Smart Devices (company)

Smart Devices () was the consumer-electronics brand of Hefei Huaheng Electronic Technology (), a Chinese company based in Hefei, Anhui. Founded in 2009 by Huang Wang, it sold Linux and Android mobile Internet devices, tablet computers and later smartwatches under the SmartQ name. Its first product, the Linux-based SmartQ 5, reached the Chinese market in 2009.

After 2013 Huang Wang wound down the SmartQ brand and founded a new wearables company, Huami, in December 2013. Meihui Fan, technical director at Hefei Huaheng from 2009 to 2013, later served as chief technology officer of the successor company, Zepp Health. Backed by Xiaomi, Huami designed and manufactured the Mi Band as an original design manufacturer, then grew into a major wearables maker, listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018 and renaming itself Zepp Health in 2021. No new SmartQ consumer hardware followed, and the brand was discontinued after about 2014. Though its parent company continued to exist as a legal entity.

History

Huang Wang () earned a bachelor's degree in applied physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1997. He then worked as a research-and-development engineer at Huawei on high-speed switching and routing equipment before leaving in 1998 to start his own ventures in Hefei. He established the tablet business, Hefei Huaheng Electronic Technology, on 1 April 2009. The company has said it was among the early makers of affordable consumer tablets in China. The company launched the SmartQ 5, a 4.3-inch handheld running a touch-adapted Ubuntu build, followed by the seven-inch SmartQ 7 internet tablet.

Over the next three years the brand moved from Linux devices toward Android tablets, releasing a range of models that kept a niche following for their openness to alternative operating systems. Two products drew wider attention. The SmartQ Ten, shown at Mobile World Congress 2011, used a screen that accepted both stylus and finger input. The SmartQ U7 of 2012 was an Android tablet with a built-in pico projector, reviewed by PCMag and Digital Trends. Around 2013 the company added the Z Watch smartwatch.

Huang later said the tablet market had declined sharply by around 2012, which led him to move away from the SmartQ line toward wearables. Huami, the venture Huang founded in December 2013, took investment from Xiaomi and its affiliated Shunwei Capital fund, and its first product, the Mi Band, sold for 79 yuan at its 2014 release. No SmartQ-branded consumer hardware is documented after about 2014. , Chinese corporate registries list Hefei Huaheng Electronic Technology as still active.

Products and technology

Linux mobile Internet devices

The brand's first devices ran desktop Linux on handheld hardware, an uncommon choice in 2009. The SmartQ 5 was a 4.3-inch budget mobile Internet device running a touch-adapted Ubuntu build on ARM hardware, with a suite of open-source applications. The seven-inch SmartQ 7 followed in a larger internet-tablet form running a Linux distribution. Reviewing the device Engadget found it useful for basic tasks such as music playback and PDF viewing, with over three days of standby, though it flagged a touchscreen that often responded incorrectly, only 128 MB of RAM, and little usable storage.

Android tablets

From about 2010 the brand shifted to Android, producing a series of seven- and ten-inch tablets. Two models stood out for their engineering rather than their sales. The SmartQ Ten, shown at Mobile World Congress 2011, carried a 9.7-inch screen that accepted both capacitive finger input and resistive stylus input, an unusual hybrid for the period. The SmartQ U7 of 2012 embedded a DLP pico projector into a seven-inch Android tablet running Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). PCMag called the projector "more than a novelty" and the main reason to buy the device, while Digital Trends rated it a fun but inessential extra; both faulted the tablet's dated processor, lower-resolution display and price against cheaper rivals such as the Nexus 7.

Wearables

Around 2013 the brand released the Z Watch, a smartwatch, as Huang began steering the company toward wearable devices. Sold for US$99, it ran on a 1 GHz processor and offered IPX7 water resistance. GadgetGuy praised its low price and water resistance but faulted its buggy software, slow performance and difficult setup, concluding it was hard to recommend over rival smartwatches.

Software

Beyond hardware, Smart Devices developed its own software, most visibly a PDF reading application, (Zhiqi Reading), bundled on its Android tablets and praised by Chinese reviewers. By early 2010 the SmartQ 5 ran a customised Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) on the LXDE desktop, and it could also boot the mobile Mer Linux distribution, a Covia-ported Android, and an official Windows CE for which a license was acquired. A review in Open Source For You judged that the device would "enthrall Linux geeks", and its openness drew interest from hobbyists who ran alternative systems on it.