These "invisible castrations" on cost-effective phones, manufacturers will not tell you

Bad reviews

2024-06-19 11:54Posted in Zhejiang Digital Creators

Before the article begins, allow me to make a violent statement -

There may not be a cost-effective mobile phone on the market at all, the so-called cost-effective, to a certain extent, is a precise knife technique, it abandons some things that we don't often use, and in places we can't see or pay little attention to, there is also a certain degree of trade-off.

Therefore, to buy this kind of mobile phone, we not only have to see what it promotes, but also to see what it does not promote, sometimes the invisible place, than the visible cost is higher, there is a price behind the cheap, those places that are not advertised, often the easiest to be used by mobile phone manufacturers.

Na, the reason why I say this is because the mobile phone market is really volatile now, compared to the calm of the foreign mobile phone market, Apple and Samsung's "mutual humility", the domestic mobile phone market is really rolled.

Mid-range machines of two or three thousand yuan have flagship-level performance, and they have made great progress in all aspects such as screen, image, appearance and texture, including manufacturers when promoting their own mobile phones, they are also promoting in the direction of "popularizing the flagship experience".

This is easy to give people an illusion: the gap between the mid-range machine and the flagship machine is very small, and this kind of mid-range machine is really cost-effective.

It is undeniable that the mid-range machine has improved greatly in the past two years, but we can't fully believe the manufacturer's words, although the gap between them and the flagship machine is indeed narrowing, but if it is really broken down, there are quite a lot of things that can be popularized, and some functions are completed, it can really help a lot!

Let's start with a few features that I think are just needed.

Now almost all Android has NFC and infrared, but dual-band GPS and tri-band Beidou are still relatively rare in mid-range machines.

Not to mention anything else, in the recently launched batch of mid-range machines, there are mobile phones that do not support these two functions, resulting in their positioning and navigation accuracy is almost meaningless.

I deliberately found two mobile phones to compare.

Found that the mobile phone that supports the tri-band Beidou, it usually searches for more satellites than those that only support the dual-band Beidou, and the dual-band GPS can basically accurately distinguish two similar routes every time when navigating, but the single-band GPS sometimes does not.

Left: Three-frequency Beidou, right: Dual-frequency Beidou▼

I encountered such an incident yesterday, when I was taking a taxi, there was an overpass overhead, we were on the road next to the bridge, the master was on the ground road directly below the bridge, according to the navigation, he needed to turn to our road at the traffic light intersection.

But he can't see this information on his mobile phone navigation, and the blue is the route that the online car-hailing master should pick me up, but he didn't turn the corner, took the red route, and finally he could only turn right again at the intersection in front, and we walked forward a little before we got into the car.

I believe that basically everyone will encounter a time when they need to use their mobile phones to locate or navigate, and for online car-hailing masters, castration of dual-band GPS and tri-band Beidou will even affect their money.

Speaking of which, a while ago, I also asked people in the industry how much is the difference between the cost of single-frequency GPS and dual-frequency GPS, and the answer given there was that it was less than 2 yuan.

Although the net profit of the mobile phone industry is generally not very high, and the cost impact of this 2 yuan is really not small, it is often particularly useful for many people who buy mid-range phones, especially online car-hailing drivers and food delivery riders.

Costs like this are spread out to users, and those who just need them should also buy it.

Including 4G and 5G network bands as well.

We talked about it before, mobile phones need frequency band support, in order to search for the corresponding 4G and 5G signals, the more frequency bands can be used, the more networks can be used, mobile phones want to get network access licenses, must support the specified frequency bands, as for the frequency bands other than the requirements, it is up to the manufacturer to decide whether to support it.

Because the design of the antenna in the frequency band also needs to be changed, which involves the cost of both filters and patents.

For cost considerations, many manufacturers generally pay attention to the frequency band support of their low-end mobile phones, and only the flagships of each company will consider supporting more frequency bands, but the frequency band must be more for us.

I found a random brand and looked at the frequency bands supported by the mid-range and flagship phones, and the results were not surprising, the mid-range phones did have several frequency bands missing:

A certain brand "performance flagship"▼

A certain brand "true flagship"▼

In my opinion, the band thing, like IP68 and USB 3.X ports, is definitely a "I can do without, but you'd better give both" thing.

