The fake concepts of mobile phones that we followed in those years, revealing the truth one by one

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What? A phone that doesn't support SA is not a true 5G phone? The speed of Wi-Fi 6 is not as good as that of Wi-Fi 5. Is Wi-Fi 6 a pseudo-concept? 50 million pixels are enough for flagship phones. Mobile phone photography should not simply pursue high pixels. Is 100 million pixels the wrong direction?

Nowadays, a new mobile phone product launch conference is a remote battle full of gunpowder, and the competitors are always the ones who get hurt.

However, the worst sufferers are the consumers. With so many gimmicks and so many hammers, they still have to face the soul-searching question: "Who is right? Who should I listen to?"

Come on, this year's "3.15" "IT Times" will expose these pseudo-concepts, help you distinguish between showmanship and marketing, and let you buy without hesitation.

Pseudo concept 01

Is it true that only SA-supported 5G phones are real?

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2019 is the first year of 5G mobile phones, and also the year with the most debate. The saying of "real or fake 5G mobile phones" originated from a WeChat Moments post by Richard Yu, Chairman of Huawei Consumer BG: "Come on, domestic peers, I hope everyone can provide real 5G mobile phones. NSA (non-standalone networking) will soon be eliminated, and SA (standalone networking) is the real 5G."

Yu Chengdong's words were quickly spread online and interpreted by the public as "NSA standard is a fake 5G phone." At that time, several 5G phones that only support the NSA standard had been released on the market. Are they all "fake 5G"?

the truth

Whether 5G is real or fake is not decided by one person. The 5G technical standards are formulated by the international organization 3GPP. 3GPP stipulates that both NSA and SA are 5G networking methods.

The so-called NSA, or "non-independent networking", is a mode of achieving 5G network access by adopting a converged deployment method based on existing 4G base stations.

In short, it is to make full use of the existing 4G base station network to complete 5G signal coverage at the fastest speed;

SA is an "independent networking mode". This mode does not rely on the existing 4G base station network at all, but instead builds a new set of 5G base stations and a back-end core network.

According to the 3GPP agreement, the 5G frequency band is divided into two ranges, FR1 and FR2. The FR1 frequency band is below 6GHz, which is also called the Sub-6 frequency band, while the FR2 frequency band above 6GHz is called millimeter wave.

At this point, the industry has extended the debate to "only chips that support Sub-6+ millimeter waves are true 5G, and those that do not support millimeter waves are fake 5G."

Whether it is SA, NSA, Sub-6, or millimeter wave, they are all true 5G. As long as they meet these standards, they are all 5G mobile phones.

Nowadays, there are more and more battles among major manufacturers about real and fake 5G mobile phones. As netizens summarized:

"When you use a 5G phone, he says that only SA-supported phones are real 5G phones; when you use a dual-mode 5G phone, he says that integrated phones are real 5G phones; and when you use an integrated dual-mode 5G phone, he says that n79 (frequency band) is a real 5G phone."

Since 2020, 5G mobile phones sold on the market basically fully support NSA and SA standards, and more frequency bands such as n79 mean that the phone supports one more 5G frequency band, but this has almost no impact on consumer use.

Therefore, one thing to remember is that when a new term occupies the marketing commanding heights, search for more information online and pay less IQ tax.

Pseudo concept 02

100 million pixels is the wrong direction?

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At the Honor V30 launch conference at the end of last year, Honor President Zhao Ming, when talking about the 100-megapixel camera, said that 100-megapixel photo taking would be delayed by 4 to 6 seconds, which is an unacceptable experience. Moreover, a 100-megapixel photo is at least 20M in size, and 100G of storage would be gone if 5,000 photos were taken.

This statement can be said to be very targeted and a precise attack. After all, at that time, there was only one company in the world using 100-megapixel mobile phones - Xiaomi.

Subsequently, Honor Business Department Vice President (Product) Honor Lao Xiong started the topic "100 million pixels is the wrong direction" on Weibo, and Lu Weibing, general manager of Xiaomi's Redmi brand, fought back.

Supporters of Honor and Redmi frequently quarreled with each other online. Honor's Lao Xiong kept explaining that "100 million pixels is the wrong direction", while Lu Weibing said that the other party "found out that they were lagging behind, so they attacked 100 million pixels like this."

the truth

In the process of digital photo imaging, pixels have always played a vital role. The number of pixels determines the accuracy of the photo file. Higher pixels can record more information, which provides more space for post-editing, whether it is for mobile phones or cameras.

Xiaomi's 100-megapixel series of mobile phones use the Quad Bayer structure, which simulates the effect of "large pixel sensitivity" based on "small pixel sensitivity" by merging four adjacent pixels into one large pixel.

Since digital photos will form some unavoidable erroneous color signals (called noise) when forming images, if multiple pixels are synthesized, the impact of single-pixel noise will be weakened after synthesis, and the overall picture details will be improved.

