Smartisan U3 pro Mobile Review
Some people think that if a brand isn’t too well known then their products aren’t as good as you would like. In most cases, this isn’t true. Every brand has started somewhere, and these small ones do that too. Who knows, maybe in the future they will be the next market leaders. But for now, keep reading the Smartisan U3 pro Mobile Review to learn about a cool phone which many people would love to own.
Design
When I would like to point out is that the design places this smartphone in a better category than the “mid-range” or “budget” sector its specs put it in. Starting out with the body interface, Nut Pro 2 has a stunning metal and glass body and the glass appears to be on both sides of the smartphone. The bezels aren’t as much of a beauty would have been expected given its trendy design, instead, it has bezels that aren’t too thick. The top bezel holds up the front camera at the center while the speaker lies within the metal frame and the glass. The physical keys on the smartphone are placed on the usual and basic right side but have a different appearance. Unlike the line type of the physical keys which we can see in smartphones, the physical keys on this smartphone are rounded buttons. It’s not something new since you can find other phones on the market with rounded buttons, but at least it looks a bit refreshed comparing to the other smartphones.
The back of the smartphone is coated with glass which holds the dual camera setup at the top left portion. The first camera is larger, and it comes a bit outside of the smartphone’s surface while the second camera and the LED flash lay even with the back surface. The fingerprint sensor is almost unnoticeable as it is placed beneath the Smartisan logo at the center of the back. To wrap it all together, a thin line goes around the smartphone’s frame. On the black version of the smartphone, the line is red while on the red and champagne versions, the line is gold.
The 5.99 inches full-view FHD+ display of the device has the bliss of 403 PPI pixel density and a resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels. It’s in-cell touch display has the Corning Gorilla Glass to act as the defender if the phone falls from high places. It has a massive 82% screen-to-body ratio and 1500:1 contrast ratio.
Software
The device comes powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 MSM8976 Plus, which is equipped with the Octa-core 2.2GHz Kryo CPU. This 64-bit CPU optimizes the 14nm process technology. Qualcomm Adreno 512 is what handles the graphics functions on the smartphone. Smartisan 4.0 OS is the software running on the smartphone. If we’re talking about the storage of this smartphone, there are five variants which are:
4GB RAM + 32GB ROM
4GB RAM + 64GB ROM
6GB RAM + 64GB ROM
6GB RAM + 128GB ROM
6GB RAM + 256GB ROM
A microSD card slot is also available, which can support a microSD card of 256GB.
Camera performance
The Smartisan Nut Pro 2 uses the IMX386 sensor with OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) which can give us very good photos in daylight. The details in these photos are really good, and in all actuality I believe the sharpening algorithm used by Smartisan is slightly better than Xiaomi’s Mi, zooming into each photo as far as you can notice very detailed and sharp, something that the Mi Note 3 can’t quite compare.
However, the Smartisan has a weak spot to say so, and that is the color reproduction. While the colors in photos are generally pretty accurate, they aren’t as vivid or deeply saturated the same way the Xiaomi cameras present their “work”. Colors do look a little dull unless you’re taking a photo of something extremely colorful. This seems to be a software decision as opposed to a lack of optimization, and I think they’ve made it that way so that the colors are generally fairly true to life without being oversaturated.
HDR mode works perfectly fine in high dynamic range environments but washes the photos out in photos where HDR is not needed.
The bokeh mode is not as bad as you would think. While there is no option to adjust bokeh when you’re taking a photo, you can adjust it after the photo has been taken, which in my opinion is a better option. The foreground/background separation is quite good and the edges are separated well enough, however, the camera does make mistakes sometimes and will occasionally put a small part of the foreground into the background, but sometimes you really couldn’t care less about that.
The video quality is very good, with a lot of detail as long as there is not a lot of movement in the video. Once you do introduce movement, you get a lot of ugly pixels, which looks very bad and unprofessional. Also, the 4K video looks a lot more like noisy 1080p.
Battery
I believe the battery isn’t as good as other smartphones have, specifically the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S. The battery is ok-ish and I could still get 10 hours of screen on time easily on the Smartisan, but the standby battery drain is higher than on other devices and I hope Smartisan fixes it as soon as possible because this battery drain is very unpleasant and doing simple things might knock out your phones in just a few hours, even doing things like YouTube, gaming, or taking photos.
Overall thoughts
This phone is quite cool and I would really like to see how long this phone will last when it’s pushed to the limits. However, such a great phone deserves a chance and if you’re interested where you can buy it, check out this shop here.
