMB 3,500.

Putting this in perspective, the top-end T1 is nearly RMB 1,800 cheaper than Apple’s iPhone 6, which retails in China for RMB 5,288. It also beats out the last generation iPhone 5S, which according to Apple’s China site will run you RMB 4,488 or RMB 4,888. The 5C goes for RMB 3,288, so Smartisan still has a brand-new model with a price point to beat Apple’s now outmoded last-gen phone.

Meanwhile, Samsung Galaxy’s Alpha G8 at RMB 3,999 isn’t as egregiously priced as the iPhone, and Chinese maker Huawei is unrolling its Ascend Mate 7, which ranges from RMB 2,999 to 3,699 according to your load-out.
Although Smartisan has a lot to prove against a lot of competition, it is competitively priced with higher-end phones. In the confused jungle of the smartphone market, the T1 is decidedly new and stands out as such. It isn’t yet obsoleting itself in a frantic, tired rat race to be the latest hottest thing.

Consumers will decide if the Smartisan T1 is hot or not, but it is cutting edges rather than corners, and doing so without the a priori high expectations doled on smartphone companies and products that boast longer lineages. The T1 is starting fresh and is well-situated to compete in a saturated market.

Conclusion

Overall, the T1 is an attractive machine that packs graceful finesse with solid computing power. Its size can be awkward and it can be a pain to carry around, but it compensates for this drawback by rendering everything on that big screen in tantalising quality. The T1 takes awesome photos and all but replaced my digital camera while I was reviewing it. Yet without the ability to adjust light, colour, aperture or speed settings, it felt like a great camera was let down by neglected, bare bones software.

Navigating the T1 in English can be frustrating or impossible, but there are fixes and the phone should be completely intuitive and usable for native or advanced Mandarin speakers. The Market, and thus access to all the apps that make phones like the T1 so smart, is likewise daunting without proficient Mandarin or help. With a price point that rivals its competitors, and in comparison with Apple easily undersells the iPhone 6, the T1 could make some serious waves.