Green Onion Metal Standard Edition Review: A Transformation, Two-thirds Success

The mobile phone market has long been a bloody battle, with domestic mobile phone manufacturers disliking each other. But if there is a manufacturer whose boss dares to come forward and report Xiaomi's false marketing twice, then this brand of mobile phones must be even more "feverish" than "feverish".

At the end of 2015, Tan Wensheng, who had reported Xiaomi twice, led the Qingcong brand to upgrade and start again. The new Qingcong Metal is its first transformed work. After teasing the "Mi Hammer" at the press conference, can Qingcong Metal be called Tan's reborn masterpiece?

Great leap forward in appearance

Qingcong Metal has released two products, the standard version and the flagship version. The flagship version, priced at 1,999 yuan, has a 2K giant screen and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor, which is more of a component to enhance the brand's status. In comparison, the Qingcong Metal standard version, priced at only 799 yuan, may be worthy of more attention.

It still has the familiar ultra-low price, but this time the Qingcong is indeed no longer the same as the previous Beidou and Xiaolajiao. Even if the full metal body can no longer make you take a second look, the full metal body with craftsmanship and design still makes the Qingcong Metal standard version look a little different.

From the front, the design of the Green Metal Standard Edition is relatively conventional. The frame is not narrow, and the earpiece hole does not have any sentimental design. However, the slight arcs on the upper and lower sides give the product a bit of Japanese style.

The entire side frame of the Green Metal Standard Edition is a relatively precisely manufactured part. The double polished chamfers, side buttons and bottom openings give people such a feeling. Unfortunately, the card slot part still reduces points. The "AND or card slot" design is very practical, but the connection between the two parts of the card slot itself is a bit loose.

The curved design on the back of the body fits the palm, and the entire back design layout is also the most thoughtful part of the Green Metal Standard Edition. The glass panel on the top, similar to the iPhone 5s, neutralizes the "white band anomaly". The completely symmetrical design looks very simple, and the rounded rectangular fingerprint recognition module is set a bit high.

In terms of appearance, the Green Metal Standard Edition is a good interpretation of the "Metal" element, making it solid and even having a design style different from other brands. This breakthrough deserves recognition.

Hardware configuration has highlights

The Green Metal Standard Edition uses a 5.5-inch 1080P display, a MediaTek MT6753 octa-core processor, a 3050mAh built-in battery, 3GB RAM + 16GB ROM memory, and a front 800W + rear 1300W camera combination, which are the more eye-catching parts.

The display effect of the Green Metal Standard Edition is pretty good. The 0.46mm narrow bezel combined with the 74.26% screen-to-body ratio further enhances the visual impact. It is worth noting that in most cases, this screen will give people a feeling of whitish colors, which is actually closely related to the color matching of the system UI.

MediaTek's MT6753 octa-core processor is not a powerful tool for those who pursue performance, but as long as you don't "run a score to show your dissatisfaction" every day, the performance of your mobile phone processor has already reached the stage of excess. The addition of 3GB of RAM is obviously more practical than simply enhancing the processor. Unfortunately, according to relevant information, the MT6753 is a chip that supports full network access, while the Green Metal standard version is marked as supporting five-mode and thirteen-band China Mobile and China Unicom networks.

As we all know, Sony almost dominates the supply of mobile phone camera components, but the Green Metal Standard Edition uses Samsung's stacked sensor and supports PDAF phase focus. Samsung's current Galaxy flagship products have indeed returned to Sony's embrace in terms of camera selection, but in the previous generation Samsung Galaxy S5, the photo-taking effect of Samsung's own camera is still quite amazing.

The camera capability of the Green Metal Standard Edition did not disappoint. The pictures showed good details and accurate colors. The overall style was cooler than that of the iPhone 6s Plus. The only drawback was that the focusing speed could not be described as fast, and the PDAF phase focus did not play an obvious auxiliary role here.

System design has a long way to go

The appearance craftsmanship and hardware configuration can be regarded as plus points of the Green Metal Standard Edition, which is enough to reflect the sincerity of the brand's transformation and upgrading. However, "transformation" is often impossible to achieve in one step. The CONG OS system equipped with the Green Metal Standard Edition still has a lot of room for improvement.

CONG OS adopts the design of virtual buttons on the screen and makes some changes to the native Android virtual buttons. They can be hidden and their arrangement can be changed. The multitasking button is replaced by the menu button, and a function button is added on the far right, which integrates multitasking management and quick settings. This is the same as the function of long pressing the home button.

Apart from the cancellation of the secondary application menu, the basic operating logic of CONG OS is not much different from native Android. The operation is smooth and ideal, but the interface is slightly lacking in beautification, especially in the design of the notification bar, which still looks a bit rough.

In CONG OS, the visual uniformity of application icons is higher, but some non-uninstallable basic services still come from third-party apps, such as Baidu Guard, 360 Cloud Disk, etc. Whether they are suitable depends on the user's taste.

For those who are used to iPhone 6s, the fingerprint recognition efficiency of the Green Metal standard version is still at the level of iPhone 6, which is not bad in the Android camp. Some auxiliary functions such as fingerprint photography enhance the fun of fingers. It is said that Green Metal uses a 175μm glass cover, which is more wear-resistant and practical than the 100μm cover on the market.

In addition, some small functions in the system are a bit unuser-friendly. For example, among the many gesture wake-up functions, the most commonly used double-click is missing. Double-clicking the volume button to take a quick shot with the screen off is a very creative idea, but the quick shot time of more than 1S is not only not fast enough, but the practice of displaying the time after the quick shot is completed on the screen also looks strange.

Therefore, the overall performance of CONG OS in the Green Cong Metal standard version is mediocre. It is difficult for the Green Cong Metal standard version to gain more market competitiveness among domestic mobile phones that use system UI as an important differentiator. Fortunately, when launching new products, Green Cong Metal stated that it will be equipped with a new system based on YunOS in the future, which is bound to bring about significant changes.

A transformational work, the "hard" part is ready

Some people may still remember that before the launch of the Green Onion Metal series, a product called Green Onion Note was used as the first product for brand upgrade. During this period, Xiaomi launched the metal Redmi and Meizu launched the metal Meizu Blue, which led to Tan Wensheng smashing the Green Onion Note in anger and launching the Green Onion Metal.

Green Onion Metal is definitely the best mobile phone Tan Wensheng has ever released, even the Green Onion Metal standard version priced at 799 yuan. Although there are not many things worth praising on the software level, the hardware has proved that this is a product made with care.

Judging from the products, the transformation of Qingcong’s brand upgrade can be said to have been two-thirds successful.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.