Smartisan T2 review: Still unique, but not as nostalgic

No one would have expected that the battle in the mobile phone industry in 2015 would end with a crosstalk.

Two days before the end of 2016, Luo Yonghao braved the biting cold wind to hold another solo crosstalk show in Beijing, and also released the second flagship phone under the Hammer brand.

From a purely product perspective, Luo Yonghao and Smartisan have done three things that were unexpected this year: no one expected that Smartisan, which originally only produced high-end products, would launch a thousand-yuan Nut; no one expected that a so-called "small company" would have the iteration speed of replacing its flagship product once a year; no one expected that this brand with not-so-good sales volume would still be arrogant and paranoid about new products.

The product of arrogance and paranoia is Smartisan T2.

A design-oriented company

There are tens of millions of Apple fans in the world, and Luo Yonghao is one of them, or rather, he used to be one.

The packaging box of Hammer T2 is almost the black version of Apple iPhone 6 box. Apart from the color, the design layout is exactly the same.

The protective film on the front of the phone is printed with the familiar craftsman's declaration. Since the design of the detachable back cover has been cancelled, the random accessories of the Hammer T2 are only the data cable and the 5V/1.5A charger. The card pin sandwiched between the pieces of paper is not handled well enough.

Hammer T2 is still a Hammer. We can easily find a lot of design elements continued from T1 on this phone, including double-sided glass, physical buttons, symmetrical side buttons, an earpiece integrated with a light sensor, a back that is almost identical to T1, and a "fingerprint collector" function. The physical power button on the top has disappeared, replaced by the HOME button, which can be pressed and held for three seconds to turn off the screen. It was not easy to get used to it at first.

Since the back cover cannot be removed, a card slot needs to be added to install the SIM card. Integrating the card slot with the right side button is definitely the most unexpected feature of the Hammer T2 product. When you get the real machine, this design will exceed your imagination.

The card slot and buttons are both movable parts. Hammer T2 connects them with a spring and two connection points. The precision of the manufacturing process makes this small component feel not loose at all. What is even more commendable is that after the card slot is installed, the feel of the button on the right is almost the same as that on the left. Hammer T2 already has a lot of physical buttons, and now it uses a very craftsman-like method to eliminate the need for an extra card slot opening on the side of the phone.

The biggest difference in the appearance of Hammer T2 lies in the middle frame. It "maybe" is the first smartphone in China with a middle frame without breakpoints. The processing of the middle frame is indeed seamless, which is very pleasing to Virgos and people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Seen from the front, the dark gray frame surrounds the phone and is closer to the iPhone 4/4s loved by Apple fans. Unfortunately, the white version may not have this frame. The protruding frame will provide some protection for the glass on both sides of the body.

Regarding the chamfer treatment of the frame, the Hammer T2 is different from other mobile phones with similar appearance and structure. It does not polish the chamfered edges in a dazzling way, but uses a gentle technique that is not fancy and will not cut your hands.

There is no breakpoint in the middle frame. In order to please the eyes, the signal will be a problem. In this regard, the performance of Hammer T2 is not bad. After all, the antenna is not designed on the middle frame this time.

According to the information displayed in the engineering mode of the mobile phone, under the indoor conditions with general signal, although the metal middle frame of the Hammer T2 is slightly worse than the Meizu Metal which does not look so metal, it is evenly matched with the Nubia Z9 with a similar design and a breakpoint in the middle frame. The signal strength of the Hammer T2 is stable at around -90dBm. Although the Nubia Z9 is much stronger in most cases, it will drop below -100dBm at the worst.

As for the design, in addition to the pleasure brought by the all-metal middle frame and the exquisite card slot, we also feel that this time the Smartisan T2 is not as bucking the trend as the last T1. Perhaps it is because T2 inherits too much, or perhaps it is because after the use of metal, T2 has more similarities with other mobile phones. This inevitably reminds people of the scene at the press conference where Luo Yonghao compared his own product with the Apple iPhone. In that clip, he was using the Smartisan T1.

The unique operating system finally has wallpapers

The operating systems in the domestic mobile phone market have always been firmly occupied by these three major camps: Apple iOS, Android that can still be seen as Android, and various domestic Android UIs that continue to imitate iOS. Therefore, the emergence of Smartisan OS, which is different from any other OS now, has to be said to be a good phenomenon.

With the launch of Smartisan T2, Smartisan OS has also been upgraded to 2.5. The adherence to skeuomorphism remains the same, and the additions and changes are few and far between.

Luo Yonghao’s idea of ​​not allowing you to “stick” icons on your loved ones’ faces has not changed, but Smartisan OS finally has wallpapers. However, there is a layer of frosted glass on the wallpaper. This layer of frosted glass and the icons are integrated into one plane. To be honest, it looks a bit like Windows Phone.

Smartisan OS has more than ten pre-installed software, which is really too many. It may be that Luo Yonghao wants to "show off" his proud skeuomorphic design on more different icons. Fortunately, they can all be uninstalled.

It is particularly worth mentioning that the newly added screen recording function of Smartisan OS 2.5 is very useful. Although the Android system has supported screen recording after version 4.4, the native experience of this function is so poor that it is completely unusable.

On the Hammer T2, you can find the "Screen Recording" button in the drop-down menu and stop recording by clicking the notification bar. It is a great tool for recording mobile games. Next, it depends on when Luo Yonghao will make this feature cooperate with WeChat Moments.

From all aspects, the main purpose of Smartisan OS upgrade 2.5 should be to update the Android version to 5.1, enhance fluency and stability, and it will still make many people who have never used it feel "fresh". If you are currently using an Android phone with a UI such as Xiaomi MIUI or Meizu Flyme, you might as well download a Smartisan desktop to see if it suits your taste.

