In fact, at the beginning, when I learned from friends that the flagship true wireless headset product that Honor will release will have a temperature measurement function, the first reaction is: What is the use of this? Isn't that a gimmick?
If you think completely in terms of "HiFi enthusiasts" thinking, with this very one-sided, addicted to the identity of the small circle to ponder this matter, it is easy to "go astray", the root is that the current state of the "HiFi field" is "self-contained", for a long time in this "circle" for a long time, it is easy to become "closed", it is naturally difficult to speculate on the intention of this kind of technology manufacturers to "build an ecology".
Fortunately, I am willing to get rid of the identity of "enthusiast" and go out to see what "live" real wireless headphones can do in the hands of mobile phone manufacturers.
It must be emphasized that the degree of attention that Honor attaches to this headset is indeed beyond my imagination, in addition to the H5 poster that some of them looked at at the beginning of the "inexplicable", it has been comprehensively introduced to the headset at the Magic 4 series global conference and the domestic conference, and even held a media communication meeting for this headset independently.
This is unprecedented for Glory; for a well-known mobile phone manufacturer that once did not attach much importance to the "headphone" category, it is even more unprecedented.
It is obviously to break the single function of true wireless headphones that can only "listen".
According to the latest Canalys statistics, TWS true wireless headphones in the fourth quarter of 2021 shipments increased by 21% to 103.8 million units, and only the strong performance of devices and audio brands, on the one hand, promoted the growth of the TWS headphones market, which is obvious, on the other hand, it also made up for the impact of the decline in sales of wireless neck-mounted headphones and head-mounted wireless headphones, overall, from the fourth quarter of 2021, personal smart audio equipment shipments increased by 7.7%.
The popularity of TWS headphones speaks for itself.
With the gradual popularization of true wireless headphones, it has become a product that is difficult to "replace" in the daily life of consumers, after experiencing the first stage, "listen to the ring", with the maturity of supply chain technology, the upgrade of wireless link transmission protocols and the "upgrade" of headphone products for such wireless products by consumers, mainstream mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo and OPPO have launched their own high-end flagship products.
And Glory has already launched high-end products in other countries, and even has iteratively upgraded to the second generation, before launching flagships such as Earbuds 3 Pro, will it be later? For this purpose, Pin Play exclusively interviewed the product manager of Honor Earths 3 Pro, and conducted in-depth communication on this product and how Honor views the TWS category.
Glory into the high-end TWS bureau, is it too late?
In fact, the question of entering the TWS field is not whether it will be "late", but whether it can bring consumers a real quality experience through a very good product experience.
It is not difficult to see that noise-canceling headphones have been optimized by upstream supply chain technology and manufacturers themselves to achieve a very good "noise reduction performance", of course, the performance I describe here refers to noise reduction capabilities, such as Earbuds 3 Pro has reached 46dB noise reduction depth, and has been listed compared with the true wireless noise reduction headphones, it is indeed "among the best", but in fact, for consumers, as long as they can block the surrounding sound when needed, this can only attract a part of the users who have needs for noise reduction. For the vast majority of users who already have a noise-canceling headset, the demand for "changing the machine" is not high.
"In fact, at the beginning, Glory wanted to use better noise reduction performance as a major embodiment point in the flagship TWS headphones, but after observation, it was found that the price of noise-canceling headphones has appeared in various price points, so for consumers, it has been able to meet, at this time, if you want to stimulate consumers, manufacturers need to enrich through some other ways or other functions."
Honor's addition of temperature measurement, as I said at the beginning, is easy to think of as a "gimmick", but it is not.
If you stand in the glory angle, the headset adds a temperature measurement function, which is actually an important part of the "health ecology", which is also an important part of the glory 1+8+N smart ecology, covering the various life scenarios of consumers, so that the headphones are involved in the field of health, is it really so simple to take temperature after wearing headphones?
Compared with watches and bracelets on the market that can measure temperature, in fact, temperature measurement is not "rare".
But in reality, a bracelet like a watch measures only the temperature of the skin, which is limited by environmental constraints. If the temperature sensor is placed on the back of the watch, after wearing the watch, the measurement at this time is actually only in contact with the surface of the skin, and there may be poor contact phenomena because of the space gap, and the non-enclosed space for the environment with too large a temperature difference, there will be a temperature inaccuracy with the watch.
The ear was chosen as the measurement object because the ear temperature and liquid temperature, oral temperature, and rectal temperature can be counted as the general anthropometric temperature. The temperature of the ear and the rectum will have some similarities, both in a relatively confined space, and the influence of the ambient temperature will be relatively small.
In fact, here we must first understand what is called "human body temperature" and "core temperature".
The temperature measured under the armpits with a mercury meter cannot actually be called the "human body" temperature, but should be called the "core temperature". The core temperature is the health data that reflects the body's body temperature, while the temperature of this part of the ear ear membrane has a very high correlation with the core temperature.
