Wen | Zihan
Editor| Deng Hao
In 2017, the smartphone market ushered in the first-ever decline, announcing the entry into the stock era with a 5% decline in shipments in the Chinese market. In order to resist the decline in the market, mobile phone manufacturers have launched a competition for parameter inner volume around flash charging, high brushing, and imaging. So it has created an undeniable fact: the data on the PPT of the conference is getting more and more beautiful, but the fresh experience brought by smart phones to users is getting less and less.
The word "innovation" is like the spear of Lucretius in the mobile phone industry. Countless people have explored the boundaries of terminal devices, but have not yet found out where the boundaries are. What else is there to look forward to with smartphones? ——This is not only the inner doubt of the current smartphone users, but also the self-torture of Liu Zuohu, OPPO's chief product officer.
In May last year, OnePlus returned to OPPO, and Liu Zuohu became OPPO CPO (Chief Product Officer). On December 15, with a work that had been dormant for a year and a half, Liu Zuohu stood on the stage for the first time as OPPO's chief product officer. OPPO Find N - OPPO's answer to the next stage of the smartphone form is also Liu Zuohu's product confession. Two days before the press conference, Liu Zuohu made a profound self-analysis in an exclusive interview with 36Kr. After returning to the starting point after a thousand sails, the answer he gave was still: "I only have one hobby, that is, to make products."
Find N: Folded every four years, from early adopter to common use
On June 19, 2018, OPPO unveiled the Find X series at the Louvre in Paris, a dual-track periscope structure that demonstrates thinking about technology and product aesthetics, and also sets the tone for the Find X series to continue to explore cutting-edge technology. At the same time, in the laboratory of Chang'an, Dongguan, the OPPO team of engineers has begun to polish the folding screen folding solution, but finally polished the product for 11 months, because it is not perfect enough, it is "left" in the laboratory. From 2018 to 2021, OPPO exhausted folding solutions such as external folding, internal folding, up and down folding, hoping to get a better solution in the mediation of large screen and portability.
Some OPPO past folding screen solutions
This is OPPO's insistence, but also Liu Zuohu's bottom line for products. He said bluntly: "We keep overturning and starting again, just to find a really useful answer in our hearts." ”
In the end, the OPPO team finalized the folding screen size of 5.49 inches for the outer screen and 7.1 inches for the inner screen. This is a set of large-screen ratios close to 1:1 in-fold scheme. When unfolded, OPPO Find N is equivalent to a small square-like plate with a height slightly less than the width, which can be operated with one hand when closed. Liu Zuohu uses the word "instinct" to describe the final decision, "Products are sometimes a pursuit and intuition. ”
After determining the size, the entire team of engineers and designers began to overcome the problem of fuselage weight and feel, hoping to create the ultimate "golden size" of the folding screen to achieve the sensorless transition of the user of the bar. In the end, the 4500mAh battery was tucked into a fuselage weighing only 275g, which is similar to the weight of a large-screen straight-panel flagship machine wearing a protective case.
But choosing a landscape screen design that is more in line with user intuition also means higher research and development costs. If the mainstream portrait mode is adopted, it is a "more cost-effective choice". But Liu Zuohu and Zhou Yibao, product manager of Find N, are very insistent, doing horizontal folding. Zhou Yibao recalled: "In order to make this product, I forced my development partners to 'die'. The whole team did it with a broken belief, and even the resignation report was made. “
In the end, a mature folding screen solution that meets the "good looking, easy to use, and right size" came out.
On this "barely visible crease" device, the water droplet hinge plays a decisive role. The OPPO team found through research that the larger the bend radius at the fold under the same circumstances, the shallower the crease will be.
OPPO Find N self-developed Seiko quasi-vertebral hinge
125 patents, 136 parts, ordinary hinges more than 3 times the cost of pay, more than 400 key size control standards. Under the polishing of Seiko, a "best hinge" that even suppliers admit is the "best hinge" they have ever seen. The bending radius of this teardrop hinge is 100% higher than that of similar products, making it almost crease-free.
Finally, through the deep grinding of the mechanical structure, OPPO achieves a stepless hover of 50 to 120° in the use of Find N on the hinge. This means that in addition to hardware, folding screens also have more possibilities in software applications, and can use three-dimensional space to bring more experiences to users.
To drive users from early adopters to common use, the construction of the application ecosystem is crucial. But behind this is not only the design of the ColorOS system alone, but also the adaptation problem for the application one by one. At present, the application adaptation rate of Find N TOP1000 large-screen application has reached 80%, and many national-level APP such as QQ, Tencent Video, iQiyi, Youku, Pinduoduo, JD.com, Kuaishou, Futu Niuniu and many other national-level APP have reached in-depth customization cooperation, realizing the folding ecological construction from 0 to 1.
"The advent of Find N is only the first step in ColorOS to build a folding ecology," Liu Zuohu told 36Kr.
Liu Zuohu: A perfectionist who is extremely fanatical about products
Looking back at Liu Zuohu's past external voices, "product" is the word that has been mentioned the most times, and this time is no exception.
Polishing the ultimate product has always been a gene rooted in OPPO. Whether it's the spinning lens of the N1, the dual-track periscope lift module of The Find X, or the OPPO X 2021 reel screen... These challenging but disruptive mechanical designs are the result of OPPO's seiko.
At present, folding screen mobile phones are still in the stage of high price and high-end niche, in order to allow mass users to accept the folding screen, it is necessary to give different value experiences. Liu Zuohu firmly believes that the reason why folding screens are an important form of smart phones in the future lies in the essential needs of human beings for large screens.
