Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

There is no doubt that the mobile phone market is entering an era of excess hardware capacity.

Specifically, the excess hardware capacity has the following manifestations:

First, the breakthrough of hardware technology capability itself. For example, chip technology, camera technology and so on.

Second, the same reduction in the cost of using hardware. For example, domestic manufacturers' breakthrough in flexible screen production technology makes the price of flexible screen cheaper.

Third, the manufacturer-led hardware sinks. For example, AI chips and structured light cameras are gradually entering the 3000 price range of mobile phones.

In this way, we can also see that many mobile phone manufacturers have launched some strange designs, it seems that they do not know what to do with these excess hardware capabilities, trying to attract the attention of users in a permutation and combination way. so that the excess hardware capacity to play more commercial value.

Today, let's take a look at several "curiosity" products born in the era of excess hardware capacity.

Five photos of Nokia: the dilemma of being light and thin.

When we thought the four cameras were strong enough, Nokia brought the Nokia 9 PureView with a rear five-camera camera that looked like an insect compound eye.

Strictly speaking, the main reason for the increase in the number of cameras is not just because of excess hardware capacity. Of course, the current improvement in chip computing power is enough to support multiple camera imaging, coupled with the further development of camera modules, which is also the reason why manufacturers are unscrupulous to add five or even a dozen cameras on the back of their phones. But more importantly, other technological advances in mobile phones, such as no need for LED backlit AMOLED screens and battery designs with increasing energy density, are making phones thinner and thinner.

The only thing that affects the thickness of the phone is the camera itself.

On the one hand, the photosensitive element will experience light refraction and diffraction during imaging, and the volume of the lens itself is difficult to shrink infinitely under the premise of raising pixels. Like a camera with optical zoom, it is achieved through the elongation and shortening of the lens.

On the other hand, the photosensitive elements on the photosensitive film are electrically driven, and if the area of the photographic film is limited and the photosensitive elements are arranged densely, it will cause inductance when the circuit is too dense.

In short, due to physical limitations, the ability of a single camera will run counter to the pursuit of thinness in mobile phone process design. That's why Google's Pixel-style algorithm optimizes single-camera imaging, and Apple-style cameras and Huawei-style cameras are responsible for wide-angle / long-focus / macro, and so on.

But unlike all these manufacturers, the Nokia 9 PureView's five cameras are not for wide-angle or zoom requirements, but use two 1200-megapixel color cameras and three 1200-megapixel black-and-white cameras to work together to image, and five cameras take pictures of different exposures and then synthesize them. The photosensitivity of the large sensor is realized by the combination of several small sensors.

The advantage of this is that the light and dark details are clear enough (especially in HDR mode), there is more space later, and multiple cameras can refocus at the same time.

In contrast, the functional richness of the five-camera unified imaging is still much lower than that of the telephoto / macro multi-camera combination, and even if it can achieve some improvement in the later degree of freedom, it does not make much sense to most users. Compared with camera + algorithm calibration models such as Apple and Google Pixel, even if there is an improvement in photo performance, it is hard to match the bad look and feel of a combination of five cameras.

In addition, Nokia 9 PureView is priced at $699 and still uses Snapdragon 845 chip, which makes it difficult to impress the market. It can only be seen as one of the directions to improve the quality of photography under the trend that mobile phones are becoming more and more thin.

Ruoping Nubia: look at this phone. It's long and crooked.

When we evaluate nosy barbers on the Internet, we often use the sentence "it is hybrid rice technology that makes you too full". Similarly, for some manufacturers, we can also say, "it is BOE that lets you use flexible screens casually."

Nubia's "flexible screen wrist phone" Nubia α is such a product.

In fact, "bendable phone" is not a very new concept. In 2013, LG developed the LG G Flex with a curved screen that looks like a shoe puller face. In recent years, Samsung Galaxy series are also marked by curved screens. But for a long time, flexible screen technology has not changed the shape of the phone much, the main reason is that although the screen can be bent, but the motherboard, batteries and other components can not be bent. So even Huawei Mate X, which is closest to the state of mature products, still chooses the solution of screen folding to expand the visual range.

