Five major trends in smartphones in the second half of the year Lingdong Island has been targeted by these manufacturers

Manufacturers target Lingdong Island for five major smartphone trends in the second half of the year

【phoneauto】The latest data shows that despite the continued popularity of the 618 shopping festival this year, there is no clear sign of recovery in the smartphone market. With a large number of new phones coming in the second half of the year, will this trend change? In the first half of the year, the mid-to-low-end smartphone market started a crazy internal competition, with abundant configurations and low prices, while high-end smartphones focused on improving camera systems, aiming to differentiate themselves through hardware, algorithms, and chips. In terms of segmentation, as the mid-range market continues to heat up, especially with intensified competition among phones priced around 3000 yuan, special configurations that were previously only available in high-end flagship phones will be “downgraded” in the second half of the year. For example, the Huawei nova 11 series will continue the Kunlun glass and Beidou satellite features found in the Huawei Mate and P series. Another example is the Redmi K series, which inherits Xiaomi’s imaging technology.

In addition, the high-end market represented by foldable phones cannot be ignored. With models like the Huawei Mate X3 and the Honor Magic V2 serving as examples, the foldable screen market will inevitably move towards “thin and powerful” in the second half of the year.

At the same time, driven by brands such as Huawei and Meizu, the integration of “car” and “phone” has become a new choice for major manufacturers to expand their system boundaries. The experience of smart connected cars will undoubtedly undergo a new transformation under the influence of smartphone manufacturers. All signs indicate that smartphone manufacturers in the second half of the year will continue to follow the path of “internal competition”. In response to the development trends of smartphone manufacturers in the second half of the year, phoneauto has launched a series of special topics called “Five Major Trends in Smartphones in the Second Half of the Year”. This article focuses on “Android Manufacturers Eyeing on the Smart Mobility Island”.

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The appearance of Lingdong Island is actually a mockery of the development of full-screen technology. Apple wants to integrate the ancestral Face ID module on the iPhone, but this cannot be achieved for the time being. Even the next generation of iPhone is likely to inherit this module. However, Apple is very clever and directly designed it as a flashy Lingdong Island, which “moves” to hide the flaws.

Speaking of this, I don’t know how many times those manufacturers dedicated to making true full-screen phones have poked Apple’s backbone. At this stage, the ideas of both sides are completely different. Some Android manufacturers want to solve the problem of phone form, and create the purest true full-screen phone; while manufacturers like Apple and Huawei want to explore new directions in phone interaction.

Some time ago, a digital blogger confirmed that the Mate60 series has Lingdong Island, and released the bright screen animation of HarmonyOS 4.0, showing the smooth sliding effect of the Mate60 series’ Lingdong Island. When people saw this news, their first reaction was that Huawei copied Apple. This is completely a low EQ statement. As we all know, good designs in the smartphone industry are often borrowed.

If you insist on saying that Huawei copied, then let’s talk about the “bathroom heater” camera incident back then. After the release of the Huawei Mate20 series, the design of the bathroom heater triple camera attracted criticism. As a result, other competitors couldn’t resist and released similar designs one after another. Apple, in particular, is a loyal fan of the bathroom heater triple camera, with its Pro models featuring it generation after generation.

Moreover, Lingdong Island is not Apple’s original creation. Honor had already used the design of the “Lingdong Capsule” on the Honor V20 phone in 2018 and applied for related patents. However, at that time, the functions of the Honor Lingdong Capsule were relatively simple, limited to simple scenes such as calls and selfies, with limited application compatibility.

Unlike other manufacturers who are eager to try, realme directly gave up. In March and April of this year, they successively launched the realme C55 and realme Narzo N55 smartphones overseas. Both of them support the Mini Capsule feature, which can display battery status, data usage, steps, and other information.

It is said that Xiaomi also plans to follow the trend of the “Dynamic Island”. Shortly after the release of the iPhone 14 series, Xiaomi deliberately “accidentally” launched the Civi 2 smartphone with a curved center pill-shaped screen. It looks similar to the Dynamic Island in appearance, but it hasn’t been adapted. This is completely a coincidence, but Xiaomi is indeed eyeing the UI design of the Dynamic Island because developers have long been requested to submit themes adapted to the Dynamic Island to Xiaomi. Even if Xiaomi does not follow the Dynamic Island, it will still align with Apple in terms of UI design.

