2021 is a key inflection point for TOP-level domestic mobile phone manufacturers to collectively soar. On the one hand, this year's head player reshuffle has made high-end mobile phones a key incremental market; on the other hand, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have experienced "scale growth" after experiencing "scale growth", in order to further develop, they must meet the "brand qualitative change" in the high-end market.
From the general increase in the price of new machines, various piles of materials, to the black technology named "the industry's first", the flagship mobile phones that have soared, the competition has never been so fierce. However, whether it is a heap configuration or a promotion of their own black technology, mobile phone manufacturers need to answer a question: do they improve the user experience?
As Shen Wei, founder, president and CEO of Vivo this year, asked himself internally in his speech at the annual meeting: we must always ask ourselves what we have created for users, what we have changed, whether this change is what users really need and really meaningful, and whether we are using simple, perfect and elegant ways to achieve this change.
These three "soul questions" tell the essence of corporate innovation: scientific and technological innovation should be user-oriented, not brand image-oriented. When many companies show black technology, they forget one thing: can this technology be mass-produced? Can it bring tangible experience improvements to users? Can you continuously iterate updates according to the needs of users?
In the creation of brand influence, vivo believes that it should uphold the thinking logic of "product is the cause, brand is the effect", and follow the principle of "research and development of black technology is not for showmanship, but for user experience".
However, people with rich experience in reading people understand the truth: to identify a person, do not look at what he says, but look at how he does. The same is true for businesses. We may wish to look at vivo's various scientific and technological innovations in 2021 to see whether vivo has practiced this concept as it says.
The industry's first micro-seam fill light: enhance the night selfie experience
On the video track, many mobile phone manufacturers prefer rear-facing and ignore front-facing cameras, while vivo is not like this. In terms of front-facing selfies, in addition to the camera pixels and beauty algorithms that have always led the industry, vivo has also made great efforts to improve the user experience in this scene in the night selfie scene that makes users feel most tricky.
For example, on the vivo S9 series of new machines launched last year, vivo pioneered the micro-slit fill light technology, using the combination of "screen soft halo + two micro-slit fill lights" to make night selfies as bright as during the day, and solve the various out-of-focus and blur caused by insufficient light for night selfies from the root.
Photochromic discoloration: vivo's exclusive appearance advantage
Among the major smartphone brands, vivo mobile phone appearance has always been more prominent, which has even become a major feature of the vivo brand. In particular, the vivo S series models, whether it is the S5's "Icelandic Love Song" color matching, or the S9's "Impression Pickup", in terms of appearance design, vivo mobile phones have always been at the forefront of fashion. Last year, the "photochromic discoloration" brought by the vivo S10 series became vivo's new "face value code".
Since entering the era of full screen, the burden of appearance innovation of smart phones has fallen on the back cover of mobile phones. Nowadays, when the vast majority of manufacturers choose to use the rear camera for arrangement and combination, trying to create a unique appearance design, Vivo is unique, immersed in research for three years, and finally came up with a new S series of face value code: photochromic change.
Roughly speaking, the process of photochromic discoloration is as follows: the back of the vivo S10 series "Qiguang Huancai" usually shows a gradient color of ice blue and pink orange, and after 3 seconds of sunlight, it will become a "Klein Blue" color. With photochromic technology, vivo S10 series not only realizes the design innovation of integrating the flow of "time" and the vitality of "light" into its appearance, but also won praise from many users, industry professionals and media.
Ultrasonic 3D Wide Area Fingerprint: Screen Fingerprint Unlocks a New Era
At the CES exhibition in 2018, Vivo launched the world's first mass-produced screen fingerprint recognition mobile phone vivo X20 Plus UD, which opened the era of screen fingerprint of smart phones. After 3 years, Vivo once again broke the "first model" created by itself. At the iQOO 8 series conference, vivo's sub-brand iQOO and Qualcomm jointly developed a new generation of fingerprint recognition technology released, based on the ultrasonic principle of unlocking technology, so that iQOO 8 Pro only needs to press once to enter fingerprints, unlock speed up to 0.2 seconds, faster than the speed of human blinking. Moreover, this technology also supports wet hand unlocking, which is simply a blessing for people with sweaty hands.
