Oneplus Ace, are you particular or will you be?

The recent mobile phone market can be too "screwed".

For example, consumers are familiar with OPPO and vivo, a "green factory" and a "blue factory" have long taken off the "high-priced low-matching" hat, and began to rely on extremely exaggerated hardware configurations and prices with enough "visual" impact to desperately dominate the high-end mobile phone market.

Whether it is from the global market, or the domestic consumer demand for high-end machines, the main features of such products are also very distinct, it is difficult to "jump out" out of the pile of materials, although there is a new form of "folding screen", but in the final analysis, users have to spend high prices to pay.

Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

With Huawei's absence, the return of glory, and the impact of OV on the high-end, how to look like a "rising star" party, ask friends around them when chatting, in addition to Apple, Samsung and other "old" and glory. Apart from "new recruits" like OV, there seems to be no other brand.

Where is OnePlus, once known as the "suit thug" and "performance king" focusing on taking the high-end route?

People are busy launching a new series of mid-range Aces.

When others are riveting and sprinting into the high-end market, OnePlus has launched the mid-range Ace series, which can't help but make everyone here wonder, are you going to be done or start to pay attention?

Why did an Ace suddenly pop up?

Many consumers or digital enthusiasts are a little caught off guard by this sudden arrival of Ace.

Some users feel that you have no original intention and have become compromised, while some users say that this is not the "successor" of OPPO Ace? There are many voices on the market, once rushing to the Cool An 200,000 heat, which is twice as much as the OnePlus 10 Pro.

Image source: GFK

From the macro market point of view, it is determined by "demand", although according to the Mobile phone sales report released by Counterpoint in the first quarter of this year, domestic mobile phone sales in the first quarter of 2022 fell by 14% year-on-year to 74.2 million units, but according to GFK survey, although sales will decline, but sales will rise, in addition, according to GFK in 2021 for the domestic consumer market in 2022, inference, in the low-end mobile phone market continued to shrink, In terms of the expansion of the high-end mobile phone market but a significant slowdown, the mid-range price mobile phone has grown steadily.

"The stability of the mid-end is because some consumers have upgraded from the low end to the high end, and there are also some middle-end consumers who have upgraded up to the high end, so the overall is relatively stable." GFK is displayed in the report.

As the price range of 2000-3000 yuan for mid-range machines, it is still a very broad market, and it is impossible for mobile phone manufacturers not to pay attention to this "fertile cake".

In fact, for the consumer market, with the product update speed, the quality of mobile phones and other factors stacked together, eventually led to a decline in the cycle of replacement, the latest replacement cycle of more than two and a half years to reach 31 months, more users still tend to choose a machine that can run smoothly, the performance can be OK, and with the improvement of chip performance and system optimization, the current mid-range price model is actually and high-end flagship in the daily sliding screen, watching news and other conventional applications, can not open the gap.

For manufacturers, the main difference between mid-range machines and high-end machines is that some functional "trade-offs", mid-range machines may do well in one or two aspects, and high-end flagships must be "all-round" to live up to the reputation of flagship mobile phones, in order to establish a brand "high-end" image.

The mid-range mobile phone wants to "base" on the world, to achieve "control field", do not have to do all aspects, but must be able to solve the needs of users in this price segment, after all, limited by the cost, it is impossible to do everything in charging, battery life, performance, photography, technology.

What matters is whether we can solve user pain points with one or two advantages of "only".

OnePlus is indeed "playing clearly" in this regard, and the "pain points" of users in this price segment are: both to pursue performance and meet the daily needs of high-load applications, such as games, videos, and other audio and video entertainment, while not wanting to make the mobile phone look too "unorthodox", but also to have some appearance and photo needs.

In terms of how to "insight" into user needs, OnePlus's approach and the previous interview with Tim Ke are both the same way to this set of "methodologies", such as OnePlus they will go to understand whether user needs really exist; what characteristics such users have, what kind of products they want to buy, followed by how the products currently on the market are sold, whether they can meet users, and where the user's expectations and dissatisfaction with such products are.

Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

"If we look at these two things together, if we feel that the user needs are real and we have the opportunity to make a better product than the existing product, then we will do it in this market."

And that's why oneplus aces were born.

Of course, OnePlus also said: "All along, in the concept of brand and product, OnePlus has made it clearer - the concept of pursuing not being ready." However, in terms of product cognition, what is the main focus of a plus series of products, what kind of users to do, what price point, what time out, compared to other brands, in fact, is not very clear. Now OnePlus will do product iterations in two series, and every quarter that follows will see OnePlus product releases. ”

In other words, OnePlus will walk on "two legs" using numbers and letters.

Does it really solve the user's "pain point"?

So the question is, how does oneplus Ace solve the pain points through products?

One is the performance, which is also the price segment users care most about, in the same price model is still using the 870, 888 such "dragon" processor, a plus Ace directly chooses the first Tianji 8100 Max, the process is more advanced, such an advantage is to be able to control the power consumption, here I also use Redmi K50 as a comparison, the latter for the Tianji 8100.

