On the evening of April 11, 2021, Vivo officially released the brand's first folding screen mobile phone vivo X Fold and the first tablet vivo Pad, as well as another large-screen flagship - vivo X Note. However, since the advent of Android mobile phones, almost every Note's future has only two possibilities: either to replace the brand's regular mobile phone sequence with better hardware configurations and become the brand's essential "flagship machine emperor", or to balance market demand, for cost and differentiation, "self-deprecating martial arts" to transform into the so-called "large-screen entertainment mobile phone". Especially in the originator of large-screen mobile phones - Samsung has announced that "the Galaxy Note series will appear under the name ultra", in the era of folding screens and small-screen tablets, Android large-screen mobile phones seem to have lost their meaning of existence.
So the question is, can vivo X Note or X Note "series" take over from the Galaxy Note, called the successor of Android "Note"?
What does Note mean for vivo?
If we temporarily put aside the cognition of "big screen" in 2022 and temporarily return to 2013, it is not difficult to find that vivo has actually launched its own large-screen mobile phone - vivo Xplay. 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor, 5.7-inch 1920×1080 screen, with 2GB RAM and 13mp stacked camera, no matter from what point of view vivo Xplay is a full flagship phone.
In the next brand operation, vivo has also always had the meaning of operating Xplay as a brand flagship: the first mobile phone equipped with 6GB RAM, the first domestic mobile phone equipped with hyperboloid screen; the subsequent Xplay6 is the "first" under-screen fingerprint program, these achievements all emphasize the status of the Xplay series in the vivo system. But after vivo released the APEX concept machine and vivo NEX lifting full-screen mobile phone in 2018, Xplay's status has changed.
In fact, from a technical point of view, the proportion of large-screen mobile phone screens like vivo Xplay is not low, but the high screen proportion of these mobile phones is obtained by increasing the screen size of mobile phones and "improving the molecular and denominator" at the same time, which runs counter to the concept of "medium-sized fuselage to put down a larger screen" in the full-screen era, so the full-screen design has also quickly replaced the former large screen and become the new favorite of the flagship machine. The former Xplay had to break away from the sequence of the flagship mobile phone, turned into a mobile phone with large-screen video and audio as the selling point, and transformed again after vivo power mobile phone photography, and has since left the category of "big screen".
From this point of view, although the product forms of vivo X Note and Samsung's S22 Ultra are similar, they have a completely different meaning behind them: Samsung's S22 Ultra means the end of the Note series independent product line, and the emergence of vivo X Note represents the "rebirth" or "rebirth" of the vivo large-screen mobile phone series.
Do you still need a large-screen mobile phone in the folding era?
Although vivo X Note represents the rebirth of vivo large-screen mobile phones, in the era of full screen, vivo X Note wants to succeed will definitely not be a simple thing as "copying the brilliance of Xplay in that year". For vivo X Note, the first problem that needs to be solved is not a technology-related hardware problem, but "how to promote large-screen mobile phones to consumers?" Or "Do the times still need large-screen mobile phones?" ”
Different from the Android tablet era, the vivo X Note launched in 2022 not only has to deal with the threat from the Android tablet, but also beware of the challenge from the folding screen phone: as an Android large-screen mobile phone and an Android tablet exist, the folding screen mobile phone can provide a far larger screen mobile phone screen viewing size within the size of the large-screen mobile phone, and the more square screen aspect ratio also brings a larger display area to the user. The difference in hardware between the two also further expands the gap between folding screen mobile phones and large-screen mobile phones in use.
How to make reasonable use of the additional display area brought by large screens has always been a question that Android mobile phone brands need to answer. In the era of Android tablets, Google proposed an unsuccessful plan for "HD/tablet software", but due to the cost of software development, Android tablets have existed like "big phones" for a long time. In the later stage of the Android tablet ecology, but also the early stage of the birth of folding screen mobile phones, Android mobile phone brands found the differentiated route of "split screen / floating window", and used parallel operation to "curve to save the country".
However, parallel operation has certain requirements for product form: many flagship mobile phones can also use the function of the floating window, but because the screen is too slender, the application experience of the uneven scale is not good, and it is more as an emergency means when playing, and it is rarely used for a long time like desktop windowing. In other words, in the most basic use case, vivo X Note compared to vivo X Fold, "before starting to lose two seconds."
In addition, whether the vivo X Note can have as much influence as the Xplay and Galaxy Note in the past is itself unknown. Take the "originator of Note" Galaxy Note series as an example, although the configuration of Galaxy Note is indeed higher than that of the S series mobile phones of the same period, the configuration is only part of the "product power" of Galaxy Not, and what really achieves the status of Galaxy Note "Note" is the S Pen and A series of special scenario applications behind the development of S Pen and S Pen since the first generation of Note.
There are many mobile phone brands that have crossed the river in the Note series, but no brand has ever been able to elevate Note to the height of the Galaxy Note. From the technical accumulation of S Pen to the pain point mining around the stylus, to the direct contact with the user's advertising marketing and user education, Samsung has created a complete set of unique ecology based on the S Pen, and this S Pen exclusive application ecology is the key to the success of the Galaxy Note series.
Vivo X Note's "Unique Cheats"
So in the face of challenges from folding screens and Android tablets, what cards can be played in the hands of vivo X Note, which wants to revive large-screen Android phones?
First of all, vivo X Note's 7-inch 2K+ screen is the biggest selling point of vivo X Note: the screen ratio of 21:10 ensures that vivo X Note can get a good application display area when using vertical screen or horizontal split screen, so that vivo X Note has the most basic "large-screen software ecology". On the other hand, the 7-inch screen area also allows vivo X Note to barely enter the field of tablets (Google's first generation of Android tablet Nexus 7 uses a 7-inch screen), so as to bring users different software ecology within the framework of the mobile phone, so that users have a better game, video and audio experience.
OriginOS' unique atomic components and quantum kits allow vivo to create a set of user-familiar but differentiated system operations for vivo X Note in basic software interaction without the help of the software ecology of Android tablets, so that vivo X Note can be as different from ordinary Android phones as vivo X Fold. Coupled with vivo's long-term efforts in audio and video, although there is no differentiated hardware like S Pen, relying solely on the collaboration of large screens and systems, vivo X Note can also find its own differentiated route in the homogenized non-folding Android mobile phone market.
But then again, using software and differentiated scenarios to create an exclusive ecology of large-screen mobile phones, this road vivo has also walked, and Xplay, which has just been mentioned repeatedly, is one of the examples. Being able to balance the relationship between the X Note series and the X digital series in addition to differentiation is the key node that determines the next development of vivo X Note.
On the surface, vivo X Note and digital series are the same flagship mobile phones, but in the camera configuration and other details, vivo X Note and X digital series still maintain a certain difference. These differences may be a helpless move under the cost constraint, or it may be a deliberate move by vivo in the product layout. Although the two are complementary in product positioning, after the consumer votes in real money, in case vivo X Note fails to get consumer recognition, we cannot rule out that the "shrinkage" of the image will become another starting point for Note's "forced transformation", and note in vivo's hands has no reason to become synonymous with Ultra like Samsung's Note.