THE word “revolutionary” is probably one of the most used (and often abused) by gadget companies who love to crow about how “game changing” their new device is and how their slab of glass and metal is better than that slab of glass and metal currently residing in your pocket.
While some do live up to the hype, history shows that for every Samsung, Huawei and Apple phone, there are dozens of other products with features that look unbelievably amazing on paper but ended up as major flops (and even led to their brand’s downfall).
Remember the Nokia N-Gage banana phone, those Windows phones, that bent HTC phone, or the Motorola Rokr which was the first phone to have iTunes? (Google the YouTube video which had Steve Jobs fuming mad during the demo.)
If last year was all about having dual cameras, 2018 would probably be remembered as the year when phone manufacturers tried their best to get rid of the bezels and get the highest screen-to-body ratio.
Many took the easy way by adopting the polarizing notch, and surprisingly it was Oppo and Vivo who are leading the notchless movement with their latest phones—the Vivo NEX and the Oppo Find X.
I still have no idea if we’ll ever see the Vivo NEX, but Oppo officially launched the Find X last week and have already been accepting preorders.
REFIND HISTORY
THE Find series of smartphones have always represented Oppo’s continuous exploration of technology and artistry with profound ideas on the future development of mobile phone.
Launched in 2011, the Oppo X903 was the forefather of the series. It had a 4-inch screen, a side-sliding QWERTY keyboard, 1GHz processor, and 512MB of RAM. Not too impressive by today’s standards but seven years ago, it was already high-end. Next came the Oppo Finder, which was known for being the world’s thinnest smartphone measuring only 6.65mm at its thickest point. It had a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display, 1GB of RAM, and 1.5GHz dual-core processor.
While other brands were still bragging about their 720p display, Oppo jumped the gun to put out the first smartphone from China to have a 1080p screen. This was the Oppo Find 5, which had a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor and 2GB of RAM.
The company also became the first smartphone to have 2K resolution on the 5.5-inch screen of the Find 7. The Find 7 was also the first to use their fast charging technology, called VOOC, that gives two hours of talk time with just a five-minute charge. It was 2014, the same year Oppo first opened their Philippine office.
Each generation of Find products is a step closer to the perfect fusion of technology and art; and the Find X continues that legacy as it stakes its claim as the Future Flagship.
FINDING BEAUTY
FIND X introduces the unique and beautiful Panoramic Arc Screen, an all-screen display with no compromises. The OPPO Find X adopts 6.42-inch, dual-arc OLED screen, supporting a display for rich color and vivid pictures. Benefiting from the unique COP packaging technology of a flexible screen, the Find X has an ultra-thin border, 1.65mm on the left and right border, 1.91mm on the top border, and 3.4mm on the bottom border, which increases screen-to-body ratio to 93.8 percent—the largest screen-to-body ratio in the mobile phone market today.
The Find X comes in two gradient color combinations—Bordeaux Red and Glacier Blue. The Multifaceted Color Process used by Oppo creates a perfect blend of gradient design with a 3D arc on the rear. In the light, Find X shines like crystal and flowing water, presenting a colorful effect that changes with your surroundings.
STEALTH 3D CAMERAS
TO get rid of the notch, the Find X uses an innovative sliding structure that completely disguises the cameras within the body of the phone. To activate the phone, all you have to do is make eye contact and the cameras will slide up for just a fraction of a second to verify your face via facial recognition and slide back down until you access the camera app again.
The stealth 3D cameras not only include the 25-megapixel front camera and 16MP+20MP dual rear cameras, but also a 3D structured light module with many high-tech components. Flood illuminator, infrared camera, proximity sensor, dot projector, receiver and RGB camera are integrated into this unit. The 3D structured light module in Find X can project 15,000 dots, building a precise and complete 3D module of a user’s face, and then compares with the registered face of the owner to unlock.
The 3D face recognition of O-Face has a higher level of security than fingerprint identification. The false acceptance rate of fingerprint recognition is 1/50,000, while the false acceptance rate of 3D face recognition is 1/1,000,000. O-Face Recognition, developed by Oppo, not only makes unlocking safer but also more convenient while offering support for mobile payment. Oppo has already made it possible to pay with O-Face Recognition by integrating Alibaba’s Alipay, making Find X the first Android phone to support payment through face recognition.
