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The article represents the author’s personal views, and the minority party only slightly modified the title and formatting.
Full screen, too beautiful to be considered powerful.
——Nut Pro 2 slogan
The domestic mobile phone market was already a red ocean in 2017, with many classic products released that year: Xiaomi 6, MIX2, vivo X20 and OPPO R11. With the release of Apple’s iPhone X, the “full screen” mobile phone form has finally become one of the hot topics of discussion.
Although there were already various “full-screen” mobile phones on the market at that time, such as Xiaomi MIX2, OPPO R11S and vivo X20, the market was never short of innovators. Smartisan Technology released the Nut Pro 2 that year – not only Smartisan’s first full-screen mobile phone, but also a product that determined the fate of Smartisan Technology Company at that time.
“The most dangerous year” and “the year of resurrection”
In 2016, Smartisan Technology encountered an all-round crisis, and the company’s financial situation was unexpectedly exposed: it suffered a loss of 462 million yuan in 2015, and continued to lose 192 million yuan in the first half of 2016. The cumulative loss in one and a half years exceeded 650 million yuan.
At the same time, the company’s total assets shrank sharply from 825 million yuan at the end of 2015 to 296 million yuan on June 30, 2016; the owner’s net assets plummeted from 193 million yuan to only 209,800 yuan. According to media reports at the time, the asset-liability ratio was as high as 99%.
Not only does it look bad on the books, but the sales of the company’s released products – Smartisan T1 and T2 – are also far less than expected. As of 2016, the total sales of Smartisan T1, T2 and Nut series are only about 2 million units, which cannot match its huge marketing volume. An official designated seller revealed that the sales volume of related models has plummeted from 60 units in a single day to 1-2 units in a single day. Suning.com flagship store cannot even sell a single T2 in a month.
Due to various public opinions, Smartisan held only two press conferences in 2017 and released the Nut Pro series, including Nut Pro and Nut Pro 2.
Among them, Smartisan’s first full-screen mobile phone, Nut Pro 2, is equipped with a Snapdragon 660 processor and starts at 1,799 yuan. It has a favorable rating of 99.9% on JD.com. According to data shared by Smartisan Technology on the C21 forum, Nut Pro 2 has quickly become a hot-selling model priced at 2,000 yuan.
As the two products went on sale, Smartisan mobile phone sales increased significantly in 2017. According to media reports at the time, annual shipments reached approximately 3.4 million units.
In this issue of “Nostalgia Notes”, please follow my perspective and take a look at the dazzling features of the Nut Pro 2 – this “full-screen phone that satisfies the public”.
Nut Pro 2
In terms of appearance, Nut Pro 2 is equipped with a 5.99-inch 18:9 large screen with a resolution of 2160*1080 and a screen-to-body ratio of 81.9%.
There are also bright spots on the back of the phone. The hammer on the back cover is not only the LOGO, but also the fingerprint recognition sensor.
In terms of configuration, Pro2 is equipped with one of the most popular CPUs in the mobile phone industry at that time: Snapdragon 660, 6GB of RAM (there is also a 4GB version), 18W fast charging and a 3500 mAh battery. It is a standard “bucket machine” among mobile phones in the 2,000 yuan range.
Smartisan OS
Since it is a hammer, the appearance design is only one of its highlights. In terms of system, the Smartisan OS 4.1 shipped from the factory on the Nut Pro 2 brings many practical features that were eye-catching back then.
For the convenience of demonstration, my Pro2 has been upgraded to Smartisan OS v6.7.4.3.
Skeuomorphic home screen
The first thing worth mentioning is the desktop of Smartisan OS. It was very special back then, and it is still so now. There are no cluttered widgets in the desktop main menu. The sequential arrangement of APPs and quasi-material style icons are put together with the appearance design of the mobile phone, and there is no sense of fragmentation at all.
Not only the system’s built-in software has skeuomorphic adaptation, but Smartisan OS has carried out targeted “home screen transformation” for the mainstream software on the market at that time. Find the “Application Icon” in the settings, and you can see many third-party APP icons with skeuomorphic design versions.
A small number of them do not have compatible software. You can also find the universal icons provided by the system on this page to set them to make the desktop style look more unified.
One Step
In terms of system functions, “One Step” is one of the most important functions of Smartisan OS.
When I tried One Step for the first time, I felt that the interaction logic was costly to get started with, and the interface was a bit messy. However, in the function introduction corresponding to the setting interface, the official has thoughtfully attached a video version of the user guide.
After a short period of adaptation, it is not difficult to find that the main page will be displayed in the corresponding direction according to your dominant hand in one step; above are the frequently used recent pictures, files and clipboard functions.
WeChat applets, contacts, quick applications, shortcut widgets, etc. can be placed on the side of the interface. This interactive logic can be saved and shared through “drag and drop” in one step. This interactive logic has also been seen in various mobile phone system functions today, such as Huawei’s “Transfer Station” and vivo’s “Atomic Island”.
Idea Pills
Idea Pills give Smartisan mobile phones more practical functions. There is a special button on the side of Nut Pro 2. Press and hold to open the flash capsule. The official introduction to this is that by long-pressing the flash capsule button or the middle button of the headset wire control to trigger the flash capsule, you can voice input a fleeting thought, and you can also give the capsule different meanings by marking the color.
In daily use, under what circumstances do we use Shannian Capsules? For me personally, most of them focus on the trivial things in life, such as using the flash capsule to write down the pick-up code when a courier arrives and set it as a reminder, what I ate out, what I bought, and how much I spent, so that I can do the settlement later, etc.
