This is a rugged phone: dustproof, waterproof, and drop-proof.
As you can see from the appearance, it is very capable of fighting and very resistant to manufacturing.
AMG's flagship device, the G2 GT, comes standard with a large 7000mAh battery, a thermal imager with a 500m field of view, IP69K water resistance certification, and an easy pass through 1.5 meters with 1000 drops......
The overflow of protection and volume weight is destined to be a rugged mobile phone represented by it, which is only suitable for use in outdoor, adventure, industrial and other scenarios, and will not be for the mass market.
However, OPPO wants to break through the barriers of traditional market segments: with the idea of assembling "special equipment", it has made a mass mobile phone - A3 Pro.
OPPO A3 Pro,千元机中的肌肉男
OPPO currently has four series on sale:
- Find X
- Reno
- Towards
- A
The A3 Pro, which will go on sale on April 12, belongs to the entry-level series, with a price range of 1000-2000 yuan.
OPPO's warm-up before this press conference is unusual, and when friends are talking about product features such as images, large screens, and AI, they are putting "durability" in the most prominent position, trying to bring the unusual "three defenses" talent to ordinary people's homes.
In addition, it also splits out 3 subdivided selling points on the A3 Pro: "super waterproof", "super drop resistant" and "super durable".
Let's talk about waterproof first, because the waterproof rating of the A3 Pro is really rare.
Officially, the new device supports up to IP69 waterproofing, which is not much different from the waterproof effect of the G2 GT at the beginning.
IP refers to the international general protection standard "GB/T 4208-2017 Enclosure Protection Level".
The first number from left to right represents the "dust protection class factor", with level 6 being completely dustproof (another way of saying fine dust).
The last digit represents the "waterproof rating factor", and the 9 level can resist high temperature and high pressure water jets. The current top-of-the-line IP68 in the mobile phone industry generally refers to "it can survive for no more than 30min at a water depth of 1.5m".
OPPO is very confident in the waterproof effect this time, and posted three Weibo posts in a row to introduce the A3 Pro with IP69 · IP68 · IP66 three waterproof standards and an official explanation:
- IP69 = Anti-high-pressure hot water spray
- IP68 = support for water immersion
- IP66 = Supports strong water spray resistance
From the official tone, we see a "water-insulated" A3 Pro, and this is just the beginning.
The second highlight of the A3 Pro is called "Super Drop Resistance", and the whole phone from the inside to the outside has almost nothing to do with drop resistance.
From the official certification, the OPPO A3 Pro has obtained the SGS (private organization, unofficial mandatory standard) gold standard five-star machine drop resistance certification, and achieved full scores, and at the same time passed the national military standard impact resistance test.
From the perspective of hardware configuration, the front glass of the A3 Pro uses the same model of the OPPO flagship series, which has 180% more drop resistance and 300% more scratch resistance than the previous generation, and the back glass is equipped with OPPO's first "Jingdun Glass", which is 160% more resistant to falling than products of the same grade.
From the perspective of internal structure, the A3 Pro adopts OPPO's super anti-drop diamond architecture for the first time, and the motherboard and components in the mobile phone are redesigned for anti-falling.
In short, OPPO has created a product that is incompatible with the mainstream 1,000-yuan machine, and they don't introduce the A3 Pro in every detail, but only grasp the "durable" feature, and explain it thoroughly.
It is said that good steel is used on the blade, in OPPO's opinion, the blade of the A3 Pro is built to withstand manufacturing, looking back at the above slogan, it is hard for you to believe that this is a mobile phone released in 2024, this "all in durable" strategy, and even hard to believe that this is the characteristics that a mobile phone should have.
But does "durable" really work?
A durable phone that stands up to the test?
Each mobile phone brand will put a different label on its various models, which often represents the "character" of a series of products.
Huawei's Mate series is focused on business, the P series is the imaging flagship, the two brothers OPPO and vivo dominate the landscape with portrait photography, and the Xiaomi digital series started from the cost performance and has been on the road to high-end and tear off the label for several years.
As for Apple, the word "apple" has been made into a kind of personality: thunder does not move, and it does its own thing.
