Why are most mobile phones now made of metal? Does it better represent style?

The progress of machine experience benefits from technological progress and continuous optimization, and this process cannot be a big leap forward. International mobile phone brands generally have a design route, and the design of subsequent products will follow this route. If you understand this "route", you can basically guess what the next generation product will look like. New phones one after another confirm this. kind of speculation. Then this "route" is very interesting.

Major domestic mobile phone manufacturers are all interested in designing metal mobile phones.

The appearance of the spy photos of Apple 7 makes people suddenly realize: Compared with the previous generation, Apple 7 has done two main things in appearance design. First, it has canceled the two penetrating white belts and increased the proportion of metal. At the same time, the metal integrated design is kept clean and elegant. This benefits from the development of antenna technology. Second, the thickness will be thinner. The design route is very scientific and clear, the goal is clear, and we do not follow any crooked ways or non-mainstream designs. This is an attitude.

The front of Apple is entirely made of glass, including the round fingerprint lock that has a better experience, which is also made of sapphire. The front material is uniform, and the fingerprint lock is not placed on the back to ensure the integrated feel of the metal shell, because drilling a hole will inevitably make it integrated. The result of modernization is the opposite. The entire iPhone is made of glass except for metal. The curvature of the combination of metal and glass is perfect, and the integrated feeling is very good.

Simple but not simple iPhone

Because of Apple’s driving role in the entire industry chain, domestic metal mobile phones continue to heat up. As the best metal integrated mobile phone, Apple's design route will inevitably become a "standard" for us to judge other metal mobile phones. This is determined by Apple's industry status.

So I use three words to summarize this "route": (for reference only)

Metal proportion, metal integration, thinning

According to With these standards, let’s take a look at domestic metal mobile phones.

Meizu mobile phone:

In fact, Meizu is the one that most adheres to Apple’s design philosophy. Meizu’s design has always followed Apple’s route, and it looks like a big touch: it keeps getting bigger. The proportion of metal reached its peak on the Pro5, and was confirmed again in the spy photos of the next generation product: an antenna band similar to the iPhone 7. Whether Meizu got it from the industry chain or guessed it on its own, these things are essentially driven by Apple.

I think Huang Zhang is a person who pursues products very much. Like the pro5, the back design is neat and symmetrical. The back is made of metal, and the fingerprint lock is placed on the front without destroying the integrated feel of the metal shell. The whole machine Can't find a big problem. Meizu listens to Apple, so the products it makes are more eye-catching. However, Meizu has a problem: real phones are never as high-end as the promotional pictures. I think this is because of cost issues such as metal craftsmanship, so Meizu has made many cheap phones. I found something was wrong, so I came back and launched a high-end pro5 to increase the brand value. It's not that I can't make good products at low cost, but I can't make outstanding products.

Oppo R9 has also been on the forefront recently. R9 is obviously a transitional work before Find9 comes out. There are many reasons why Find9 was not released as planned. Xiaomi stole the limelight of 820, and vivo took the spotlight of curved screen. , the selling point of the flagship is gradually overdrawn by its competitors... Therefore, Oppo needs to calm down and consider how to create its own differentiation to maintain its core competitiveness. So Find9 doesn't need to be launched in such a hurry. And things like the R9 that are targeted at the market completely follow the public aesthetic line. Now the public's aesthetic standards for mobile phones actually come from the iPhone, so it is absolutely correct to follow Apple's design line. If it goes too far for the market, it will be lost. . Motorola and LG have come up with a lot of differentiated designs that are different from Apple, but the facts prove that they are all wishful thinking. To put it bluntly, they want to save face and suffer. If you don’t copy them, they will not sell well. As a result, the lonely aristocratic brands will die with their heads held high. .

So you will find that the design of R9 contains many iPhone elements: metal integrated body, strip antenna belt, simple back design, front fingerprint lock, curved transition of the frame... and made Some improvements: extremely narrow borders further increase the screen-to-body ratio, and the largest possible round-rectangular fingerprint lock. These solutions have significantly improved the user experience, so there is nothing to criticize. The R9 is also very thin. Being thin is not plagiarism but a capability. Being thin is also a key part of the evolution of iPhone: iPhone 7 will become even thinner, and even the 3.5mm headphone jack will be removed for the sake of thinness. For metal-integrated mobile phones, making them thin is not an easy task. It tests the brand's overall design capabilities and requires high-cost support. Starting from Finder, Oppo has long been focusing on making thin phones. Don't underestimate this thinness, mobile phones are just like that. With a little change, the entire product will have a completely different temperament.

It can be said that in terms of metal proportion, degree of integration and thinness, R9 has delivered a good answer. R9 is currently the most Apple-like mobile phone in China, and it is beautiful and exquisite. It is a good model for reference.