There are leaks that several smartphone manufacturers will follow similar designs to the Dynamic Island in the second half of the year, but it doesn’t specify which ones. Currently, apart from the above-mentioned three, manufacturers like Vivo and OPPO, who pay special attention to system development, could also be potential players.

In the small area of the smartphone notch, domestic smartphone manufacturers actually explore more vigorously than Apple. Whether it’s the rotating camera and pop-up camera from previous years, the now more reliable hole-punch front camera, or the under-display front camera technology that still needs breakthroughs, domestic manufacturers have many optional solutions and don’t need to follow Apple’s path.

However, in the smartphone industry, there is almost nothing that cannot be learned from each other. Since you can call it the “Dynamic Island,” then I can come up with something like the “Dynamic Capsule” that can be compared to it. There is no way. In the development of the smartphone industry to this point, there are very few places for innovation. The rest is for manufacturers to learn from each other’s strengths and make themselves look good.

Simply put, this is the homogenization of the entire industry. So, homogenization is not a big deal. For some manufacturers, survival is the top priority. They must have what their competitors have and must fight for market share. Otherwise, how can they compete with others? You can say that there is a lot of gimmicks in this, but ultimately it is the manufacturers’ own choice.

However, for consumers, it is a completely different story. Since manufacturers have made up their minds to go to the “island”, they cannot engage in actions like burning bridges after crossing the river, because user experience always comes first. If they cannot adapt the applications well on the “island”, the consequence may be losing users. The trend in recent years has been that Android users are turning to Apple. Therefore, the focus for Android manufacturers going to the “island” is not on the “island” itself, but on system interaction and application adaptation.

Whether it is Apple’s iOS system, Android system, or the newer HarmonyOS system, they are all brainstorming for user interaction. The “island” was an idea from Honor’s earlier years (when Honor was still under Huawei), but Honor did not explore this concept.

The “island” may seem not very useful, but it has expanded the interaction of the Apple iOS system and brought users a more novel experience. Although there is no lack of similar creativity in the industry, there are not many like Apple that are willing to put in a lot of effort for extensive adaptation.

In terms of usage, the “island” is more like a more convenient pull-down window or notification. The most important aspect of the “island” is not “innovation”, but convenience. It is easy to operate and view information. It can be said to be a combination of running applications and sliding down the notification bar on a smartphone, simplifying the interaction on the phone. Apple and Android have also developed a lot of functional components, but obviously, they are not as flexible as the “island”.

And, it doesn’t require users to spend much learning costs, it’s entirely based on users’ personal habits.

Speaking of habits, many Apple users still aren’t used to using Lingdong Island today, and some have even forgotten about its existence. But the usage habits of smartphone users are constantly changing, to be precise, they change with the continuous innovation of products.

Take a very simple example, side swipe to go back is one of the simplest and most practical functions of smartphones. Initially, Google added this feature in Android Q, where users can swipe inward from both sides of the screen to go back, but this conflicts with many applications. In the later Android Q beta 5 navigation gesture scheme, Google changed it from direct swiping to lightly touching the edge of the screen and hovering for a while to swipe inward, thus solving this conflict problem.

Nowadays, Android’s side swipe back has become a high-priority system-level command, which means it can be used normally in any software. Before the advent of full-screen smartphones, no one would have thought of this kind of operation logic because many people were used to using keyboard phones.

After saying so much, do you really think Lingdong Island is useful? Or should I pour cold water on Apple, in fact, many iPhone users are not clear about the meaning of Lingdong Island’s existence, at least until the application adaptation of Lingdong Island is complete, it really hasn’t found a very strong use case.

In fact, the author believes that most users don’t have a strong demand for mobile interaction at all, and designs like Lingdong Island are easily marginalized by users, and the reality is indeed so. Therefore, phoneauto believes that for Android manufacturers to follow Lingdong Island, it is an unnecessary but useful step for them to take.

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