Of course, iQOO 8 Pro's ultrasonic 3D fingerprint unlocking brings not only unlock acceleration and wet hand unlocking, but also its fingerprint recognition area is as high as 578mm, which is more than ten times the general optical fingerprint recognition area. The large area of the unlocked area combined with vivo's latest OriginOS operating system at that time realized the quick operation such as scanning the code payment directly on the lock screen interface, and directly brought a new era to the use experience of screen fingerprint unlocking.
360-degree horizon stabilization: "Very perverted" stabilization capability
Since vivo released the industry's first anti-shake micro-gimbal technology in the X50 series models, the "you are responsible for jitter, I am responsible for stabilization" anti-shake technology has become vivo's golden signboard. Last year, Vivo upgraded this "golden signboard" again, bringing 360-degree horizon stabilization on iQOO 8 series mobile phones.
Many digital bloggers, after reviewing this feature, can't help but use words such as "very perverted", "too strong" and "industry anti-shake ceiling" to describe it. In fact, we just think about how "perverted" this feature is when you take pictures: rotate the phone 360 degrees and the picture remains level. It can be said that it is a model for vivo to apply its image stabilization technology to the extreme.
V1 chip: open the era of hardware-level algorithms
Ever since smartphone camera pixels have increased from millions to terrifying billions of pixels, there has been a discussion in the industry: can the image capabilities of smartphones replace SLR cameras?
Compared with the camera, the increasingly thin and light smart phone, the contradiction between the sensor size and the thickness of the whole machine is more and more prominent. It is basically impossible for smartphones to challenge SLR cameras under the physical law of "crushing people to death at the bottom level". Therefore, in the case of smart phone imaging hardware is becoming more and more difficult to break through the physical boundary, the improvement of imaging quality has entered a bottleneck.
At this time, Apple, Google and others took the lead in carrying the banner of "computational photography" and began to become a solution for improving the quality of imaging. However, although computational photography is a breakthrough in the improvement of image quality today, the huge amount of computation it requires has also brought great challenges to manufacturers.
In this context, Vivo launched its first professional imaging flagship chip V1, which makes it possible for mobile phone photography to be processed concurrently in real time at low power consumption, unlocking the era of hardware-level algorithms for vivo images. The vivo X70 series equipped with V1 chip, due to the throughput ability of the flagship desktop computer, under the night scene shooting, the real-time preview of the picture is like a night vision goggle, which is a must in reducing noise and presenting a clear night scene.
OriginOS Ocean: Build a whole new user experience
If there is a factor that determines the reputation of smartphones last year, then the operating system can certainly be at the forefront. Xiaomi's former ace MIUI has caused a decline in reputation and damaged brand reputation due to bugs; Huawei's Hongmeng system has grown rapidly to become the third pole of the smartphone operating system; and the new version of OriginOS Ocean created by vivo has built a new user experience and become an important factor driving the growth of brand reputation.
The simple, smooth and unique style of UI interface reconstruction, the redefinition of system-level APP interaction methods such as reading, notes, and calls, as well as the update and development of heavyweight functions such as small window mode, lock screen system, and privacy system, make OriginOS Ocean not only have a unique and attractive design, but also innovate the interactive experience of mobile operating systems.
Write at the end
In 2022, we will now look back at vivo's technological innovations last year and will be surprised to find that even if this year has only passed a month or so, technologies such as micro-slit fill lights, photochromic discoloration, ultrasonic 3D wide-area fingerprints and other technologies have been iteratively updated on models such as vivo S12 series and iQOO 9 series, and have come to version 2.0.
It is not difficult to find that vivo's scientific and technological innovation can not only really improve the user's experience, but also continue to iterate and continue to meet the user's functional needs. There is no doubt that these stable and iterative update technologies will also become the unique differentiated competitive advantage of the vivo brand like the previous technologies such as micro-gimbal and vivo ZEISS joint imaging system.