Powered by 3D structured light, the Find X introduces 3D Smart Selfie Capture. Find X creates a 3D model of the user’s face using O-Face Recognition with millimeter-level accuracy. Based on the resulting 3D model, AI technology intelligently analyzes facial characteristics such as face shapes and features, providing suggestions to make faces look more natural and realistic.
In addition, precise face recognition enables the Find X to simulate various lighting effects on a human face, so portraiture lighting is enabled even for a selfie. Various lighting effects are supported including: feature light highlighting the contour of human face, bi-color light that simulates the classic red-blue color of neon, and rim light that brightens the skin color and makes the contour more vivid.
Aside from 3D Smart Selfie Capture, O-Face also has another interesting function—3D Omoji. You can choose any interesting images to make Omojis or generate your cartoon avatar, and then create video or GIF emojis. Now, you can use them in any chat app and chat with friends using your own Omojis.
POWERFUL PERFORMANCE
THE Find X isn’t just about beauty as it’s also equipped with the latest Snapdragon 845, Qualcomm’s most powerful CPU, to give it that premium, high performance experience. The CPU is built on a 10nm LPP process and an Adreno 630 graphic processor, improving graphic performance by 30 percent, while reducing power consumption by 30 percent. It also has an Adreno 630 GPU, with 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and a huge 256GB of storage.
The Find X has a 3730mAh battery that is supported by an upgraded version of its VOOC flash charging system. I’m not sure how long the ordinary VOOC system could fully charge the Find X, but for its more premium brother, the Find X Lamborghini Edition, the Super VOOC fully charges the phone in just 35 minutes.
So are we really looking at the Future Flagship in the Find X, or will those motorized sliding cameras end up as a novelty? Based on our initial hands-on with the phone, I’d say holding the Find X is a truly different experience. Unlike most smartphones today which look almost the same, the Find X stands out both in color and design. It’s one of those very rare phones which won’t make you ask about specs because you know just by looking at it that it’s an ultra-premium flagship.
But is it worth the P49,990 price tag? I’ll have the answer to that in our full review coming in the next few weeks.
20,000 NEW NOVASTARS
LAST week I detailed eight reasons I think the Nova 3i would be another big hit for Huawei. What I didn’t expect was that it was going to sell 20,000 units on launch day.
On July 28 I think Huawei was also able to set a couple of records for the brand. First is that they occupied both activity centers of Glorietta, with two setups, one for the launch and James Reid and the other side as an experience zone for those who want to try the different features of the Nova 3i. The other is for the sales of their shiny new midrange phone—again more than 20,000 units, which adds up to a combined value of P320 million.
The Nova 3i is a solid followup to the Nova series and comes with a quad-camera setup, a HiSilicon Kirin 710 octa-core processor, 6.3-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD panel, dual front and rear cameras, as well as a glass back.
HUAWEI OVERTAKES APPLE
EVEN more good news for the brand is that it now ranks second in the number of smartphone units shipped in the second quarter of 2018.
According to a recent global quarterly market monitoring report from IDC, Huawei is now ranked at the second place with a market share of 15.8 percent, which surpasses Apple by 3.7 percent in a whole quarter for the very first time.
Huawei continues to lead the China smartphone market with a record-high market share of 27.0 percent in 2018. In the first half of this quarter, Huawei’s P20/P20 Pro series found strong demand in the $600 to $800 price segment, helping Huawei build a high profile in the market
Strategy Analytics also reported that Huawei soared 41 percent annually, from 38.4 million smartphones shipped worldwide during Q2 2017, to a record of 54.2 million units in Q2 2018.
Huawei overtook Apple for the first time ever to become the world’s second-largest smartphone vendor. Huawei’s midrange Android models, such as Nova 2S and Nova 3e, are proving wildly popular across Asia and Europe.
Research firm Canalys also reported a massive 41-percent year-on-year growth and a 54 million units sold by Huawei at the end of Q2 2018. Canalys acknowledged the strong sell-in of its latest flagship, the P20, which exceeded launch quarter sell-in for both the P10 and P9.
The secret of Huawei’s success is borne out of its consistent and massive investments into research and development. At Huawei, over 10 percent of revenue is invested in R&D every year. According to its 2017 annual report, there are about 80,000 staff members working for R&D, taking 45 percent of the total number of employees. According to the 2017 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard report from the European Commission, Huawei ranked No. 6 among all the tech giants in the year of 2017 in terms of the R&D investment.