In the past year, Apple has relied on its strong performance in the Greater China region, which can be described as a very bright financial report. According to statistics from consultancy Counterpoint Research, the iPhone had a market share of 23% in the fourth quarter of 2021, reaching the top of the Chinese mobile phone market for the first time in six years. The key to all this is that Huawei's previous share in the high-end market was "ceded" to Apple.
In 2021, Huawei will not launch many smartphone products, only a few high-end products including the Mate X2, P50 series, and P50 Pocket. And what is even more fatal is that as the flagship model unveiled in the third year of 5G mass adoption, most of Huawei's flagship products are not equipped with 5G capabilities. At the moment when the outside world rumors that the Mate50 series will be unveiled this year, there are rumors that "all the mobile phones released by Ah Hua are still only 4G versions, but the effect of 5G can be achieved through the mobile phone case." ”
The use of mobile phone cases to support 5G networks, past experience has taught us that this seems to be a little bit of a possibility. After all, smart phones want to achieve mobile communication functions, relying on a chip called baseband (Modem) or modem, and this chip is responsible for the wireless communication of the transmitted signal for digital signal processing, modulation is to use the baseband pulse to control a certain parameter of the carrier waveform, the formation of a signal suitable for line transmission, demodulation is when the modulated signal reaches the receiving end, the modulator transformed analog signal removed from the carrier to restore the original baseband digital signal.
For the processing of baseband chips, the industry usually has two ways, one is to integrate the baseband with CPU, GPU, ISP, DSP and other chips in the SoC, the typical here is Samsung and vivo cooperation Exynos 980, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen1, and MediaTek Tianji 9000, etc.; the other is Apple iPhone 13 series A15 bionic chip plug-in Qualcomm Snapdragon X60 baseband, or Kirin 980 + Baron 5000 solution. Since the baseband chip can be associated with the SoC in the form of a plug-in on the same motherboard, it is not impossible to build a baseband in the mobile phone case and then associate it with the mobile phone.
Seeing this, perhaps some friends thought of an artifact "Apple Skin" made for the iPod Touch. More than ten years ago, that is, the era of iPhone 4/iPhone 4S, the iPhone has not yet become today's arcade machine, and its price of more than 5,000 yuan at that time is indeed difficult for many people to accept, but at that time the design was similar to the iPhone, the hardware was also half a pound of eight or two iPod Touch, and the price was only about 40% of the iPhone of the same period. However, at that time, although the iPod Touch seemed to be good, it lacked only key communication functions, so the team launched an accessory that could make iPod Touch calls, "Apple Skin".
"Apple skin" is actually a full-cover mobile phone case, and its communication function is achieved by a back-button communication module. The most classic solution of that year was the Qualcomm QSC6085 platform plus Marvell8688's WIFI chip \ Bluetooth module, using soft AP routing, and support for OMA functions, plus SIM card slots and built-in batteries. Although the "Apple Skin" still needs to jailbreak the iPod Touch first, and the answering and receiving calls is not so stable, it does achieve nearly 80% of the iPhone's functionality with a low-cost solution.
In addition to the "Apple Skin", the world's "first" 5G model Moto Z3 is actually through the "5G mobile phone case" to achieve 5G communication. As early as the summer of 2018, Moto launched Z3, and the biggest feature of this model equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 main control is to support the built-in Snapdragon 855 main control, Snapdragon X50 baseband, 4x4MIMO antenna, 2000mAh battery MotoMODs module.
Not to mention, the solution to achieve 5G communication is also 5G portable WiFi. Especially in today's Bluetooth 5.0, WiFi 6 technology has been very mature, Bluetooth and WiFi performance is no longer a bottleneck between the two devices communication capabilities, the use of 5G mobile phone case as an external device to through wired hard connection or other soft connection methods, to make the mobile phone to achieve 5G communication, almost not too much technical difficulty of a thing.
However, although the solution of 5G mobile phone case looks reasonable at first glance and the technical level is completely feasible, the question is who will produce this 5G mobile phone case? In fact, according to relevant rumors, the key to Huawei's new machines at this stage cannot support 5G is that the 5G RF front end cannot be localized, and overseas suppliers are subject to well-known reasons and cannot supply them.
But the problem now is that although the domestic 5G RF front end has been announced for mass production, it has not yet been commercialized, that is to say, even if the solution of "5G mobile phone case" really exists, it also needs a commercial entity to buy from the supplier. After Intel's baseband division was acquired by Apple, the suppliers of 5G baseband are now only MediaTek, Samsung, and Qualcomm in addition to Huawei.
But the matter is not over here, not with the baseband chip can achieve 5G communication, the adaptation between the baseband and the SoC is also needed, which requires the cooperation of the baseband chip manufacturer, but the question is whether there are manufacturers who can do this? So this problem returns to the original point, 5G mobile phone case with Huawei 4G mobile phone solution, is the need for Huawei or Huawei's related parties to be able to obtain 5G baseband, but if Huawei has a 5G baseband chip, but also this 5G mobile phone case for what? It is not good to do 5G mobile phones directly with the way of external baseband.
Taking a step back ten thousand steps, even if a 5G mobile phone case is really made, will there really be consumers to pay for it?
For the current smart phone products, thin and light is already a need in the consumer market. But from the original "Apple skin", to the Moto Z3's 5G module, without exception are synonymous with "bulky", after all, in the mobile phone case to be stuffed into the baseband chip and battery, etc., the weight must be several times higher than the traditional mobile phone case, even if the power supply can be solved by reverse wireless charging, but the built-in 5G baseband circuit board itself also needs to occupy a certain amount of space.
The most central point is, is 5G really important for today's consumers? A fact that must be admitted is that from 2018 to now, 5G has not appeared in a real sense of the killer application, and the existing mobile ecology can also run smoothly in the 4G environment. Of course, today's consumers believe in "I can not use, but you can not do without", so support for 5G networks seems to be a seemingly unnecessary but necessary thing for Huawei.