In fact, there is really no need to condemn the R9 for copying Meizu. In terms of design, they are actually copying Apple. Everything is from upstream. It depends on who is good at copying. Let’s see who can make better products at high cost and whose brand can support the price of his mobile phone. His brand is low-end, so he can only make low-end products. No one buys high-end products. If a brand is high-end, it can make high-cost good products for high-end users, but the process of building a brand is obviously long and difficult.

Ideals are full, reality is skinny. In this kind of close-to-hand competition, survive first, and then do pursuits: while I am making the R series and relying on all-metal to win the market, I slowly It is polishing its flagship Find9 that can truly represent itself, and is also working on its own differentiation such as vooc flash charging. It has to be said that Oppo is a pragmatic and pursuing mobile phone brand in China. Its products are reliable, stable and exquisite. Oppo is inspired to be a century-old store. It belongs to the petty bourgeoisie who only makes a lot of money but still has a small taste.

I would like to take out a few other metal mobile phones and talk about them in particular:

When it comes to metal mobile phones other than iPhone, the first thing that comes to mind is the ham M8 and other models. The exploration on the machine started relatively early, but overall it is still unable to surpass the iPhone. Starting from the M7, and then the M8 and M9, the metal ratio is at the forefront, but the metal workmanship of the M8 is quite excellent, so the texture of the real phone is full. !

The M9’s two-color metal process maximizes this advantage. The curvature of the back brings greater design challenges, and the plastic skylight on the top destroys the feeling of metal integration, which is not as pure as the iPhone. Ham still has a certain appeal. It has to be said that many domestic metal mobile phones have the shadow of ham: the design of the NFC antenna, the curved metal back shell, the fingerprint lock on the back...

Beautiful The generous M9 mobile phone

However, with the emergence of A9, you will find that ham has begun to copy Apple.

At first glance, this phone is indistinguishable from the iPhone. It is made very similar, with a large metal ratio, a front fingerprint lock, and an Apple-like appearance and curvature. But the ham sausage still takes advantage of its craftsmanship: more and more beautiful colors, and a noble metal body.

In my opinion, the HTC 10 (not yet released) is a product that completely compromises with Apple: you will find that although this machine is not as similar as the A5, it is full of Apple elements. This also reflects Hamon's compromise with the status quo and remaining pragmatic.

HTC 10 spy photos

So, people are starting to copy ham sausages, and there is no need to pretend to be reserved...

This is more interesting from Huawei Since a product is named mate S, it means that it is a special product in the mate series. It is actually a product for Huawei to show off its "level".

This machine has the shadow of HTC metal machine. The metal ratio is very large. The top and bottom are also complete metal. There is no large area of ??plastic, no patches, and there is no plastic skylight on the top. The metal ratio is larger than that of the M8. This is due to Huawei's radio frequency antenna technology. It is the first to use a small-area antenna band in China. The metal ratio is larger than that of the iPhone 6 series. The metal integration feels slightly inferior due to the damage of the fingerprint lock on the back. The metal craftsmanship is first-class and it is made of mobile phones. The jewelry is very beautiful, and it is not easy to achieve the thickness of the small screen size, so Huawei has spent a lot of money on this mobile phone.

As the saying goes, good things are expensive! Manufacturers can make products priced at 4,000, but consumers won’t recognize it as useless. You still think that Apple mobile phone is worth 6,000, because Apple mobile phone has never been low-end, and he would like to buy it at this price. Not only can it sell well, but it can also be mass-produced on such a large scale. Huawei relies on the Ascend series to enhance its brand value to 4000, which is already an outstanding performance among domestic mobile phones. The key question is: whether the high-volume phones are high-end products with higher profits, then your competition is directly Samsung and Apple, however, most of the domestic high-end mobile phones are expressing their attitude towards making products. Many flagship manufacturers do not plan to buy many of them. The ones that really increase the volume are still those cheap products. There is no point in relying on garbage to increase your income.

Information about Huawei’s high-end mobile phone P9: The proportion of metal is not the largest. The top is still the design of the iPhone 5 series. It uses dual cameras. It may be released in advance with the iPhone 7 Plus. The fingerprint lock is placed at the back. For a dual-camera mobile phone, if the fingerprint lock is placed on the back and there are too many holes on the back, it will affect the feeling of metal integration. Therefore, placing the fingerprint lock on the front to make full use of the chin space is a good choice. If you look at the metal ratio From the perspective of metal integration, P9 obviously cannot keep up with the trend. From the perspective of thinness, it does well. Thinness has always been the selling point of the P series. I have always wondered, since we are taking the road of metal integration, why not be more paranoid and make the integration simpler and more beautiful?

It’s a simple truth: We all understand what you said, but if I design it that way, my phone will become an iPhone... In fact, manufacturers have their own attitudes. No matter how good Apple’s path is, it is still Apple. Yes, sometimes you can’t copy even if you are greedy. The bigger the brand, the more so. Sometimes it’s because of patent issues, sometimes it’s because of the target group, and most of the time it’s because of cost. The cost of buying an iPhone is not necessarily less than that of Apple. It is a high-end product.