Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

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Apple's loss of innovation is not a new idea, and many people joked about "hollowing out Android" in the recent release of iOS 14. In fact, it's a bit hard for Apple. In recent years, leapfrog innovation in the smartphone field has almost disappeared, more micro-innovation, or just conventional iterations of technology.

Some people might say that folding screen technology is a great innovation, such as Samsung Fold series, Huawei mate X series, soft series. Although these machines have a certain market, but from the scope of popularity, practical value, the current performance of folding screen technology is very general. Or the screen high-brush that was suddenly fired this year, the highest even with 144Hz, is actually a technical iteration, not an innovation.

Does 5G count? I'm afraid not. 5G is a regular iteration of smartphones at the hardware level, and its performance for more than a year, or surprise to users, is far less than the leap from 3G to 4G. After all, many experts believe that the emergence of 5G is actually more of an upgrade of the B-end industry chain, and it is actually an upgrade of communication technology rather than an upgrade of smartphones.

Have smartphones really hit the ceiling of innovation? We can simply discuss it from five aspects: camera, range, appearance, chip and system.

Camera: far away from the SLR

Two years ago, Huawei P-series began to develop the camera system of mobile phones, so it started a trend, and each family racked their brains to make the camera stronger and make features. Last year, Huawei carried 5x light change and 50x digital zoom on the P30 Pro, and then Xiaomi cc9 Pro carried 100 megapixels for the first time. This year, Samsung S20 Ultra offered 100x digital zoom, while Huawei P40 pro+ directly showed 10x light variation.

From the perspective of products, there are many differences in the way we make cameras. For example, Xiaomi wants to do more pixels, and Huawei wants to make the distance far. As a result, manufacturers also have a big war of words and public relations wars over the right direction of the camera from time to time, which has never disappeared.

Whether it is 10x light change or 100 million pixels, from the evaluation of subsequent products, many digital bloggers and professional photographers have a lot of controversy. One question that can torture the soul is: how useful are the extreme functions of these show technologies?

The answer is that it is only useful for a few people, or not in most scenarios. So we can also see that these functions are only available on top models such as S20 Ultra and P40 Pro+, and they are expensive and there are not many early adopters.

The good news is that at present, the average quality of more than one or two thousand mobile cameras can basically cover most of the needs of ordinary people's daily life. The camera promotion that occasionally excites us briefly is basically aimed at the development of extreme scenarios.

If you look at some standards, such as anti-shaking performance, color blending level, night shooting ability, etc., the comprehensive ability of mobile phone cameras has improved a lot in recent years, even shooting the moon and watching solar eclipses, and the shooting limit has also been raised. But it's the same question: when can a small, thin phone beat a SLR or a SLR? This may require the superposition of multiple leapfrog innovations.

Battery life: just charge faster.

Android phones have also made remarkable progress in battery life in the past two years, mainly in terms of battery capacity and charging speed.

The battery capacity of this piece, even if it is a thousand-yuan machine, can generally reach about 3000 Ma, while the middle and high-end models are generally about 4000 Ma. In general, there is no pressure for a charge a day. Today, when most people choose a mobile phone, they are less sensitive to the size of the battery, because the rapid iteration of charging technology makes capacity less important to some extent.

This year is also a year of fast charging and high-speed iteration. From the flagship phones of several major manufacturers, wired fast charging or wired super fast charging is already standard, generally around 40W-65W, such as 50W flash charge of Xiaomi 10 pro series, 44W flash charge of vivo X50 Pro+ series, and even 65W super flash charge of OPPO Reno4 Pro series.

In terms of wireless, charging technology is also evolving rapidly. For example, Xiaomi 10 pro series supports 30W wireless flash charging, and Huawei P40 Pro series supports 27W wireless super fast charging.

Even for phones with a battery capacity of 4000 Ma or more, advances in fast charging technology have reduced the filling time to more than 30 minutes. To some extent, the current fast charging technology has largely offset users' worries about battery life and battery capacity, and even heavy users, who have consumed 80% of their electricity in half a day, can make up for it in a very short time.

