In the tech world full of swagger and extravagance, what is real innovation?

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In recent years, the competition in the mobile phone industry has become increasingly fierce. In order to find selling points for their products, every manufacturer has begun to choose to innovate a lot of technologies and functions on their products. Fingerprint recognition, pressure touch, eye recognition, eye rolling, edge touch, voice-activated photography, floating preview, gesture page turning, and other new technologies and new terms have emerged one after another.

Many of these innovations are both practical and elegant, but some have become mere marketing points, pure showmanship. Users will initially use these showmanship features repeatedly just to try them out, but once they discover the tricks, they will stay away from them and keep them hidden forever.
Exaggeration and showmanship have become the norm, and marketing hype is a common problem

Looking back at several technological innovations that seemed extremely cool at the time and were used as advertising selling points, they have now died down.

The first is the eyeball rolling technology. This technology is used by a certain international manufacturer in its fourth-generation flagship phone. The purpose of this technology is to enable people to turn pages without turning them up and down manually. They only need to stare at a point and move their heads up and down like "cross-eyed" to achieve page turning and scrolling functions. The biggest weakness of this technology is the low recognition success rate. When rolling the eyeballs, the whole person looks like a clown and the eyes are extremely uncomfortable.

The second is the sound photography technology. I found this technology on a friend's Chinese brand thousand-yuan mobile phone when I went hiking. It is specially used for selfies. At that time, the friend borrowed the author's selfie stick and started shouting "Eggplant" to the phone without connecting to Bluetooth. The phone realized voice-controlled photography. The friend was taking pictures enthusiastically, but the others laughed and shouted "Eggplant" loudly. They took more than ten photos of his friend. ***The friend was helpless and had to give up.

The third is the gesture page turning and floating preview technology. These two technologies are available on a large number of domestic and foreign smartphones. When reading e-novels, you only need to stroke the screen like turning a book to automatically turn the page. The floating preview does not require the phone to touch the screen, and you only need to hover and touch to operate. These two technologies seem advanced, but in fact, they will be abandoned after trying once or twice, because the touch is not sensitive, the movement range is too exaggerated, and it is very inconvenient. When reading e-books, I still use the original page turning technology to operate.

The fourth is eye recognition technology. Eye recognition security verification technology is originally a very excellent technological innovation, and it is more secure than fingerprint recognition. However, when some major domestic mobile phone manufacturers were using this technology, they all made an eye recognition frame. Recognition can only begin after the eyeball is aligned with the recognition frame. This technology looks very science fiction when used, but when used in subways, buses, workplaces and other places, it gives people a psychological barrier - others will always give you the same look, making you embarrassed to use it again.

The fifth is edge touch technology. This technology was first used by a domestic telecommunications giant in its "borderless" (actually, it is made of 3D glass, not as exaggerated as Samsung S6 Edge) mobile phone. It has various single-finger, two-finger, and three-finger operation gestures, which are not only cumbersome, but also have a high probability of accidental touches. After trying it for the first week, users will eventually choose to return to the traditional operation method.

......

There are too many technologies of this type to list, but they all have one thing in common, which is that they are all used in marketing advertisements. Brands are very excited when they advertise, but users find it boring after using it. After using it once or twice, they eventually choose to give up.

Each of these technologies looks very cool, but they are not comfortable or natural to use, and they do not meet the needs of users. Not only is the learning cost high, but it also causes great trouble to users.
To solve real needs: user comfort is king

Zealer founder Wang Ziru talked about this in a recent program titled "The Ruined Intelligence" that a good product must use relatively mature technology and appropriate product form to solve a real need.

What are the real needs? Simpler, more fool-proof interaction, convenient and fast operation are the real needs of users when using smartphones. When using technological innovations, users should feel comfortable, natural, and not awkward, and be willing to use this technology for a long time.

For the same eye recognition, Microsoft's flagship Lumia 950 chooses to remove the eye recognition frame, which actually understands the psychological barriers of users. Although the recognition time is still relatively long, overall, from the perspective of human-computer interaction, Microsoft's technology is the most mature.

Xiaomi's Mi 4C also has edge touch, but it only has two functions: double-click to return and single-camera photo taking. It has few functions, but for a large-screen phone, they are both relatively practical. Although the probability of accidental touches on the edge of the Mi 4C is still high, it is just right compared to the phone mentioned above.

Although the Android system has three buttons, Meizu's latest M-Back only needs one Home button. It is not fancy, but simple enough. Once users get used to it, they will never go back. Compared with the previous Smart-Bar, it is more commendable.

The iPhone 6s' 3D Touch can be pressed hard to slide into the multitasking interface. This greatly reduces the chance of double-clicking the Home button, and for users, it will be more psychologically dependent.

These four cases all illustrate one issue: not fancy and comfortable for users to use is the key to a product.
Real technological innovation: no sense of technological innovation

Not fancy is only one aspect. From a professional point of view, the above four technological innovations are not professional enough. Wang Ziru has mentioned a sentence many times when hosting programs over the years - the real technological innovation is that people can't feel the existence of technological innovation.

Fingerprint recognition can be said to be the biggest technological innovation in recent years. Although Motorola and other manufacturers have done it before. In 2011, the Motorola ME860 was launched. The Motorola ME860 has a built-in fingerprint recognition device integrated with the power/unlock button. This design is similar to that of a notebook, and its function is mainly to ensure confidentiality. The fingerprint recognition device of the Motorola ME860 can directly read the fingerprint of the finger to unlock, and two fingerprints can be set at the same time for backup.

Because it was too complicated and used the swipe method used on laptops, the Motorola ME860 ultimately failed. This was actually due to its immaturity, excessive display of technology, and low recognition success rate.

On the contrary, after the launch of iPhone 5s, everyone remembered the Touch-ID technology, and all manufacturers began to follow Apple's standard press-type fingerprint recognition technology. The success of iPhone 5s' fingerprint recognition lies in its integration into the original product of the Home button. Users can use it with just a light press, which can not only unlock the phone, but also pay with fingerprints. Users do not have such a high learning cost, and it is comfortable and natural to use, so it quickly became the object of imitation for the Android camp.
postscript:

Technological innovation is not about showing off or finding marketing selling points. The innovation of technology and functions must be truly implemented for user use. Reduce the learning cost, keep it close to the original usage habits as much as possible, and slowly find the balance between innovation and habits, so that your technological innovation can be truly implemented.