Any more information about the hardware configuration?

Since there are mobile phones like vivo X6 Plus in the market that use the same processor as Redmi and cost three thousand yuan, the configuration of Hammer T2 combined with its positioning of around 2,500 yuan is not bad.

Luo Yonghao doesn't like to follow the trend of large screens when making mobile phones, which results in the only hardware upgrade on paper for Hammer T2 compared to T1 being the use of Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor. In fact, from the perspective of chip selection alone, this is a very rational approach.

In the range of Qualcomm chips to choose from, on the downside, the Snapdragon 805 is a 32-bit design and is a bit outdated, and on the upside, the extremely hot 810 and the 820 which is expected to take another half a year to wait are not very suitable. Hammer, which values ​​sentiment, did not talk to you about "enough" with the Snapdragon 801 in 2015 like ZUK did, which is quite honest.

The performance of Snapdragon 808 is indeed sufficient. You will never find any game that can be run by Snapdragon 820 but not by Snapdragon 808. Qihoo and LG have also chosen this chip for their 2015 flagship products. There is no need to blindly "get excited" about it.

Whether it "gets hot" or not, the Hammer T2 may still be a phone that gets hot easily. The reason why it is possible is that Luo Yonghao cleverly released this product in Beijing in winter, and we have no idea how it will feel in summer. Like all metal-framed mobile phones, the heat of the machine will be preferentially conducted to the surrounding frames. After the phone heats up, it can only be said that it is not "hot".

The 2670mAh battery capacity may seem a bit small at first glance, but the Hammer T2 is just a "small phone" with a 5-inch 1080P screen. This battery cannot guarantee that the Hammer T2 can be used frequently for two days in a row, but it is more than enough for a day of normal use.

Hi-Fi sound effect is the highlight of Hammer T2. The ability to optimize for headphone models has excited music enthusiasts. However, the reality is that Hammer T2 currently supports a small number of headphones for optimization. In addition to Hammer's own headphones and Apple EarPods, the other two AKGs and one model each of JBL and Sennheiser can only cover a very limited number of users. AKG's popular K420 and the entire Audio-Technica family failed to make the first batch of optimization lists.

Unlike the introduction of T1, the press conference did not spend too much time introducing the camera of Hammer T2. It only emphasized that optical image stabilization was added without any protrusion on the lens, which is the only upgrade point of the imaging part of the mobile phone.

In terms of actual photo-taking performance, the overall picture of Hammer T2 is dark, and the improvement effect of HDR mode is extremely limited.

The Hammer T2 uses a 13-megapixel main camera, the same Sony IMX214 sensor as the T1, which inevitably makes people suspect that it is "clearing inventory". In the same scene, the photos taken by the iPhone 6s Plus are still more pleasing to the eye, and even in terms of details, it is better than the Hammer T2 with 100-megapixel more. There is no need to mention Android phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Sony Xperia Z5, whose photo performance can surpass the iPhone in some cases.

It’s a bit regrettable…

To be fair, the hardware level of the Hammer T2 meets the flagship standard of Android phones in 2015, but the product has several regrets in its hardware.

Nowadays, it is not difficult to find a few fingerprint-supported mobile phones among the thousand-yuan phones. The lack of fingerprint recognition undoubtedly makes the Hammer T2 look a bit outdated.

The reason is that the fingerprint function of Android phones is generally not as powerful as that of Apple iPhone, which may be one of the reasons why Luo Yonghao hesitated. Moreover, Hammer, which emphasizes design so much, seems to find it difficult to find a place to place the fingerprint recognition area on the body. Luo Yonghao generally will not accept the practice of adding a "Band-Aid" on the front like OnePlus 2. Of course, we can learn from how Sony Z5 balances fingerprint recognition and simple design.

However, even though Qualcomm chip products generally support fast charging, the charging speed of Hammer T2 is still not fast. Using the original 5V/1.5A charger, it takes about 1 hour and 5 minutes to charge from 1% to 50%, and it takes 2 hours to charge about 80% of the battery. Luo will not tell you "charge for a few minutes and talk for a few hours", and you must remember to plug your phone into the charger before going to bed at night.

Finally, it cannot be said that it is a bad thing that Hammer did not add a USB Type-C interface to its T2 products. When you are worried about not being able to borrow a charging cable in the office, you will definitely understand the reason.

Will you buy the new “sentiment”?

I guess no one would object to saying that Luo Yonghao is one of the top five influential people in China's mobile phone industry. On the contrary, with Hammer's annual sales of less than 300,000, it is really difficult to calculate where he should rank.

Frankly speaking, the Hammer T2 is not that nostalgic. Perhaps the uniqueness it had a year ago has evolved from the personality of a product to the personality of a brand. Or perhaps with the seamless metal middle frame as the starting point, Hammer is trying to create products that cater to the masses in its own way, but the speed is still a bit slow.

In general, the Hammer T2 can be regarded as a masterpiece among small-sized mobile phones, especially in terms of design and details. In addition, Luo Yonghao himself is quite proud that Hammer has successfully "grabbed" many users from Apple. If you are not yearning for a large-screen Plus version of the iPhone, and rarely use fingerprint recognition to protect the HOME button, then the Hammer T2, whose initial price is less than half of the iPhone 6s, is worth a try.

Only 100 yuan more than the 16GB version, the 2,599 yuan 32GB version of the Hammer T2 is obviously a better choice. However, this price will still make many consumers who take 2,000 yuan as the price line of domestic flagship phones wonder why it must be hundreds of yuan more expensive than other phones?

What Luo said is right. Hammer has the ability to convert some Apple users. However, whether it can convert users of domestic competitors such as Xiaomi, Meizu, and Huawei in the future is a rather mysterious question.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.