This time, OPPO chose the "durable" label on the A3 Pro, and even tried to solder this impression firmly into its DNA by the official name of the "durable king", and the last one to do so was Nokia.
From 1996 to 2011, Nokia led the global mobile phone market for nearly 15 years, with a market share of an unprecedented 50.9% in 2007.
At that time, Nokia was able to create a global mobile phone "dynasty", and there were three core reasons:
- I can take the firmness of the walnut
- There can be no anxious range
- A hundred flowers bloom, never the same product updates
However, when you put the success of 20 years ago in today's mobile phone market, it will be the culprit that kills the brand.
Product continuity design is an important criterion for judging the success of a series of models. Manufacturers with top shipments, such as Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi, all have a consistent design language on their flagship models, and they don't change easily.
After opening the era of mobile Internet and smart phones, the full screen integrates many functions and has become an indispensable part of our lives.
The sturdy and durable ones are not very close to the current consumer electronics, and the smartphone industry has always been more resistant to this feature.
Consumer electronics products have two major characteristics: first of all, we must find the user's demands, and consumers can only sell them if they pay for them; secondly, the product is also a consumable, and there is a future only if there is repurchase.
As a core product in the field of consumer electronics, manufacturers don't really care about durability, but hope that users will replace their phones before they are bad.
The mobile phone system has a big change every six months and a small change every two months; the mobile phone battery has become larger, but the battery health has also decayed with the soaring screen time; chip companies are also chasing the "Moore's Law" that is about to reach the edge day and night; the device storage space has become larger, but the app is not "small but beautiful" and the high-quality photos of more than a trillion yuan make the 256GB mobile phone space a little cramped.
Many people have not yet figured out the latest flagship model that they bought a few months ago, and the next generation will come out in two months.
No manufacturer will admit the statement of "planned scrapping", but all these iterations of mobile phones labeled as "explosive growth of technology" seem to be urging us: you are out, keep up with the rhythm!
According to IDC's data report, global smartphone shipments in 2023 fell 3.2% year-over-year to 1.17 billion units, the lowest full-year shipments in a decade.
This is still the record achieved under the condition that major manufacturers are riveting their products with all their efforts, optimizing market segments, and grasping the high-end sinking market.
In the "ice age" of the mobile phone market, whoever does not run and does not progress will become the mascot in the history textbook of consumer electronics.
In such an environment, it seems that the A3 Pro, which continues to emphasize "durability", has chosen the wrong time and route.
However, these are just the perspective of manufacturers, and when we sit in the seat of consumers, we will find that the most useless "durability" may be the new selling point of smartphones.
Some people are pretending to be asleep, some people are awake
As consumers become more pragmatic in their purchasing choices, we are seeing a growing demand from the masses for a longer-lasting, more reliable mobile experience.
Liu Bo, President of OPPO China, emphasized in the promotional letter of the OPPO A3 Pro that durability is the result of user orientation, and has also become the primary consideration of many mass users when choosing a mobile phone.
When smartphone sales peaked in 2016 and replacement cycles lengthened, durability became even more important.
The first important thing is battery durability and health, and even battery health has become one of the decisive factors in the second-hand price of iPhone.
In addition, new materials and structures developed by mobile phone manufacturers have also made mobile phones more durable, such as the iPhone's ultra-magnetically crystalline glass, Corning's Victus 2 glass, Huawei's Kunlun glass and Xuanwu architecture, as well as the waterproof and dustproof features that are not the focus of every press conference.
Even if it is a niche folding screen with few existing users, the number of folds of the flexible screen, as well as the strength and durability of the hinge, will be highlighted.
Therefore, durability is the priority of mobile phone selling points, and it is starting to become higher and higher.
According to a report by market research firm TechInsights, the global smartphone replacement cycle continues to stretch to the longest in history in 2023 at 51 months, with Chinese consumers switching more frequently, but also more than 40 months.
In other words, many consumers only change their phones once in more than 4 years.
Li Nan, CEO of Numeow, once posted that this is the best proof of the excessive performance of flagship chips. In the early years, everyone's replacement cycle was generally 1~2 years, because the performance of the mobile phone at that time could not keep up with the actual needs of users, at most with a 3-year-old model will become very stuck, plus the upgrade of the system version, the mobile phone has to be replaced.
