Inventory Of 2019 Mobile Phone Technology Trends: Software And Hardware Accelerate Convergence, 5G Competition Curtain

From the perspective of technological development, 2019 is a key year in the history of China's communications.

As the first year of 5G business, mobile phone manufacturers have made remarkable moves in the aspects of internal design and power balance.

Shooting is still a sharp weapon in the mobile phone competition. The four shot began to become the standard of the flagship model. On this basis, matching the software's AI capability, anti shake technology and multiple mixing optical zoom is the main condition for the Hawking. In the future, the multi material fusion, the landing of TOF technology and even the deployment of under screen lens will become a more important direction.

Software is gradually becoming an increasingly important dimension this year. This is not only related to the exploration and landing of related applications in the early stage of 5G, but also closely related to the release of more and more functions of the lens.

It is precisely because of entering a new era of communication technology, the underlying capacity building has become a more urgent topic. This will depend on whether the mobile phone can adapt to the market or even the survival of mobile phone manufacturers.

Hardware: chip capability + camera

In mid December, the industry broke out a message from a head and company to a job at the gate of a chip design factory in Shanghai.

The news was subsequently falsified, but it opened up the next trend of competition for mobile phone manufacturers: the construction of the underlying technology capability. This is certainly not necessarily a step in place with chip design talent, but knowing how to pre define the chip capability to better design the product's ability threshold with upstream chip designers has become an essential capability.

It is no wonder that Chen Mingyong, founder and CEO of OPPO at this year's technology conference, announced that 50 billion yuan will be invested in R & D budget in the next three years. In addition to the technology focused on R & D centers, the words "building the core technology of the underlying hardware and software engineering and system capabilities" have become more eye-catching.

Besides the chip, the lens war is still in full swing, but there are also many doubts. A big factory that quickly seized many shares in the domestic market this year has been caught in the controversy of "shooting Fake Moon". It is pointed out that the moon texture obtained by zoom technology is the result of AI optimization. At the same time, the controversial topic is: what exactly should the fourth cameras do?

"The industry is now caught in a strange extreme and a little deviated from normal." An industry analyst summed up this twenty-first Century economic report.

He said that at present, the four or more plans put forward by manufacturers are mostly aimed at solving some problems such as macro distance, portrait and so on. "Maybe 90% of the scenes will not be particularly effective, so I will play 92% of the landing ability. General consumers may not feel it, but professional consumers with special needs will be concerned about this one.

Another cell phone operator told the twenty-first Century business news reporter that OPPO and HUAWEI's multiple optical hybrid zoom technology do have their patents and program thresholds, which are difficult for other manufacturers to break through in a certain period of time. This covers many aspects, from structure to hardware, software and algorithm.

"Of course, this is not a black box, probably in the same industry. It is sure that it will not be demolished, but other manufacturers will also need to go through the path of OH two manufacturers, which will take 2 years or more. The source said.

In the medium to long term, there are many optimization capabilities for cameras. In 3D space processing, TOF (flight time) technology is accelerating the search for landing scenes, and more is the view that TOF will replace structural light in front of the front camera in the future.

To put it simply, TOF can bring 3D information to mobile phones. In addition to completing the application of traditional structural light, such as face recognition, unlocking and payment, AR capability is also expected to achieve landing on mobile phones based on this technology.

The search for cameras also includes materials. At present, the mainstream camera program will carry 5-7 lenses to achieve superposition effect. The superposition of lenses can theoretically achieve more realistic results through mutual correction of imaging effects. At present, most of the shots are made of plastic.

A mobile phone factory researcher told reporters that as a more transparent glass material, mixing with plastics is the direction for the industry to explore together. However, the difficulty lies in the fact that the glass thickness is higher, the processing cost is higher, and the yield is also somewhat difficult. In the future, glass and plastic lenses will be mixed.

Software: matching hardware landing to deepen

Software and hardware have never been cut apart, but hardware manufacturers have rarely mentioned the matching of software capabilities in the past few years, and this year has become an exception.

Prior to OPPO's future technology conference, Liu Chang, vice president of OPPO, said that the company has improved this year in terms of software engineering and system architecture capabilities.

At a recent OPPO developer conference, a research and development staff explained to the twenty-first Century economic news reporter that the hardware vendors are indeed promoting the ability to open up these two years. "The third party application can do little in Android platform. In the past two years, the application of hybrid optical zoom, ultra wide-angle and anti shake based on camera technology is actually related to the software platform, but the degree of openness is not enough. In fact, the momentum of the industry has not yet risen. "

He further said that if the mobile phone hardware did not cooperate with the three party software vendors such as WeChat and jockey, then a single lens could be called when shooting the software, even though the powerful imaging capability was not fully played out.

"It was a point to point cooperation with the third party. For example, video anti shake function and jitter sound access cooperation, but this cooperation is more based on a certain type of machine, similar to the bottom hole to open a hole for you. This is a selling point idea, which is open for short term. But the result is how many types of aircraft access to the third party software, which requires several holes at the bottom, and the amount of access to different software is doubled. The developer said the bigger problem is that the system has opened too many holes at the bottom of the system and the security problem has come out naturally.

This is why hardware manufacturers urgently need to better open up. "So what we are pushing forward is to decouple the underlying technology and peel off the capacity of open access, so that software can be opened to all models without touching safety." He continued.

The implementation of the new popular mobile phone function "super anti shake" also needs software capabilities to make up. OPPO a R & D staff analyzed the anti shake function of the video to the twenty-first Century economic report reporter. On the one hand, it needs hardware equipped with a similar anti shake function motor, which can be imagined as the function of the cloud platform or the automobile shock absorber; the software level is similar to cutting, after identifying the main body, the shear frame is used to ensure the relatively stable effect.

The bigger software empowerment is on the AI level, which has landed in many different scenarios. At the filming level, video optimization and super night vision require AI capability optimization, which is complementary to hardware.

The need to attract a large number of developers is more intelligent voice assistant, which will face more large and complex landing scenes and different functions of interaction, and open ecology is particularly important. At present, the voice assistant of mobile phone manufacturers has been able to achieve multiple rounds of dialogue functions, combined with a series of scenes such as driving, daily life and business life.

At the developer conference, OPPO vice president and CEO of the Internet division proposed that in 2020, the company will invest 1 billion yuan in the previous year, and invest 1 billion resources to support the world's best developers. The company has also launched a series of planning for content ecology, mining content derived value.

Facing the accelerated 5G era, the construction and opening of software ecology is the key arm to open up the imagination of hardware vendors. Whether it is the 3D scene brought by TOF or the real killer application of 5G, it may all be born on the hands of these software developers. In fact, there are already more and more young people with internet backgrounds joining the Hard Suits Inc to promote their imagination.