But now in 2026, based on my own main mobile phone, I find that I no longer need this action: this function has been deeply integrated in the system functions of most domestic mobile phone manufacturers. For example, when the express arrives at the post station and a message is sent, the system will actively identify the key information in the text message and generate a strong reminder in the notification center and the system. After paying for a meal, the system will automatically link with the built-in wallet application and actively help me record the debit action.
What used to require me to click on the flash capsule to do it manually has now become standard.
Big Bang
I believe there may be people like me in normal times. When reading an article or needing to copy a paragraph of copy at work, they habitually press and hold the screen to bring up the screen recognition function, and then select the corresponding text paragraph for copying. This feature is named Big Bang in Smartisan OS.
After long-pressing the text content with your thumb to trigger it, the text will be arranged in an orderly manner on the phone screen, allowing you to directly select, copy, and paste, and even share it with those who need it through functions such as “One Step”.
But now, whether to use one finger or two fingers to trigger, each manufacturer has different implementations. What I want to say is that the function of screen recognition and text extraction has now been mostly “internalized” by the mobile phone system. Whether it is a long press, two fingers, or directly letting the AI assistant extract it, it has become a basic and standard ability in the system, and there is no need to struggle to wake it up. Extracting text has long been integrated into the daily use of domestic mobile phone users.
But back then, One Step, Flash Capsule, and Big Bang were the core functions of Smartisan OS 4.1. When it comes to my feelings about the Nut Pro 2, I think there is no difference between the performance and ordinary phones equipped with Snapdragon 660. However, in terms of system, some functions that seem commonplace now can still really help me a lot in my daily life.
The nostalgic notes of Nut Pro 2 end here – but the story of Hammer continues, let us turn the time back to 2018.
“The next generation flagship phone”
On May 15, 2018, Smartisan Technology held a press conference at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing. Luo Yonghao brought the latest flagship mobile phone: Nut R1, as well as the Nut TNT workstation, which was said to be able to “change the next ten years.”
I believe that apart from these two products, what impressed most people most about this conference was Luo Yonghao’s words “Long live understanding” at the conference.
Putting this aside and looking at the product itself, if the 2017 Pro2 is a good “bucket phone”, then the 2018 R1 can be called a “flagship phone” with both good looks and strength. In terms of configuration, R1 is equipped with the Snapdragon 845 flagship CPU, with 6GB and 8GB RAM options available. At the same time, R1 is also one of the first models to provide 1TB of mobile phone storage.
In terms of appearance, R1 is still a full screen, with a size of 6.17 inches and a resolution of 2242×1080.
The back is the same hammer LOGO and fingerprint recognition two-in-one design as the Nut Pro 2:
In addition to the hardware upgrade of the R1, the software upgrade is also a highlight that cannot be missed, so much so that the official promotion promotes the R1 as “a next-generation flagship phone with a computer from the future inside.”
In fact, this is not the first time in history that a mobile phone is compared to a computer. The most famous one is Nokia’s N95 series in 2007. As Nokia’s N series flagship at the time, Nokia packed the N95 with a two-way sliding cover design, built-in WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS at once. The official promotion at the time called it:
all-in-one multimedia computer.
Back to the Nut R1, what makes Smartisan characterize the R1 as a computer from the future?
TNT(Touch and Talk)
The answer lies in the new feature of Smartisan OS installed on R1: TNT.
Although it is just a software function on the R1, the biggest highlight of this function is its adaptation to large screens.
The method of use is very simple. Connect the mobile phone to the monitor through the docking station, and the mobile phone screen will automatically switch to the TNT desktop system and be output to the large screen. After connecting, you can also connect a wired keyboard and mouse through the USB interface of the docking station to get a more complete operating experience.
Of course, there is also a more convenient way to use it – wireless TNT. The usage method is the same as our current mobile screen projection. Under the same LAN, you can connect your mobile phone to the large screen and activate TNT. At this time, the mobile phone can also be used as a wireless mouse to control the large screen.
If I were to evaluate this function, I think it is different from a computer in the traditional sense. It provides a solution to reduce the cost of computer use. In traditional usage scenarios, you may need a host, a monitor, a mouse and a keyboard – even later laptops or all-in-one computers cannot achieve a good balance between portability and additional cost – and Smartisan’s TNT realizes the innovation of a mobile phone being more than just a mobile phone through its adaptation to large screens.
“Ideal” and “Reality”
Going back to the title of the article itself, under “ideal” conditions, the Nut Pro 2 and R1 released by Smartisan were successful. The former was recognized by consumers in terms of price and reputation, and the latter allowed everyone to see that a mobile phone can be more than just a mobile phone.
But in “reality”, Smartisan Technology’s road is still bumpy. The Nut R1 released in 2018 was nicknamed the “Diving Champion” by netizens because of its constantly falling prices. According to media reports, the TNT workstation, which had high hopes, was unable to be mass-produced due to too few orders and the foundry’s unwillingness to accept the order, which became a landmark event that crushed the company.
At the beginning of 2019, ByteDance acquired some of the patent rights of Smartisan Technology. The original Nut mobile phone team was merged into ByteDance to form “New Stone Laboratory”, with former Smartisan COO Wu Dezhou as president. Luo Yonghao himself did not join ByteDance with the team, but chose to stay and bear the debt. According to public reports at the time, he had resigned as the legal representative of several Hammer companies, and in September 2019 he publicly stated that “Digital’s new machines have nothing to do with him.”
We often hear that “ideals are beautiful, but reality is cruel.” So why is Smartisan mobile phone the same? From the “return to glory” in 2017 to the “total flameout” in 2019, it took Hammer only three years. But in just a few short years, Luo Yonghao and Smartisan Technology have made a significant mark in the red sea of domestic mobile phones.
Copywriter: Whatever, part of the historical data in this article was verified by DeepSeek.
Illustration: Whatever you want
References:
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