Nowadays, the comprehensive overflow of mobile phone performance has become the fundamental reason why users have gradually become "old nail households".
Therefore, it is more important to increase user stickiness and let everyone use a brand of mobile phone for a long time than the goal of "replacing the phone every year" expected by the manufacturer.
In addition to outdoor mobile phones such as AGM, mass consumer mobile phones rarely regard durability as the first selling point, and A3 Pro's choice to hit this point means that in the face of the longer and longer replacement cycle, as long as three or four years, some manufacturers have finally begun to change their thinking:
Since you can't afford to drive the replacement, especially the replacement of the entry-level mobile phone, it is better to change your thinking and give you a durable mobile phone, so that users can rest assured that they will not change the phone.
Moreover, the users of the A series are price-sensitive, which also means that users are more cautious about the cost of replacement. With the large-scale decentralization of curved screens to low-end models, the cost of replacing broken screens is also higher, so durability may really be the first demand of customers.
Now, turning the durability of the A30 Pro into a selling point, there's just one last hurdle left:
How to resolve the contradiction between durability and repurchase?
In 2002, Crocs, the originator of cave shoes, was officially unveiled at a yacht show in the United States, and 200 pairs were sold out in stock.
In 2007, Crocs made a whopping $168.2 million, and everyone from toddlers to elderly grandmothers wore Crocs' cave shoes. This wind also blew to China on the other side of the ocean, and "new sandals" of various colors entered the streets and alleys for a while.
Just a year later, Crocs was revealed to have lost $185 million for the year, and its stock price fell 76%. Since Crocs had already made $800 million in the four years before going public, and the stock price had almost tripled since the IPO, the management, who had been carried away by the current prosperity, began product line expansion and acquisition plans, and also opened the first trough since the founding of Crocs, which lasted for 10 years.
Industry insiders pointed out that the decline in sales of Crocs is indeed related to its disorderly expansion, but the selling point of the product itself is an important reason why it has fallen to the bottom:
- Cave shoes are only suitable for wearing in the summer, no one will buy them in the winter, and the sales are cyclical
- The quality of Crocs is so good that it even claims that a pair can last a lifetime, which prevents consumers from repurchasing and leads to unsalable products
For consumers, the above two may also become the appeal points of repurchase, but Crocs shoes have been a flaw since their inception, which is unbearable for many people: ugly.
- TIME named Crocs one of the 50 worst inventions, and the Los Angeles Times described it as "one of the most unsightly objects on the planet."
- Maxim listed it as one of the 10 worst things that happened to men in 2007;
- Facebook has set up a "Let's burn Crocs!" group.
Out of the circle because of its ugly special, decline because of its special ugliness.
So, Crocs realized that "how to get more people to accept this ugly shoe" was the top priority.
In '16, fashion designer Christopher Kane embellished the sneakers with gems and brought them to the runway, in '18 Balenciaga put Crocs on a 10-centimeter platform sole and wore them at Fashion Week, and in '21, Crocs teamed up with former YEEZY designer and former Versace sneaker designer Salehe Bembury to launch the Pollex Clog, which made the sneakers a hard currency in the secondary market for a while......
Although the reviews of Crocs are still mixed, even if it is still not so good-looking, the "cheapness" has gradually disappeared from the hole shoes in the collaboration over the years.
Back in the Chinese market, Crocs cooperated with popular stars, focusing on the fashion route of young people, and in Xiaohongshu's mass DIY, the "breathable and durable" slippers have been transformed into a choice for young fashion.
Cheap price and durability are not the original sin that affects repeat purchases, but the sense of cheapness is.
So, looking back at this OPPO A3 Pro, the official emphasis is that it is very durable, this is the lining, what the official does not say is its design, this is the face.
The A3 Pro is not ugly, and even has an atmosphere that surpasses the price: a curved screen, a glass back, and even plain leather on top.
While impacting the high-end 10,000 yuan machine, mobile phone manufacturers can also make products with a price of 1,000 yuan a sense of decency, and the biggest significance for consumers is: they don't worry about using it at ordinary times, and they don't drop the price when they take it out.
This may be the reason why durability can also be a selling point for mobile phones.