Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

About a week ago, the Red Devils 8s Pro set a new record by pushing the memory capacity of mobile phones to 24GB, which is 50% more than the 16GB memory of most laptops.

At least the mobile phone circle is not surprised by the Red Devils' pursuit of super-large memory. After all, this is one of the few game phone brands today.

Game phones are nothing new. In the 50 years since the advent of the first mobile phone in 1973, there have been at least two significant attempts at game phones, represented by Nokia N-Gage and Sony Xperia Play. But if you start with the Razer Phone, the first game phone in the smartphone era, the game phone we are familiar with today is only six years old.

Many changes have taken place in the past six years. Thunder Snake gave up the game phone, the former game phone leader Blackshark is struggling on the brink of collapse, Xiaomi chose to cut after two generations, and Lenovo put down the savior phone. Looking around the mobile phone, only Nubia Red Devils and Asustek ROG are still waiting for the game phone to change.

ROG Game Mobile phone 5, Picture / ROG at the same time, mobile games are in a different situation, from mobile phone manufacturers to players, the promotion and attention to the game experience is not reduced, but is increasing. At one time, the "original God" allowed players to exceed the requirements of conventional flagship phones in terms of performance, heat and integrated gaming experience. But in the end, the original God still did not pull the game phone back to the main stage from the brink of elimination.

It is not certain whether the game phone will continue to live, but I believe this is not a fantasy, nor is it a chicken feather.

Since last year, the volume and attention of game phones have declined significantly, and the rumors of black shark selling have pushed this doubt to a peak, followed by more and more questions about game phones, louder and louder. But no one can deny the traces that game phones have left in the entire mobile phone industry over the past few years.

Many Android users should remember that in the past, compared with the iOS camp, a common problem with Android phones was "not following hands". Specifically, the screen display could not keep up with the finger touch and could not reach where to hit. There is not only the problem of Android itself, but also the problem of screen, and a core key is the screen touch sampling rate.

The game phone first seized on this pain point, significantly increasing the touch sampling rate to 240Hz, or even 480Hz and 960Hz, combined with system optimization and higher screen refresh rates, making the phone's screen more "follow-up" (shortening touch screen response time). This change has also led to the upgrading of the entire mobile phone industry, including iPhone, which has improved the touch sampling rate of the screen.

For game phones, Tu / Lei technology games can be said to pay most attention to audio-visual experience and feedback, from game consoles to PC, and game phones are no exception. In addition to trying to increase the screen refresh rate to 144Hz and applying frame insertion technology to mobile phones, game phones have also invested a lot of energy in "feedback", such as the sound effects of loudspeakers and motor vibration.

The input of the game phone at the sound level, in addition to meeting the needs of some players to "listen to the location", it also really improves the sound effect of the game and the performance effect of the soundtrack, making the game more immersive.

The same is true of shock feedback. Compared with conventional flagships, game phones tend to be more motivated to plug bigger and better vibration motors and devote more energy to shock training. The improvement in the sense of shock gives players a more real sense of physical feedback, which actually spills over to daily typing and other scenes, changing the dilemma of "shaking to the hand" of Android phones.

Similar changes occur in heat dissipation. Since there are not many options in the core SoC, game phones have long begun to improve the core frequency and further squeeze the processing performance, and the corresponding measures are to strengthen the phone's heat dissipation design, increase the heat sink area, and even build fans like the PC.

As we all know, two years ago, Qualcomm launched Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 two generations of "Fire Dragon" SoC, causing the Android camp to learn from the heat of game phones in order to improve poor game performance.

Black Shark Game Mobile phone 5, Picture / Ray Technology in addition, game phones have also taken the lead in launching game space / mode, game assistant and other designs, which can now be seen on most domestic mobile phones. As for shoulder key design, frankly I haven't found any value outside the FPS game, but it does change the mobile game experience of some players.

But in the end, we all know that these changes in game phones have never been able to reverse their decline.

Mobile games do not save the best proof that mobile games are "feasible" comes from game laptops (hereinafter referred to as game books).

