Quite simply, because the development of the smartphone industry, including the ecosystem built around smartphones, has entered a bottleneck period, it is difficult to arouse consumers' desire to change machines before there is a new breakthrough.
Let's show you a comparison chart:
This is the first generation of MIUI born in 2011, from the interface you can see that miUI at that time adopted a skeuomorphic design style, but visible to the naked eye, in some material processing, shadow processing and other aspects of some rough.
MIUI1
Two years later, in January 2013, Xiaomi released MIUIV5, this version of MIUI has made major changes in UI design, the design is more refined, various animations are more abundant, the speed of progress is fast, and it has the prototype of the mobile phone system at this stage. (Even I think it looks better)
MIUIV5
Let's look at these two years, the following are MIUI10 released in 2018 and MIUI13 released in 2022, two systems that have been separated by nearly four years, from the interface style and aesthetics alone, it can be said that there is almost no change.
MIUI10
MIUI13
This is actually a microcosm of the current development of the smartphone industry, and the innovation speed of the entire smartphone industry is significantly reduced. This is not only a problem for mobile phone companies, but also the limitations of mobile phones as a carrier.
For another example, five or six years ago, everyone should have a deep impression of using mobile phones, a mobile phone, especially Android machines, after one or two years, the system will appear obvious caton, some games after several large version of the update, may not be able to run smoothly, at this time, the replacement will be put on the agenda.
But the time has been pulled up to now, everyone should be able to intuitively feel that at this stage, whether it is an Android machine or an iPhone, as long as the performance is reasonable (equipped with a mid-range and above SOC), the problem of using three or four years is really not big. To take the most direct example, the VIVONEX flagship version equipped with Snapdragon 845 that I bought in June 2018 has basically been four years now, the system fluency is still good, and the popular games - LOL, King, Eat Chicken, etc., can run smoothly under the medium and low special effects.
This is because not only has the development of the mobile phone industry stagnated, but the mobile ecosystem around mobile phones has also appeared bottlenecks.
3G-4G conversion is also accompanied by the popularity of domestic fiber and WIFI, five or six years ago I went to college, the broadband at home is generally 4M broadband, download speed is only 400Kb/s, and now the speed of broadband has reached 500M or even 1000M level, increased by a hundred times.
This is a huge improvement in the mobile ecosystem, and the ultra-high network speed means that software manufacturers can make the volume of the APP larger, the internal picture settings are higher, and the function settings are richer; the streaming media industry is also thriving. Game manufacturers can set the modeled textures more finely, the effect is more beautiful, and it looks better. And these factors will put forward higher and higher requirements for the hardware performance of mobile phones.
Therefore, in the first few years of the development of smart phones, due to the rapid development of the ecosystem, the performance of smart phones can easily encounter bottlenecks.
However, in recent years, the development of mobile ecology has gradually eased. The function of the APP is basically fixed, the game's screen has not made significant progress, more are changes in art style, although there are occasionally several large stand-alone games with higher performance requirements, but they are also short-lived.
So what is the root cause of the stagnation of the mobile phone industry? It is because the physical conditions of the carrier of the mobile phone are limited.
What is the essence of a mobile phone? Is a passive mobile communication device, this positioning limits its form, to the current point of view, the screen size of smart phones is difficult to break through 7 inches,
Because breaking through 7 inches will have an impact on consumer grip
。
Then in this volume, it will have an impact on the application ecology. Take the game, the refinement of the game screen on the one hand is the art style, but more important is the detail polishing and texture fineness, but under the screen of the size of the mobile phone, even if the game manufacturer does how exquisite, it may be difficult for the user to perceive, because the mobile phone screen is really too small.
The display is changed from 1080P to 2K, and the experience perception is very obvious, but the mobile phone is changed from 1080P to 2K, and the perception is not obvious, and as for 4K, it is even less obvious.
In addition, there is heat dissipation, to the size of the mobile phone, can only use passive heat dissipation, and passive heat dissipation means that the TDP power consumption of the mobile phone chip should be controlled very low,
For example, at this stage, the TDP of mobile phone chips is up to 15W
In the field of computers, this is not even a slag, but this is already the limit value that the carrier of mobile phones can present. The heat dissipation also restricts the improvement of the performance of mobile phone chips, and the current process used in the mobile phone chip industry has far exceeded the desktop chip, but it is the same as nothing.
This is an endless cycle, the size of the mobile phone screen is not large a day, and it is difficult for the smartphone industry to have any big development.
Therefore, mobile phone manufacturers are also actively trying to do a variety of ways to make the screen of the mobile phone increase, of which the folding screen is the current direction of the smart phone industry. However, because of the problems in terms of volume and difficulty of mass production, it may be difficult to become mainstream at this stage.
In the current situation, mobile phones are more durable than before and the overall innovation ability is also declining, and consumers' desire to change machines is naturally reduced, which is a very normal thing. However, once the cost of folding screen mobile phones in the future declines, the volume is controlled, and the mobile phone can accommodate more powerful SOCs, the smartphone is still promising.
Hope that can help you