Smartisan Nut Pro review: Android smartphone enhanced with drag-and-drop, text editing and smart sensor
From a company whose founder wants to be China’s Steve Jobs comes an innovative handset whose major software tweaks are worthy of applause but ultimately try too hard to change what isn’t broken
When it comes to global recognition, five-year-old Chinese phone maker Smartisan isn’t on the same level of smaller Chinese brand Meizu or upstart brand OnePlus – let alone the big boys Huawei and Xiaomi. Despite this, Smartisan has a cult following. In May, 4,000 paying fans filled Shenzhen Stadium, in the city over the border from Hong Kong, to watch the company’s launch event (I was there, and I saw scalpers outside the stadium).
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The reason for the fandom: company founder Luo Yonghao, an eccentric, trash talking, hilariously blunt former university dropout who has openly stated his desire to be China’s Steve Jobs.
With such a bold goal, Luo’s products had better not be cookie-cutter, and the Smartisan Nut Pro definitely isn’t. It’s technically an Android phone, but Luo has crafted such odd, quirky software that it makes these unlike anything else on the market.
Design and hardware
The Nut Pro is a glass-back phone with dated (meaning not slim) bezels around a 5.5-inch 1080-pixel display. It has a clickable button below the display that’s also a fingerprint reader. It’s got a mid-range Snapdragon 625 chip-set, 4GB of RAM and dual 13-megapixel cameras. The whole package is well built, but it’s boring, dated hardware at this point.
Software and features
This is where Luo has left his mark. Smartisan’s OS, as mentioned, overhauls Android in every way. Let’s start with the home screen: all apps fill the entire screen in a perfectly symmetrical grid (4x4 or 5x5), while every app has its own cartoonish, real-world icon that run counter to Google and Apple’s “flat design” style.