The prosperity of PC games has directly made game books one of the core categories of notebook computers. At the same time, the high performance and high specification requirements of PC games have made game books the first choice for many creators. Considering that consumers buy laptops at the core of nothing more than three scenarios-office, creation and games-it is not difficult to understand the importance that PC manufacturers attach to game books.

When it comes to the mobile phone, the original God has also let the game phone see the dawn of success. After the launch of "original God" in 2020, despite opposition from stand-alone gamers, it achieved undisputed commercial success around the world, and triggered many players' dissatisfaction with the performance of mobile phones.

In hindsight, "original God" can be called a "3A game" in the mobile game world, no matter in terms of project scale or game screen performance. And leading peers a large part of the game screen also brought advanced performance requirements, happened to run into Qualcomm's two generations of "Fire Dragon" SoC, resulting in a period of time, mobile phone manufacturers in the press conference are talking about the "original God" game experience, but in fact are reducing brightness, resolution, only iPhone and game phones can to a certain extent understand the "original God".

With Qualcomm's successive launches of Snapdragon 8 + Gen 1 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the performance and heat performance of flagship phones have been comprehensively improved, basically running all or nearly 60 frames at the highest picture quality of 720p. At this time, the game phone, which is not cheap, has to face the torture of the soul:

It's no different to play games, why don't I buy a flagship mobile phone?

Game phones are hard to answer. The success of all game platforms in history is inseparable from the core content of the game. Players can endure the weak function of Switch because of the fun of Legend of Zelda: tears of the Kingdom, but will not buy a game console with empty performance. PC players also chase games rather than game stores, upgrading graphics cards in order to better play more masterpieces, which often require higher hardware configurations.

In the final analysis, game phones still need more popular games with higher performance requirements to prove their value and necessity. However, nearly three years after the launch of the original God, domestic players can only see Miha Youyou's new "collapse: star Dome Railway", Tencent's "Arena of Valor World" is still a long way off, and other mobile games that are close to the original God in configuration are also far from being able to convince players to consider it when changing their phones.

The real machine demonstration of "Arena of Valor World" shows that the future of Tencent Games game phone lies in the "long board", not in the "short board". In the past, many analysts said that the product idea of "emphasizing games over mobile phones" hinders too many people from accepting game phones. Indeed, the highly stylized design, in order to enhance the weight of the game experience, makes public users stay away from game phones.

But this analysis ignores that when mobile game players take the game experience into consideration, the most important thing is to know whether the advantages of mobile phones in games can impress them.

Compared with the short board theory, or "bucket effect", the existence of game phones may be more in line with the long board theory. Only by grasping their own "long board" and giving full play to the advantages of "long board" can we jump out of the "encirclement and suppression" of mainstream mobile phones and build their own users' minds.

The game experience is the fundamental reason for the success of game phones. In order to make up for the "shortcomings" of game phones, such as being light and cheap, it will weaken the "long board" and will only be eliminated by players.

Long-term Strategy, Picture / Xiaomi, for example, when Hongmi launched the enhanced version of the K40 game, Lu Weibing said that they focused on improving the three pain points of "too heavy, too gaudy, too expensive", and then adopted the very non-game Tianji 1200. The design for the game is basically only physical shoulder keys. When Lu Weibing announced the cancellation of the "e-sports version" of the K60 series, he also thought that "the frame rate and picture quality of the (K60 Pro) completely surpassed that of e-sports 's mobile phone."

The failure of the enhanced version of the K40 game and the end of the Hongmi game phone show that the game experience is the foundation of the game phone.

But as mentioned earlier, game phones have to face a cruel fact: the fate of game phones, of course, takes into account the efforts of mobile phone manufacturers, but in the final analysis, the more important premise is decided by mobile games masters.

Or in other words, if Miha travelers don't give Qualcomm more strength and more "graphics card killers", the future of game phones:

It's bound to be bleak.

The picture is from Pexels.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Lei Technology (ID:leitech), author: Lei Tech Digital 3C Group

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