For consumers, if you put forward the "body temperature data" demand such a concerned environment background, but also want accuracy, but also want to have a real-time demand for their own temperature, put the temperature measurement function on the headset, is a natural solution. In addition, through the earbud part in fact, in the ear has formed a relatively closed space, this time and ambient temperature, it will be less affected, in the confined space to measure the temperature, the accuracy will be very high.
In addition, the temperature measurement logic of the headset and the "ear temperature gun" using infrared temperature measurement is not the same, after all, the headset can not be built-in infrared scanning module, so the solution is through the joint action of three sensors, one is the contact type of "diaphragm" attached to the ear skin, if only this one sensor, will still be affected by the temperature inside the ear and slight flow fluctuations, so the second sensor for the headphones to monitor the air temperature, and the third sensor will measure the ambient air temperature outside the enclosed space, When the external ambient temperature is relatively small, then measure the temperature.
Together, this makes the temperature monitoring inside the headset more accurate.
In addition, in addition to accurate measurement data, it is also necessary to cooperate with a reasonable monitoring cycle, which can be seen in the glory of the smart space APP, and the test cycle is 10 minutes, so that after opening, you no longer have to worry about whether to test the problem. If the body temperature exceeds 38 degrees, there will also be a prompt tone inside the headset, of course, after multiple sampling data, there will be a prompt, indicating that there is a problem with the body temperature health data, it is necessary to combine the heart rate state, blood oxygen, breathing, etc. to check, it is necessary to seek medical treatment.
However, the current temperature measurement function is only used as a temperature reference, and for the future planning, because it has a 1+8+N full-scenario strategy, it has always wanted to open up various devices and various software to carry out mutual coordination, such as watches can measure heart rate, blood oxygen, sleep, breathing, pressure, etc., and headphones can measure body temperature, so that they can cover more than 75% of the human vital signs, so that together, they can achieve "monitoring" of physical health.
In addition, Glory also said that in the future, it will also expand to exercise to test calories, menstruation and body temperature abnormality monitoring during pregnancy.
Look at the ecology from the headset, preemptive
In fact, the views of digital manufacturers on the development of TWS are different from the traditional HiFi manufacturers looking at the development of TWS headphones. For example, Honor launched TWS headphones with temperature measurement functions this time, one of the reasons is to meet everyone's demand for health in the health of the epidemic, and to explore or stimulate some deep "pain points" that consumers may have. In addition, Honor believes that more important than the breakthrough is to lay a good foundation for consumers to experience, if you can not weigh the "new features" such as temperature measurement such as dynamic noise reduction, and "basic functions" such as sound quality and noise reduction, consumers can not buy it.
Honor believes that the future development direction of the TWS headset market or the owner of the market will still be on the side of mobile phone manufacturers. For traditional HiFi audio manufacturers, it is more to meet the needs of sound quality, or portability.
For wired headphone sound quality, basically only the unit material, wire and front-end collocation will affect the sound performance, but for wireless headphones, in addition to the unit material, the wireless transmission link will also affect the sound, although Earbuds 3 Pro for the first time using a piezoelectric ceramic unit, and through another moving unit to form a coaxial architecture, the use of point sound source characteristics to improve sound performance, but the lack of HD transmission protocol support, indeed for some of the pursuit of "extreme" sound quality performance of the user, It is indeed a little regrettable on the hardware.
Of course, in the process of interview, Honor said that "through the previous market research data, the contact price of Honor's target consumers for headphones should still be in line with the price range that Honor high-end mobile phones or Glory mobile phone users can accept." ”
In the final analysis, the price of TWS headphones needs to be associated with mobile phone-related user groups.
According to the previous third-party research agency, CINNO Research data shows that the current domestic smart phone sales ranked in the top three are OPPO, vivo and glory, of which glory increased by 242.9% year-on-year, an increase of 54.4% month-on-month, in addition, the hot selling models also include flagships from honor 60 to glory X30, honor play 30 Plus.
Image: Image from CINNO Research
The next thing Honor has to face is how to continue the high growth trend of mobile phones in the field of audio and video, especially in the most common products such as smart wear, such as headphones.
Before being affected by some old owners, its rapid rise and the strategy of some products, so that glory can not launch new ideas or market-forward-looking technologies or products at the first time, but now different, after coming out independently from the old owners, glory still hopes to continue to exert efforts in other areas through some product strategies, and the temperature monitoring function on the headset is only the first step to explore new areas, and the future is still a long way to go.
With the strategic adjustment of traditional HiFi manufacturers, such as Sennheiser, Iron Triangle, Sony and other brands to launch different grades of true wireless products, gradually penetrating into the mass consumer market, but also let mobile phone manufacturers have to their own TWS headphones through the hardware, software and service ecosystem through the iterative upgrade, to ensure that true wireless is not only a simple audio accessory for smart phones.