"Small enough, big enough," Liu Zuohu summed up OPPO Find N in six words.
When talking about the difference between one plus products and OPPO, Liu Zuohu replied bluntly that there is no difference. Making a product is a very pure thing in his eyes.
In addition to products, Find N also lurks Liu Zuohu's prediction of the future of the industry.
In Liu Zuohu's eyes, the competition in the smart phone industry has entered a comprehensive competition stage. Since three years ago, competition has gradually entered the deep water zone. "The remaining mobile phone brands are not weak, and now the fight is hard kung fu." It is impossible to say that one move wins, and hard kung fu is to stick more solid and deeper on each pillar. For example, like the display, camera, structure and so on. ”
When it comes to changes in the market, Liu Zuohu has his own calmness, "The mobile phone industry will be very dangerous to judge the future with the current state, and it will often be wrong. Periodic, short-term fluctuations are a normal phenomenon in the industry. Back to the essence, the industry has entered the contest of comprehensive strength, and your view will be different when you look at this industry at this time. ”
"In the past decade, every year, some people will predict that there will be no change in the mobile phone industry, and the actual annual change is not small." This view is also applicable to OPPO, from the first mobile phone to the present 13 years, there have been high, there have been singing decline. But OPPO's pursuit is still the same as when the first smile phone, A103, was launched in 2008. Liu Zuohu said that OPPO still "smiles forward", "that is, self-confidence and calmness, steady and steady, and constantly striving to achieve a better state." ”
On the road to high-end, Liu Zuohu also maintains this mentality. He admits that the issue should be looked at more rationally. High-end requires a cognitive process, which is itself a long-term strategy.
"We are ushering in a new revolution in smart phones, and the folding screen is the beginning of the next journey of high-end machines," Liu Zuohu said firmly.
This is liu zuohu's first public interview since his return to OPPO, and he has answered many sharp questions without hesitation. In conversations with 36Kr, he remains the perfectionist who is extremely fanatical about products. After 4 years and 6 generations, OPPO Find N may also be Liu Zuohu's answer to the future of the smartphone industry.
The following is an excerpt from the conversation between 36Kr and OPPO Chief Product Officer Liu Zuohu, edited:
36Kr: For early adopter users, when they see the folding screen, they will first want to ask why the mobile phone is folded, which is actually the evolutionary logic of the mobile phone form. Why do you think "folding screens will be the next stage of smartphones"?
Liu Zuohu: Folding screens must be a very important mobile phone category in the future, the reason is very simple: after using it, you can't go back.
From the perspective of visual experience, people's demand for larger screens has always existed, which is also in line with physiological needs. So we can see that for so many years, mobile phone manufacturers will make the screen bigger and bigger. But there is also a limit to the degree, last time I saw a 7-inch bar machine, there is no way to put it in the pocket.
Why is the development of smartphones entering the next stage? Because the folding screen can indeed bring a completely different operating experience, with the continuous update and iteration of the software ecology, innovation can really bring a different experience to users, and bring a new idea to the smartphone industry.
36Kr: So what is the standard for the folding screen that OPPO wants to create?
Liu Zuohu: First of all, this product cannot have obvious shortcomings and hard injuries. To become a commonly used mobile phone, portability and usability are the requirements that must be met; followed by the feel, beauty, and beauty, after all, the mobile phone has been with the user for a long time. Third, on this basis, you have to have some innovative experience that the bar machine does not have.
36Kr: Compared with the folding screen on the market, Find N has a very unique hover function this time.
Liu Zuohu: Yes, to let users accept the folding screen, we must give them different value experiences, at this time they may accept a new thing, after all, the price of the folding screen is placed there. At that time, when I collided with the team, I found that after the folding screen had different forms, it could bring many kinds of experiences that the bar machine had never had before, such as hovering when taking a selfie, which could allow the person being photographed to see his own picture, such as listening to music and doing sports, and the experience was completely different.
36Kr: In fact, the current folding screen has gone through the stage of technical discussion and is in a period of mass popularization. At this stage, where do you think the challenge of folding screens going to the public is?
Liu Zuohu: Although the folding screen has now reached the standard of daily use, but now the user has not experienced, do not know how much its value is, the thought of the folding machine is very expensive, sold to 167,000, far from himself, so he did not want to try, I think this is our biggest challenge now. This requires the industry to do market education together.
36Kr: Seven years ago you had a sentence out of the circle at the OnePlus conference, "Feel really TMD cool", if you use a similar sentence to summarize OPPO Find N, what would you say?
Liu Zuohu: You can't let me say dirty words again. In fact, there is a saying in our team that makes me feel very touched - "small enough, big enough". You close it small enough, but open it big enough, and it's a big screen again, which feels very comfortable.
Imagine a scenario where a bunch of people in the elevator watch you take a big-screen phone. I may have felt embarrassed before, but when I hold the OPPO Find N, I feel like a delicate man.
36Kr: What is the process of Find N for OPPO's high-end route?
Liu Zuohu: Do high-end to be patient, it is a process of building trust, the first generation of products is a taster, I think this thing is really good, I can try it. When this part of the seed user has a good reputation after trying, he will influence the people around him, which is such a process. First of all, we must continue to do a good job, and the second thing is to be patient, and then spread through word of mouth.
36Kr: Find N is OPPO's first folding screen and your first as OPPO's Chief Product Officer. This time, the expectations for Find N are more inclined to user reputation or market sales?
Liu Zuohu: It must be word of mouth, and any product must first be to make users satisfied, which is the first. Market performance is simply the result of word of mouth.