It may not make a difference in normal times, but once you come to the interest one day and go, or go to a place where there are many people exploding, it may be the difference between having an Internet and not having a network.

Also, don't look at the mid-range machines now1.5K screens, some are even equipped with 2K screens, and their performance in color depth, color gamut, color accuracy and eye protection has also begun to be on par with the flagship, but these indicators are the same, which does not mean that the display effect is the same.

Because of the most basic light-emitting materials and screen technology, there is still a big gap between the mid-range machine and the flagship machine.

Those flagship phones are basically equipped with the latest screens, such as CSOT C8, BOE X1 and Samsung E7, which can significantly increase the screen brightness while achieving lower power consumption, and they support 8T LTPO technology, which can make the screen refresh rate switch between multiple gears silky and power-saving, but many mid-range machines do not have this treatment.

Let's just say that in the batch of mid-range phones that have been released so far, I can count the phones that use the latest light-emitting materials and support 8T LTPO.

Let's not talk about whether the screen saves power or not,Their brightness advantage is really obvious,The screen of the flagship machine is basically rushing up4000nit up,However, when it comes to the mid-range machine, it is directly cut in half,Many mid-range machines,The peak brightness of their screen generally does not exceed 2000nit。

The difference in brightness between the two may not make a difference, but when watching a movie or outdoors, the flagship screen looks transparent.

Well, that's not too much to force.

According to the industry brother, the cost of an 8T LTPO screen at this stage is almost 1.5 times that of an ordinary LTPO screen, and this cost will indeed increase a lot.

If you think that the screen display effect of the mid-range machine is good enough, and there is no need to be as extreme as the flagship machine, then there is another parameter here that you will definitely care about, and that is the touch sampling rate of the screen.

It directly determines whether the screen follows the hand when the finger is operating the screen.

When I switched from the flagship to the mid-range machine before, I found that some mobile phones were particularly uneasy, especially when I was brushing Weibo, the screen couldn't point where to play, and then I learned that it was because of the touch sampling rate, 240Hz, 360Hz, 480Hz The touch sampling rate experience is completely different.

And some phones even do rain touch to the screen, at first I didn't think this function was anything, but it wasn't until I actually used it that I realized that this thing was really useful.

There is often a very light drizzle here in Hangzhou, and I feel that I don't need to use an umbrella at all, but the OnePlus 11 I originally used, there was a little water on the screen, and I couldn't light it at all, and the touch failed, which was particularly maddening.

Later, I changed to the OnePlus 12 that supports rain touch, and I didn't have this problem at all.

What I said above,Basically, it can be regarded as a rigid need,As for things like wireless charging、Symmetrical dual speakers、Large-area linear motor、Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos certification,It's the kind of thing that I can accept no or a little less,But I still hope to be able to add。

It should not be difficult for you to realize that all these things actually cost money.

For example, the cost of a wireless charging module is now 5 yuan, which is the result of reducing costs and increasing efficiency after the industrial chain matures, otherwise it will be more expensive.

The strategy of mobile phone manufacturers to do mid-range machines has always been - I first pile up materials where you care, such as processors, memory and storage specifications, as for the places that you don't pay attention to or can't see, it is selective stacking, and I will vigorously promote the materials when I pile them, and I will not publicize them if I don't pile up materials.

If I want to say that there is nothing wrong with mobile phone manufacturers doing this, after all, they also spend their money on the blade, and many people buy the mid-range center is performance.

Even so far, there are still many performance-only users on the Internet, and after the performance of mobile phones goes up, at least their reviews will not be too bad.

As the saying goes, you get what you pay for, and we don't expect to have a mid-range machine, which can really benchmark the flagship in all aspects, but it can only be said that the focus of each mobile phone is different.

When we usually choose a mobile phone and make a decision, in addition to focusing on key parameters, we can also pay attention to these places.

Of course, we can't get used to manufacturers.

Some functions, such as image algorithms, system animations, and special functions or something, the mid-range machine obviously has that condition, and even if it is added, it will not bring additional costs, but the manufacturer still deliberately castrates these on the mid-range machine, artificially creating differentiation, which is a bit disgusting.

There are so many mobile phone manufacturers on the market, which ones are really thinking about users, or just coping with shouting a few slogans, which can be reflected in these details, the popularization of flagship experience in mid-range machines, at this stage is just the beginning, and there is still a long way to go.

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