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A screenshot from the livestream to launch the new Smartisan-branded phone from ByteDance, October 2020. Photo: Screenshot
Tech

ByteDance-owned Smartisan launches new 5G smartphone, eyes education devices and software

  • The Smartisan team is also eyeing education hardware and software market
  • Smartisan launched its first smartphone under ByteDance in November last year, which gave users smoother access to Douyin
Smartphones
Iris Deng
Iris Deng
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TikTok owner ByteDance has launched a new 5G handset under the Smartisan brand, the smartphone maker it acquired last year, and said it plans to expand further into education hardware devices.

The Nut R2, already on sale, features a curved full screen and a 100MP lens, and runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 processor, according to a Tuesday evening launch event in Beijing, which was live-streamed online. The phone has a base price of 4,499 yuan (US$676).

Smartisan, which was a niche Chinese smartphone maker with a cult following, was acquired by Beijing-based ByteDance last year after it ran into financial trouble. Its debt-ridden founder Luo Yonghao, who was absent from the event last night, was later put on China’s ‘deadbeat’ social credit list in November for failing to pay off Smartisan’s debts.

“We are alive and well,” said Wu Dezhou, former CTO at Smartisan and now head of New Stone Lab, the hardware project under ByteDance, in response to public curiosity about the team’s fate.

Luo Yonghao. Photo: Sohu.com

The new phone received a mixed reaction on social media. A hashtag about the launch event on Weibo, the Chinese Twitter-like site, already has over 9 million views and some users complained about the pricing of the smartphone. “Smartisan is too confident with the high price,” one Weibo user wrote.

Big-talking smartphone maker Smartisan might be in trouble

Smartisan launched its first smartphone under ByteDance in November last year, which gave users smoother access to Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, including the distinctive special effects and filters.

Wu said that the size of the Smartisan team has doubled since joining ByteDance, and they are looking beyond smartphones. Specifically, they are looking at developing devices and operating systems for the education market, said Wu, without revealing further details.

This new direction aligns with ByteDance’s ambitions for online education.

In 2018 ByteDance made its first foray into education with the beta launch of Gogokid, a tutoring platform where Chinese children are taught English online by foreign teachers.

The company later launched a paid content app called Haohao Xuexi, which literally means “study hard”. The app offers a variety of content covering career advice, parenting, culture, wealth management, as well as audiobooks.

Earlier this year, the company launched two artificial intelligence-powered apps – GuaGuaLong English, which aims to teach Chinese two-to-eight-year-olds English, and GuaGuaLong Mind, which focuses on teaching kindergarten age children mathematics.
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