However, when the Chinese manufacturers led by BOE broke through the flexible screen production technology and broke Samsung's price monopoly, the application cost of flexible screen dropped greatly, and various manufacturers also had room for "forced innovation".

Like Nubia Alpha, the biggest highlight of Nubia Alpha is that it has a 4.01-inch flexible screen that fits the arc of the wrist like a wristband, and the display area of the screen can be adjusted according to the needs of users. The biggest slot about this screen is that although it claims to be a "4-inch" large screen, it is very anti-human in view because of its narrow width, so it is difficult to show a large amount of information in detail, and it will be very troublesome in software ecological design in the future.

If you think of Nubia Alpha as a mobile phone, you have more to complain about. For example, Nubia mainly promotes the one-number dual-network function from the eSIM card, that is, the same mobile phone number, which can independently receive and receive phone calls, receive and send text messages on two terminals, and so on. However, functions such as answering phone calls independently, sending and receiving text messages and mobile payments are basically what Apple Watch could achieve three or four years ago. As for routine functions such as heart rate monitoring and sedentary reminders, they are not beyond the capacity of cheap exercise bracelets.

It can be said that this screen of Nubia Alpha is more symbolic than practical, just telling you: I can make a long curved screen.

What's more, the minimum Nubia alpha is sold for 3499 yuan.

The strangest LG in history: feel the power in my hand

The last coquettish operation product comes from LG, which has no sound in the Chinese market.

In the past year, we can find that more and more 3D imaging capabilities are beginning to enter the front camera of mobile phones. Whether using 3D structured light or TOF technology, facial scanning that can only be seen on iPhone is now seen in most middle and high-end mobile phones.

Generally speaking, 3D imaging can not only be used to input face information, but also has been used to optimize selfies and so on. But perhaps LG feels that the above uses have not been brought into full play, and the new LG G8 ThinQ has applied the "Hand ID function"-the unlocking of palm vein lines.

With this function, users can reach out to the phone and unlock the phone. LG explained that this feature is designed to unlock the phone when the user puts the phone flat on the table, without having to pick it up.

In addition to unlocking, Hand ID also brings the Air motion function, which allows you to perform some simple controls on the phone through spaced gestures, such as taking screenshots with "pinch" gestures and gestures to the left or right to adjust the volume. Some alternative operations can be carried out when it is not convenient for the user to touch the screen directly.

However, in the process of foreign media measurement, the functional response of Air motion is slow, and its practicability is not high. At the same time, it will occupy a lot of electricity, computing power and so on. Digital Trends even called LG's Hand ID "the strangest feature on the phone".

Apart from the strange Hand ID function, the configuration of the Snapdragon 855 and 16 million wide-angle + 12 million standard pixel dual camera lens of the LG G8 ThinQ can only be called a regular one. Perhaps this is a flagship machine that specializes in strange functions as its main selling point.

Those products that click on the wrong technology tree

Judging from the above three products, they all give the impression of "clicking the wrong technology tree".

In fact, there are some conceptual and experimental products in the mobile phone market, such as the Find X and Nex launched by OV last year, and the first version of Magic launched by Glory a few years ago. These products may not be perfect in themselves, but they all bring many inspirational solutions to the industry, such as using hidden cameras and sliding screens to solve the bangs problem, or being the first to come up with the concept of artificial smart phones. The products mentioned in this article, either for the sake of innovation, strongly concave out the needs of users, or sacrifice other experiences for the sake of a little performance improvement.

We should understand that although the hardware capabilities of mobile phones have grown by leaps and bounds, the way to show hardware muscles has never depended on stacking the hardware itself. Sooner or later, this era of excess hardware will come to an end in the following ways:

Either enterprises and developers have improved their research and development capabilities in software and really made more use of new technologies such as 3D imaging, or mobile phone hardware technology has achieved overall and considerable development. so that those hardware capabilities that used to be a long board can play a matching card, or be completely forgotten by users and manufacturers, from bright spots to ordinary ones.

Not all branches will flourish, and some of the wrong technology trees will continue to thrive, but more often they will become an interesting little ink dot in the history of terminal development.

After all, innovation has never been so easy.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.