Therefore, no matter whether it is the 48 million, 64 million or the current 108 million, when the Quad Bayer structure with four-in-one pixels is adopted, the photos presented do not have such high pixels, but 12 million, 16 million and 27 million pixel photos with better details.

Without turning on the "full pixel" mode, the photos taken by Xiaomi's 100-megapixel lens have only 27 million effective pixels, which is higher than the mainstream 12 million pixels and 16 million pixels, but it cannot be simply understood as doubling the pixels.

Pseudo concept 03

100%, is it considered a full screen?

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Full screen was a very popular concept in the mobile phone circle in the past few years. Major manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc. have released their own full-screen mobile phone products, but there has been no standard for a true full-screen.

What is a full-screen mobile phone? If we understand it literally, a full-screen phone means there is no border, the front of the phone is completely covered by the screen, and the screen-to-body ratio reaches 100%.

In order to achieve full screen, various mobile phone manufacturers have successively launched designs such as notch screen, water drop screen, curved screen and hole screen, but strictly speaking, these can only be regarded as close to full screen.

It is worth mentioning that vivo was the first to launch the under-screen fingerprint recognition technology. By setting the fingerprint sensor under the screen, it avoids drilling holes on the front screen panel of the fuselage, and can use fingerprints to unlock the phone while ensuring the integrity of the screen. The subsequent popularization of facial recognition technology has further accelerated the progress of full-screen phones.

Nowadays, in addition to the hole-punch front camera, the front of the mobile phone screen can be a truly full screen.

the truth

Full screen is a relatively broad definition of ultra-high screen-to-body ratio in the industry. Mainly limited by the current technological level, the full-screen mobile phones claimed by the industry are usually just designs with ultra-high screen-to-body ratios, which are still far from 100% front screen-to-body ratio.

The change of the screen ratio of a mobile phone requires the joint follow-up of many supporting technologies. Full-screen mobile phones need to solve many difficulties in manufacturing technology, such as the location of the earpiece and front camera and how to solve the problem of front fingerprint recognition. Solving these problems will undoubtedly increase the cost of research and development and manufacturing, resulting in the final selling price being much higher than that of ordinary mobile phones.

At present, most of the full-screen mobile phones on the market have a screen-to-body ratio of more than 90%, with ultra-narrow bezels and "chins" and "foreheads". With the development of technologies such as folding screens, wrap-around screens, and under-screen fingerprint recognition, the screen-to-body ratio of more and more mobile phones has increased again, reaching or even exceeding 100%.

Pseudo concept 04

Is Wi-Fi 6 not as fast as Wi-Fi 5?

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On February 13, Xiaomi livestreamed the release of its annual flagship Xiaomi Mi 10 series. One of the selling points of the new phone is that it supports Wi-Fi 6, the latest Wi-Fi standard in the 5G era, with a maximum throughput of 9.6Gbps, which is 2.7 times that of Wi-Fi 5, and has attracted widespread attention from users.

Unexpectedly, the Wi-Fi 6 function has been criticized by peers. Li Xiaolong, vice president of Huawei's mobile phone product line, said on Weibo: "The theoretical bandwidth of Wi-Fi 6 mobile phones currently on the market is only 1200Mbps, and the actual measured bandwidth is just over 900Mbps, not even 150MB/s. It is not as good as the Mate20 launched in 2018."

In response to netizens' questions, Li Xiaolong explained in the comments: "I didn't say Wi-Fi 6 is weak. Wi-Fi 6 is a good technology and we will definitely use it in the future. I said that the Wi-Fi 6 solution currently used in mobile phones on the market is too weak."

As soon as the Weibo post came out, netizens couldn't sit still. Is Xiaomi Wi-Fi 6 not as good as Huawei Wi-Fi 5? Is Wi-Fi 6 a pseudo-concept?

the truth

In fact, whether it is Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6, they have a common name, called 802.11X.

As early as 1997, IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) launched the first wireless LAN standard 802.11, and each generation of Wi-Fi standards has been named after it since then.

To make it easier to distinguish, each generation of standards will add letters after 802.11, such as 802.11ac and 802.11ax. The wireless network standards organization Wi-Fi Alliance gave them new names, Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6, to make them easier for users to understand.

Wi-Fi 6 introduces multiple new technologies to improve the communication quality, transmission efficiency, energy consumption performance and IoT optimization of wireless networks.

The reason for the controversy is bandwidth. As we all know, bandwidth is used to describe the theoretical maximum rate at which a network or line can transmit data. Common bandwidths include 20MHz, 40MHz, 80Mhz and 160Mhz.

The key to the problem is that the Wi-Fi 6 mobile phones currently on the market only support 80Mhz bandwidth, while some Wi-Fi 5 mobile phones not only support 80Mhz bandwidth, but also support 160MHz bandwidth.

