Chinese phone maker Hammer Technologies launched the Smartisan T2 in China in December. It’s a phone with a 4.95 inch full HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor,3GB of RAM, an a heavily customized version of Android called Smartisan OS.
While the company doesn’t currently sell its phones in the US, the Smartisan T1 did pass through the FCC last summer, suggesting that Smartisan was at least thinking about bringing its phones to North America.
Now the Smartisan T2 has also hit the FCC.
The phone has a 13MP rear camera, a 5MP front camera, a 2,670 mAh battery, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, and NFC.
But it’s the software and phone design that really makes Smartisan’s devices stand out. There are rocker buttons on both the left and right sides of the phone, letting you adjust volume on one side and brightness controls on the other. You can adjust the phone for right-handed or left-handed mode to decide which rocker controls which function.
You can also adjust the phone’s settings to use these “sidekeys” as shortcuts for other actions, such as skipping songs while listening to music when the screen is off, creating a new calendar task, starting a voice recording, or taking a picture with the camera.
The Smartisan OS home screen shows your icons in a tile-based user interface, and allows you to sort apps by installation date, frequency of use, or icon color. While the version of Smartisan OS used in China does not include Google apps and services, there’s a “Smiling Cloud Service” for synchronizing your contacts, calendar, notes, bookmarks, settings, and photos.