Liu Zuohu takes a different approach to ROM to prove that he knows more than just hardware

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"In 2014, OnePlus's mobile phone revenue reached 300 million US dollars", "The sales volume of OnePlus's first single product exceeded one million units in 2014", these are the results of OnePlus last year given by Liu Zuohu.

This achievement has also won the favor of large companies in China. Previously, it was rumored that 360 would acquire a stake in OnePlus, and Liu Zuohu had frequent interactions with Zhou Hongyi on Weibo. It was not until 360 announced its investment in Coolpad that the rumor disappeared.

According to people close to Liu Zuohu, privately, Liu Zuohu and Zhou Hongyi still maintain a good relationship. Liu Zuohu admires Zhou Hongyi's persistence in making products, but the two have different understandings of making a "product that the market expects", so they did not end up together. Simply put, Liu Zuohu wants to make small and beautiful boutiques, but Zhou Hongyi wants to pursue the quantity and scale of products.

However, Liu Zuohu believes that as a mobile phone brand, OnePlus not only has the genes of hardware, but also has its own development opportunities in the software and Internet fields. "Therefore, as early as May last year when OnePlus' new products were just launched, capital institutions valued OnePlus at 500 million US dollars." He believes that capital institutions value more than just the value of OnePlus in mobile phones.

Hardware company or Internet company?

In the industry, especially emerging smartphone companies, it is inevitable to be defined as a traditional hardware company, an Internet company or a software company.

Regarding OnePlus' positioning, Liu Zuohu has no intention of defining himself as a hardware company or an Internet company. He said that OnePlus has never limited itself to the hardware field and has always emphasized that it will develop its own ROM in the future.

In terms of corporate culture genes, the entrepreneurial team led by Liu Zuohu, the former vice president of OPPO, comes from a hardware background and has his own unique expertise and experience in the hardware field, but will his understanding and grasp of software systems be equally accurate?

In fact, OnePlus’ development path is indeed not like Xiaomi, Hammer and other Internet mobile phone brands that first make a ROM and then make a hardware. Instead, it chooses to enter the market first in the hardware field where it is good at, find its own fulcrum, and then do other things.

In Liu Zuohu's view, a startup's energy, resources, and growth period are limited in the early stages. If it wants to do everything, it is possible that it will do nothing well. However, OnePlus' ultimate goal is to achieve a perfect combination of software and hardware.

How difficult is it to make a ROM?

To fulfill Liu Zuohu's vision, OnePlus needs to make a hardware with the best industrial design and quality, and also provide users with a software system with the best sensory experience and Internet experience. And it needs to adapt to the 36 countries and regions where OnePlus sells products outside of China.

Based on the differences in usage habits and cultural backgrounds between overseas and domestic users, OnePlus has created Oxygen OS and Hydrogen OS for domestic and foreign users respectively.

On March 30, the weather app of OnePlus Hydrogen OS was also released and launched, and users can download and experience it. "The weather app has largely reflected some of OnePlus's ROM-making ideas." Taking advantage of the release of the weather app, Liu Zuohu first talked about his ROM-making ideas.

There are many excellent ROMs on the market, but Liu Zuohu found a strange phenomenon: trying every means to change Android to be more like "iOS", or making a lot of skins, and simply seeing the process of making ROMs as a process of changing the UI. In his opinion, these are very old ideas. If it is just a simple UI or skin change, it is a job that anyone can do.

He attributed the above problems to the lack of understanding of user experience. "It is unlikely to achieve a breakthrough in functionality when making ROMs now. This is a bit like the beginning of the hardware homogenization of mobile phones two or three years ago. The difference in the quality of ROMs now comes from the understanding of the 'ROM experience'." Liu Zuohu compared a good ROM to a shopping mall. A good ROM can allow countless excellent third-party apps to operate in it without users feeling uncomfortable.

There are many companies blindly copying Apple in the market. Liu Zuohu believes that many companies that copy iOS only see the surface and fail to understand the core of Apple. The real "Apple core" is the perfect integration of the highest quality hardware and the most user-friendly system.

Have the confidence to make ROM

Luo Yonghao once publicly stated that he was not optimistic about the chances of Liu Zuohu, an entrepreneur who came from a hardware background, to succeed in making his own ROM. However, Liu Zuohu believed that his knowledge of hardware was his biggest advantage.

Often, many companies that make ROMs only see the layer that connects the ROM to the user, and they care a lot about whether the user thinks the ROM is beautiful at first glance, but they fail to see the "language communication" between the ROM and the hardware at the bottom level. Liu Zuohu said that if a ROM is to be adapted to a piece of hardware, it is a difficult problem to adapt the various codes at the bottom level, which requires people who make ROMs to understand hardware to a certain extent, so that they can help the ROM adapt to more different models.

Previously, Liu Zuohu mentioned that ROM is like a shopping mall. Currently, Android 5.0 based on the Material Design concept is actually a good shopping mall. Liu Zuohu believes that Hydrogen OS will not be "keen" to change the system to be very similar to iOS, but will focus on the mobile Internet service experience and provide a good deep Internet experience.

Making a good ROM is consistent with creating an excellent hardware spirit, and both require a precise grasp of user experience and user needs. This requires manufacturers to have both sensitivity and a sense of smell for the industry, and to have a certain user base. For this reason, Liu Zuohu chose to launch his own ROM only after OnePlus sales exceeded 1 million units and accumulated a certain user base. Existing OnePlus users are not only the largest word-of-mouth channel for Hydrogen OS in the future, but also the most direct user feedback that OnePlus has in the process of building Hydrogen OS.

Regarding the interface style of OnePlus Hydrogen OS, Liu Zuohu said that no pictures can be released now, but he described the overall style as elegant and smart, with some geometric aesthetics in it, and more use of sliding gestures instead of the "click-click" operation method.