Although there has been no progress in mobile phone battery materials for many years, and recent manufacturers of graphene batteries, which are relatively loud, have not really been installed commercially, the iteration of charging technology has kept most users from complaining about battery life. In the short term, battery life is optimized by fast charging technology and energy consumption, and major battery-related innovations are still hard to come by.

Appearance: color and back cover

The emergence of touch screen should be one of the greatest innovations in the history of mobile phones. The emergence of touch screens not only creates more possibilities for mobile phones in appearance, but also changes the way people interact with mobile phones. To a certain extent, it leaves a huge space for the later development of mobile phone software.

In the past two years, the focus on the appearance of the mobile phone was still the overall screen, to see who accounted for a high proportion of the screen. Some manufacturers have made dual-screen solutions, such as Nubia X, while others have made pop-up cameras, such as OPPO Find X. Now, the situation has changed again, and at the launch of the flagship machine, it is difficult to see a certain manufacturer's share of the screen.

From the point of view of the various price segments released this year, the most intense game in appearance is color matching and materials. Huawei P40 series ice cream silver, Nova 7 series "7 color", OPPO Find X2 Pro series bamboo cyan, one plus 8 Pro blue color. In terms of materials, in addition to plastic and glass back covers, more and more manufacturers begin to try ceramic, plain leather and other materials.

The most eclectic appearance is the game phone, such as Blackshark 3, Red Devils 5G, the design is in line with the flow of the game design style, in order to create a cool, extremely fast visual impression.

In terms of appearance, the screen share is getting lower and lower (camera position is changeable) and color matching is becoming more and more rare should be the two mainstream development trends in the future. Despite the practice of the second screen, the appearance of the smartphone has been basically stereotyped, and even the folding phone has not changed much in appearance.

Chips and Systems: step-by-step upgrades

Thanks to Moore's Law, the performance of mobile phone chips has been steadily improving over the past few decades. Now, due to the demand of 5G upgrade, the integration of 5G capability by major chip manufacturers has also made great progress in the overall performance of the chip. Last year, Qualcomm, Hayes and MediaTek all launched their own 5G chips, either for their own phones or to capture manufacturers' users.

At present, the emergence of 5G chip only gives the phone 5G capability, mainly reflected in the upload and download speed. The logic of improving chip performance, such as the decline in energy consumption or the increase in computing power, is similar to that in the 4G era, depending on the AI capabilities and chip design capabilities of each company.

And at present, not long after the birth of the 5G chip, there are still many areas that need to be improved in the 5G experience, such as stability, dual card, dual standby and so on. With the increasing popularity of 5G base stations, this situation will gradually improve.

The system should be the most innovative place for mobile phones. In the past two years, whether it is Android or IOS, more innovation has been carried out in terms of interaction, privacy, fluency and so on. At the Android level, various manufacturers have made their own customized versions, forming their own characteristics, such as Huawei EMUI, Xiaomi MIUI, Meizu Flyme, a hydrogenated OS and so on.

System experience is a matter of benevolence and wisdom. The fluency of IOS system and UI design have always been models, but EMUI, MIUI and so on are also catching up or even surpassing them in different ways. But at present, the lack of innovation in IOS may already show some problems, that is, there is indeed a big bottleneck in system-level innovation.

Write at the end

In the first year of 5G, the release time of new phones was extremely tight, and there was nothing wrong with seizing the market, but if you weigh most of them carefully, you may find that they are only different combinations of existing solutions, and there are few really exciting innovations. In a way, it's no wonder that what they don't have in the supply chain and the lab can be on the terminal. Even so, there is no denying the contribution of micro-innovation to mobile phones in terms of efficiency and experience. 5G is faster, but maybe a little slower, there will be more time to see the future.

(official account of Liu Kuang / tr. by Phil Newell) ID:liukuang110

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