computer science

Smartisan

Smartisan is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Smartisan rather than just read about it. In short: Smartisan Technology Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 锤子科技; pinyin: Chuízi Kējì, literally "Hammer Technology") (briefly called DELTAINNO) commonly known as Smartisan, was a Chinese consumer technology company headquartered in Beijing, Sichuan, & Chengdu.

Key takeaways

Smartisan belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Smartisan to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Smartisan from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Smartisan Technology Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 锤子科技; pinyin: Chuízi Kējì, literally "Hammer Technology") (briefly called DELTAINNO) commonly known as Smartisan, was a Chinese consumer technology company headquartered in Beijing, Sichuan, & Chengdu. It made smartphones and accessories designed under the principle of artisanship and perfectionism.

History

Luo Yonghao

Luo Yonghao was the Chief Executive Officer of Smartisan, often described as "eccentric" and "unconventional" in his executive style. He began his professional career in 2001 teaching GRE English at a private school in China. Yonghao has said that he taught himself English in a year, then successfully passed rigorous tests and got employed. His humorous and outlandish lessons got posted by students on social media, known as "Lao Luo Audio Clips" and quickly garnered him attention and fame. He went on to found Bullog.cn, a blogging platform for prominent Chinese liberal voices, after dissatisfaction with censored blogging platforms like Sina. On October 19, 2007, Bullog.cn was shut down, supposedly due to the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. He later founded Smartisan on May 18, 2012. After the winding down of Smartisan, Luo would be put on a restricted consumer list, which bars him from making large purchases because of his $89M debt. For the same reason, he was restricted from flying and high-speed rail for a few years. In 2025, Luo Yonghao publicly shared that he was diagnosed with ADHD with his Weibo audience, as a public explanation to his running late at a major Beijing event. He detailed that his neurodivergence played a role in his public expression while at Smartisan, saying that he never rehearsed speeches.

Pre-ByteDance (2012-2019) Smartisan was founded on May 18, 2012 by Luo Yonghao, a serial entrepreneur and influencer.On March 27, 2013, Smartisan announced Smartisan OS, a smartphone platform based on the Android operating system. Smartisan OS followed a design language with irregularly shaped icons, similar to macOS Yosemite (released 2 years later), in a default 3x3 grid-like home screen arrangement. On May 20, 2014, Smartisan announced their first smartphone, the Smartisan T1. It received the iF Gold Award, noted for its coherent design and polished details. On December 29, 2015, Smartisan announced their second smartphone, the Smartisan T2. It featured a similar design to iPhone 4. Press hailed it as a "bigger brother" of the Apple device.

Attempted diversification In 2018 & 2019, Smartisan made significant efforts to diversify outside of the niche of smartphones, which in China had become very saturated. In 2018, Smartisan launched Bullet Messenger (later Liaotianbao), a messenger app for iOS & Android devices. It is not currently available on App Store or the Play Store. Smartisan also released an award-winning air purifier in 2018 under the name JOSÉ TRONCO & face masks under the same name. In 2019, Smartisan debuted the disposable vape & e-cigarette sub-brand Flow. It was praised by iF for its sleek designs.

Post-ByteDance (2019 & onwards) By the second half of 2018 Smartisan had racked up 600,000,000 RMB in debt ($89M). Yonghao Luo declared on Weibo that he wouldn't file for bankruptcy, instead hoping to make money through "busking" (performance arts for money). According to ByteDance (parent company of TikTok) for a YiCai article, In 2019, the company acqui-hired Smartisan, taking over their patents and signing contracts with all of its hardware division employees and some of its software division employees. It was rumored by market analysts that ByteDance planned to produce education hardware, such as smart desk lamps. Notably, Smartisan's next phone, the Nut Pro 3, was preinstalled with Douyin, the Chinese-localized version of TikTok. In 2021, ByteDance halted Smartisan's device production to refocus on its line of hardware products for the education sector. It has not yet put any education hardware on sale. In 2022, ByteDance unveiled "Smartisan TV OS" (also known as MEyou OS), a "next-generation smart screen operating system" based on Smartisan OS with plans that it would be used on select Konka televisions. It did not feature Smartisan OS-like design, instead opting for a more bubbly, generic aesthetic. It has not been used on any production Konka TV. Since 2022, Smartisan seems to have ceased operations. Luo Yonghao has said he wants to return to the technology sector in Weibo posts. In January 2026, about 14 million RMB worth of company equity held by Luo Yonghao was frozen by the Beijing Fengtai District People's Court.

Related Ventures (2022 & onwards) Yonghao later founded Thin Red Line, a technology startup with its main product being Jarvis (initially called "J1 Assistant",) a voice-controllable AI assistant app with the main functionality of being able to do multiple things at once, such as noting down something and sending a message all in one prompt. It launched in beta on select Android mobile phones. In December 2025, ByteDance and ZTE announced Nubia M153, an "engineering prototype" only available for order online, which included Doubao, an operating system-level large action model. Doubao is able to perform tasks on the phone, such as tapping, through a GUI Agent. The phone uses Obric UI, a customized Android environment made by ByteDance. The browser icon on Obric UI looks like Smartisan OS'.

Software

Smartisan OS is a heavily modified operating system based on Android. It differentiates itself with an extensive number of visual tweaks. Smartisan did 200-1,000 unsolicited re-drawings of popular Chinese and global app icons for use on its operating system. Smartisan OS also has a handful of exclusive features.

Big Bang Standard written Chinese does not use spaces between words, and many words use more than one character. Big Bang is a text manipulation & segmentation feature specifically designed to solve for this Chinese particularity, but it is available for Latin script too. When users hold their thumb or whole finger over piece of text, it expands. The words appear in neat individually spaced squares. The user can cut part of a word, rearrange words, break words down into individual letters (characters) and copy part or all of the selected text. Big Bang used optical character recognition for images with text.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Smartisan T2 (left) next to iPhone 4. The T2 has a "Smartisan" wordmark which can only be seen under direct light or sunlight.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Smartisan

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Smartisan claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Smartisan before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Smartisan ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Smartisan

In research: Smartisan appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Smartisan in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Smartisan is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics ByteDance, Chinese brands, Chinese companies established in 2012, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Smartisan outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Smartisan in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Smartisan means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Smartisan out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Smartisan in simple terms?

Why does Smartisan matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Smartisan?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Smartisan.