The same is the Tianji 8100 gap is really a bit big Picture source: Pin play lzh photo

It is not difficult to see from the Running Score of AntuTu that the performance of one plus Ace is indeed more MAX than that of Redmi, and the running score can exceed the gap of about 50,000, which also shows that this time OnePlus does cooperate with MediaTek to adjust more deeply and optimize more in place.

Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

In the actual game experience link, oneplus Ace in the "Peace Elite" game, the maximum quality of the frame number is very stable; and in the "Original God" game, after opening the "stable frame" and setting the picture quality to medium and high, it can also maintain 50 frames of stable operation for a long time, so the performance in terms of performance can still make users feel "at ease".

The extreme can only meet the needs of the "game", which is obviously not in line with the positioning of OnePlus on Ace's "performance trump card with beauty and material", since the performance has remained at the same price point enough, then for the brand of one plus that is born with "obsessive-compulsive disorder", it will naturally not reduce the aesthetic of the appearance.

Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

The front of the OnePlus Ace is actually not much different from other models at the same price, of course, what I am saying is still designed for "punching holes in the screen", but if you look closely, you will find that you are more "concerned about details" than some of the main "game" models at the same price, such as the "black edge" border at the bottom is very narrow, from a visual point of view, the bottom and top and the left and right sides are basically "iso-wide".

But the design of the back, although it is recognizable enough, is from an aesthetic point of view.

It can only be evaluated with a "strong polytechnic man" aesthetic.

In addition, at the media briefing on April 12, there were many media outlets who paid great attention to "design changes" such as Ace, especially on the "three-stage switch" of the "cancellation" logo and the more "sharp" issue of right angle design.

After all, the "three-stage switch" as a plus mobile phone logo "logo", for "plus friends", there are feelings and emotions in it, which is like seeing an old friend's feeling of seeing each other and hating the night.

The sudden cancellation will cause the faith of the "friends" to collapse.

But it is also really helpless, after all, in the 8.2 mm fuselage, re-entry into the three-stage switch design, is bound to squeeze more structure and space inside the fuselage, which will affect the battery capacity, the layout of the camera, the lightness of the feel, etc. will change, which will lead to an increase in research and development costs, and this cost will eventually be reflected in the product price.

Can you accept that oneplus phones do not have a "three-stage" switch? Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

"For a thinner feel and gaming experience, we finally decided to return to the original intention of the Ace series, back to the positioning of the product we wanted to build in this price segment and the core experience we wanted to bring to users. Weighed the benefits of the three-stage type with the long-term positioning and development of the Ace series, thus making the choice of canceling the three-stage switch"

And for the "three-stage" switch will it "return" in the product later? OnePlus said it would measure it according to subsequent product planning.

The "three-stage" switch design is more reflected in the function, and for the back of the "design revolution" can reflect the overall "tonality" of the brand.

Some media asked at the communication meeting why when the lens specifications are not so high, still use a large backplane design, OnePlus said that it is still based on the overall design, of course, this also includes the texture below and the process of the electric waterfall.

Although the aesthetic is very subjective, but everyone is basically relatively consistent with the "beauty", a plus Ace back shell is not beautiful, which is like letting the polytechnic boyfriend make up his girlfriend, can only try to do the standard.

The reason why both sides of the front and back are designed with 2.5D steps, in fact, is also in order to take into account a part of the hand feeling under such a large trade-off condition as a right angle border, in fact, this design idea is very understanding of game lovers, after all, when playing games on the horizontal screen, the straight screen operation feel and 3D curved screen can not be the same day.

Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

During use, I did not notice that the back was made of plastic. In fact, many users will talk about tiger discoloration when they talk about the back shell of the mobile phone is "plastic", and the split head covers the face first, and wait until the game is played to feel that the temperature control is very good, and then it is "really fragrant".

The use of plastic materials, in fact, more or consider the "heat dissipation", after all, the summer is coming soon, the temperature change of the mobile phone can also have obvious perception, for the game process in the frame overheating problem, ACR in the frame added insulation material, so with the plastic material heat resistance than the metal good characteristics, in the game will not be hot fingers.

The back is made of plastic material, so Li Jie said, "If a mobile phone has a VC and another mobile phone does not have a VC, we assume that the difference in their heat dissipation ability is 1; then if a mobile phone is metal and another mobile phone is plastic, then it is plastic. Its heat dissipation capacity difference may be 0.05, that is to say, the metal is indeed better than the heat dissipation of plastic, but the cross-sectional area of the metal is small, so it may only be zero points and a few points for the improvement of the heat dissipation capacity of the whole machine, and even sometimes the error cannot be detected, so in practical applications, the heat dissipation of the metal is very small, much less than adding a piece of graphite or VC. ”

Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

Sometimes when manufacturers consider consumer pain points, they can only take into account part of it, and it is a solution to improve heat dissipation through materials, but since the front of the Ace mobile phone has been done enough to be amazing, it is BOE's independent adjustment of separate supply, and it is excellent border control, while the back side uses plastic materials, which has some "split" feeling.