Some Wi-Fi 5 phones ran at a rate of 866.7Mbps through a bandwidth of 160MHz, while Wi-Fi 6 phones could only run at a maximum rate of 600.5Mbps on a bandwidth of 80MHz.

Different bandwidths naturally have different speeds, and are not comparable. But if the same bandwidth is used in the test, Wi-Fi 6 will definitely outperform Wi-Fi 5.

With the rapid development of 5G in 2020 and the era of the Internet of Everything, Wi-Fi 6 technology has great potential.

Pseudo concept 05

Does "pseudo memory" really exist?

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The concept of pseudo memory originated from Huawei's "flash memory gate" incident. Not long after Huawei's flagship P10 series, which was highly anticipated by the terminal, was launched, it was embroiled in huge controversy.

After some netizens purchased the P10 mobile phone, they found through testing software that there were obvious differences in the flash memory speed of the P10 series mobile phones.

User test results show that the flash memory speed of some mobile phones only reaches more than 200MB/s. However, there are also media reports and reviews that the flash memory speed of the P10 mobile phone can reach about 800MB/s.

The flash memory of the same mobile phone is so different. Does "fake memory" really exist?

the truth

Huawei has officially responded to the "flash memory gate". Industry insiders believe that the above situation occurs with the same P10 phone because some P10 phones use eMMC5.1, some use UFS2.0, and some use UFS2.1, which leads to differences in flash memory speeds.

eMMC is an embedded multimedia storage card. In terms of core algorithms, the main control of eMMC is integrated inside the chip. The eMMC chip can be soldered on the circuit board in chip form and connected to the system bus through the MMC protocol. eMMC has the advantages of convenience, lightness, simplicity, and space saving.

As for UFS, it is the first generation universal flash storage standard. The biggest difference from eMMC is that by changing the bus from parallel to serial, the operating frequency can be greatly improved, thereby speeding up the data transmission rate.

Huawei launched the Mate 9 series of smartphones and also promoted the flash memory accordingly. However, some netizens found through software testing that the series of smartphones did not reach the UFS2.1 advertised by Huawei.

77 consumers were furious and took Huawei to court. The court ruled that although Huawei did engage in improper behavior in promoting the Mate 9 series of mobile phones to consumers, Huawei's behavior did not constitute false advertising.

In response, Huawei's Yu Chengdong said that the cost difference between different specifications is only more than 2 yuan. The implication is that Huawei cannot use the cost of 2 yuan to defraud consumers. The so-called "fake memory" is nothing more than memory solutions of different specifications.

At present, when mobile phone manufacturers release new phones, they often introduce the memory model of the new phone. For example, UFS 3.0 is a common memory version on flagship phones. Faster memory means faster data reading and writing speeds. For users who care about memory quality, they can pay attention to the detailed parameters released by mobile phone manufacturers.

Pseudo Concept 06

"Fake fingerprint recognition" cannot prevent an orange peel

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It is not an exaggeration to say that a piece of tape, an orange peel or even a strand of hair can open a smartphone. Users have been discussing and paying attention to the security of mobile phone fingerprint locks.

A reporter from IT Times once concluded through testing that a single film can crack fingerprint unlocking, and the mobile phone brands involved include all the current mainstream domestic mobile phone manufacturers. After the development in recent years, does fake fingerprint recognition still exist?

the truth

The security factor of fingerprint unlocking is all hidden in the algorithm. If the fingerprint chip manufacturer reduces the security of the algorithm in order to improve the so-called user experience, then the tragedy of a mobile phone being cracked with a film will occur.

The so-called full-image algorithm means that when the recorded fingerprint is stored as an image for unlocking, the system will compare the image to be identified with the recorded image, and it will pass if the images are consistent.

However, the flaw of this technology is that it “only recognizes but does not differentiate”. Because it has a self-learning function, it can pass as long as it recognizes the consistent parts of the image, and will not distinguish whether the different parts are artificial interference images.

For example, the algorithm could originally recognize the mother's appearance. One day, the mother held her child to unlock the phone, and the algorithm passed. The end result was that the child could unlock the algorithm without the mother, resulting in a "stealing" situation.

Artificial intelligence technology is very popular nowadays. Sun Libin, an expert in the artificial intelligence industry, said that by using a large amount of fingerprint data as "raw materials", learning the structure and characteristics of fingerprints through machine learning, and reorganizing fingerprints based on certain rules, fake fingerprints can be generated. This is a new challenge that new technologies have brought to fingerprint recognition technology.

There is never absolute security. Whether fingerprint or facial recognition technology is used in mobile phones, the security awareness of mobile phone users is more critical. Good safety usage habits are the most critical weapon to ensure personal privacy and property security.