Foreword: The rapid iteration of the mobile phone industry, but out of a "stubborn design"
As we all know, the market competition in smartphones in recent years can be said to be particularly fierce. And this naturally brings a phenomenon, that is, various related technologies will be updated and iterated very quickly.
For example, on the hardware chip and platform, the mainstream flagship models are basically updated once a year, even if it is a low-end product, it is rare to use a master control for more than two generations.
For example, in the image scheme, in recent years, the models of the mainstream price segment have been "rolled". A variety of exclusive, first-outsole CMOS emerge in an endless stream, similar to optical image stabilization, IMX766, which was once only a flagship can use the configuration, this year has "fallen" to the two thousand yuan price segment.
Not to mention that in the styling of smart phones, whether in the Symbian, WM era, or in recent years, manufacturers have been actively promoting innovation.
Even in the case that the "full screen" has long been popularized and the front shape of the fuselage is difficult to play with flowers, it is not difficult for everyone to find that the design of the back material of the fuselage and the decorative cover of the rear camera module has become a new "arena" for major manufacturers to exert creativity and even compete in technology.
However, it is in this context that when a seemingly extremely simple and functional "simple" small design took four years to "ostensibly" be eliminated from the design of mainstream models, which naturally aroused the attention of our three easy lives.
In 2017, a humble little design swept the Android camp
In April 2017, Samsung released its flagship product, the Galaxy S8, that year. On this model, in order to promote its own "Bixby" voice assistant, Samsung has added a separate physical button on the side of its fuselage. And this is the "Bixby key". By default, its role is unique and unchangeable, which is to call out the phone's built-in "voice assistant" when pressed.
Obviously, whether it is in terms of hardware cost (after all, it is just a key), or software functions, the "Bixby key" is essentially quite rudimentary.
However, this simple little button was quickly welcomed by the entire industry. On the one hand, since 2018, from LG to SONY, from Xiaomi to Huawei, more and more manufacturers have begun to equip new machines with this independent physical button for calling out AI voice assistants.
On the other hand, in the mobile version of the Google app updated in February 2018, Google also added support for independent "AI keys", showing that it has defaulted this setting to a standard for Android models.
From birth to seemingly obsolete, the life of independent AI keys is unexpectedly long
If the popularity of the independent "AI key" at the beginning is somewhat of the mobile phone manufacturers' habit of "paying tribute" to each other and manufacturing selling points, then it is far more than the "life" of many other designs, which is somewhat incredible.
For example, in 2017, when the design of "AI key" was just born, the mainstream "full screen" of smart phones also used the earliest scheme of 18:9, and by the time "AI key" became more and more common in 2018, "Liu Haiping" had become the mainstream design.
By the time of the Xiaomi Mi 9 series in 2019, the "full screen" solution of the smart phone at that time had been updated for another generation, but the "AI key" still became the common choice of many new machines at that time.
Xperia 1 III has a separate "AI key"
With the time to 2020, although some manufacturers have begun to eliminate the "AI key", such as the Xiaomi 10 series at that time, the Samsung Galaxy S20 series have cancelled the independent voice assistant physical buttons, but there are still some models that choose to "insist".
Xepria 1 IV spy photo, AI key disappeared
So when did the independent "AI key" completely disappear from the design of mainstream models? The answer is 2022.
Because just recently, a spy photo about Sony's next-generation flagship model (Xperia 1 IV.) was exposed, which showed that the 2022 Sony flagship model finally canceled the independent "AI key" used for several generations. This also marks that the seemingly simple design of "independent AI key" is finally "abandoned" by mainstream mobile phone manufacturers after five years of birth.
Although the "AI key" seems to be gone, it is actually more ubiquitous
Note that we've been emphasizing that the disappearance of the physical "AI key" is really just a superficial phenomenon. This is because at the same time as the physical "AI key" is canceled, almost all manufacturers have integrated its functions with other operating logic of the phone.
This means that for mobile phone manufacturers, although they did "cancel" the physical AI button design on the smartphone, and thus save this part of the hardware material cost. But for users, the "AI key" feature has not disappeared in nature, and may even become easier to trigger than in the past.
For example, on some models, the function of the "AI key" is integrated into the power button, the user long press the power button will first call out the voice assistant, if you do not want to use the voice assistant you need to press and hold the power button for a longer time, and then you may see the shutdown menu. And this is only "possible", because on some models, the shutdown operation has even been changed to a more complex key combination, and a single press of the power button can only call out the voice assistant.
For example, the "AI key" on some models has been replaced by a gesture operation from the bottom of the screen. This means that even in day-to-day operations, it becomes easier to be triggered by misoperation, and the user experience is actually worse to some extent.
Why do "AI keys" live so long? To put it bluntly, it is still the business demand that is at work
Is the "AI key" really practical and easy to use? Honestly, if it's really popular with consumers, then it doesn't make sense that its physical keys will disappear from the design of smartphones. The intelligent voice assistant applications they are associated with will hardly be mentioned at the new product launches of major brands.
However, from the fact that the "AI key" has disappeared on the surface and is actually further integrated into daily operations, it is actually not difficult for us to glimpse the intentions of mobile phone manufacturers.
To put it bluntly, although everyone understands that the physical "AI key" can no longer be used as a selling point for product promotion, the "voice assistant" that is deeply bound to the ecology and Internet business of various ecosystems is an entrance that mobile phone manufacturers are never willing to give up. Therefore, even if the "AI key" is gone, mobile phone manufacturers hope that users can activate and use the voice assistant on the mobile phone more frequently. This naturally leads to the fact that the "AI key" is not only very long-lived, but also seems to disappear, but in fact it has become more deeply integrated.
【The picture of this article comes from the network】