After all, the texture of glass and metal is something that plastics can't achieve no matter how much "grinding", in other words, since there is time to polish plastics, why not use metal materials directly? I believe that consumers will not have doubts about the extra tens of grams.

Finally, to talk about the lens part, or because of the limited cost, so in terms of taking pictures, it can only be said that it is enough, only 50 million pixels IMX766 supportS optical image stabilization, but there is always better than nothing. However, 8 million ultra-wide angle and 2 million macro still have a "number" feeling.

As for the imaging effect? You look at the samples.

Personally, I still feel that the color saturation is too high, and there is less layering.

Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

How far is OnePlus from "having a reputation"?

This is not the first time that OnePlus launched a mid-range machine, in 2015, OnePlus launched a Plus X, when the price of 1699 yuan was indeed eye-catching enough, but it was limited by the processor overheating and optimization problems, coupled with the "encirclement" of the Xiaomi system in the same period, so that the more remote models launched by the niche brand itself were quickly "overwhelmed" by the same period of products, and finally had to be replaced by OPPO A30 to end.

OnePlus X Image Source: Originated from the network

This time it was a failed attempt to let OnePlus directly turn to the "high-end" market.

But after all, the current one plus is not the one plus of the year, it is not alone now, after OPPO "took back" one plus, I think there will be no "singing decline theory", for the return to OPPO, there are advantages and disadvantages.

"Advantageous" is that in the field of technology research and development will be fully "released" such as from the previous 1,000 R & D personnel, after integration into OPPO can be "shared", OPPO has 10,000, that one plus also has 10,000 R & D personnel resources, is directly able to reuse OPPO's technology, such as this Ace's 150W charging technology is from OPPO there "take" (I admit that this is the real incense function), in addition, in the supply chain, there are also incomparable advantages, such as in the cost advantage, New technology acquisition, customization technology, can bring better competitiveness and differentiated experience to OnePlus products, and this time with MediaTek to do deep chip joint customization, is based on such advantages to get the "product".

10 minutes can be charged to about 70%, just ask you if it is OK? Image source: Lzh photo of pin play

The "drawbacks" are mainly reflected in user habits, such as the "demise" of hydrogen OS.

Do you miss Hydrogen OS? Image source: Originated from the network

This system once left a smooth, refreshing, and clean impression on users, but because of the tightening of Android permissions, changes in the domestic software ecology, as well as the growth of "brushing" enthusiasts, new user expansion, etc., this not "grounded" system was soon replaced by ColorOS with better ease of use, and hydrogen OS completely stopped maintenance.

The system can be the "soul" of a plus mobile phone, so "forced" to make hydrogen OS extinct, and does not provide users with dual system options, it is simply impossible to calm the anger of their own inherent fan group through a few wallpapers with hydrogen OS characteristics, such a treatment is not decent.

To achieve the product to be "well-known", in addition to the excellent quality of the product itself, the most important thing is to do a good job of communicating with users, which includes online and offline, one plus online is through the one plus community to deepen communication with users, in this regard, one plus investment is enough, enough "smooth", but for offline, obviously not enough.

I found that in the OPPO store, it was difficult to find a trace of a plus mobile phone before, and this year, I found that there were OPPO stores that successively exhibited one plus mobile phone after another, but only limited to flagship machines such as one plus 10 Pro.

To this end, Li Jie said, "When we complete the layout of offline experience points, not only the Ace series, but also our digital series will also come to these stores, which can also allow users to experience our products." Therefore, the offline layout is not limited to the Ace series, we hope that the entire OnePlus brand can provide users with a consistent online and offline experience, and we do the layout based on this purpose. ”

To put it simply, it is to expand the offline channels of OnePlus with the help of OPPO's complete offline channels, and Li Jie also said that he will also comprehensively accelerate the layout through the first batch of 5,000 experience points planned, covering about 2,800 districts and counties and about 4,000 business circles across the country.

The "expansion" of one plus mobile phones is imminent.

But on the road of "expansion", it does not seem to be smooth, such as the recently exposed "one plus mobile phone on the first day with hot hands" hot search, if you look carefully at the temperature said in the news: 43.7 °, 46.5 ° and still in the play for an hour after the temperature, obviously this is within the normal range, and one plus also responded that it is a normal phenomenon, coupled with the self-media said that "the positioning of the new one plus is not small, can be seen as the independent sub-brand of the green factory mainly attacking online e-commerce", which is obviously contrary to the development of the offline market this year.

In the end, after the integration of OnePlus into OPPO, it will pay attention to it or will it be? It also needs to look at the future of OnePlus products and market feedback, and it is too early to conclude the conclusion based on the first product of the new series.

Back to the product itself, I still recommend that you go to the offline store to play.