What exactly is the problem with Meizu phones?

Before, I could never understand why a company that is obsessed with making products and is a "pioneer" in Internet brand marketing would stagnate in this era when even pigs can fly.

Is it true that product development is not as good as marketing? Holding the MX4 engineering machine that I have used for more than a month, and watching the launch of the MX 4 Pro, I seem to see clearly where the problem of this company lies.

On the stage, Mr. Bai wore a standard black round-neck sweater and spoke in "poor" Mandarin. The emphasis on "poor" here is not disrespectful to Meizu at all (I am also a kerosene, you can look up the details in my previous article), but this "poor" is exactly the true portrayal of Meizu's "tangible but soulless" imitation of Apple. The problem of Meizu is actually very simple: Huang Zhang is indeed a devout believer of Jobs, from product creation to marketing style, but Huang Zhang seems to have forgotten that his company is called Meizu, and Jobs' company is Apple.

Just as Rome was not built in a day, Apple did not suddenly "reinvent" the smartphone. Do you know when the development of the iPhone first began? At the end of 2004! iOS system, capacitive touch technology, and supply chain management, from technology to products to mass production, every step and every field involved has its own traces. For example, there is a very "touching" description on Zhihu, in which a Microsoft engineer's reaction after experiencing the first generation of iPhone was, "How is this possible?"

"Yes, how is this possible? Within 40 square meters around me, there are prototypes of all the new smartphones released in the world, not only Dopod, an ally of MS, but also Nokia, Moto, and even some small European brands. I have never seen such an amazing system. At the same time, those demonstrations gradually transformed into software instructions and hardware adaptations in my mind. I clearly know the limits of the current industry's known level. No combination can produce a system that can complete those operations well, such as pressing the screen keyboard with the thumb to input characters (WM must use the pen to click accurately), two fingers to zoom in on photos, and the natural stretching when the camera is framing... There are too many... When I used it alone, I felt like crying. The perfect combination of technology and design completely exceeded my cognition and made me clearly feel the existence of that kind of technological fault..."

Jobs, who reshaped Apple, created the iPhone. Only he and Apple know how much they paid ahead of others. How many trials and errors have been made behind the simplicity and smoothness of iOS? New hardware technologies that can significantly improve the experience often mean that they are difficult to use on a large scale and are costly. How did Apple solve this problem all of a sudden? How did Apple insist on watertight quality control when tens of millions of mobile phones were assembled and produced by third parties? There are even rumors in the industry that defective iPhones are better than genuine products. How did they do this? There is no other possible explanation for all this except Apple's ten years of deep cultivation in the supply chain and its extreme focus on products. From the collection of technical intelligence from the production line, active investment in supply chain manufacturers and the dispatch of engineers, and the negotiation of supply terms...all geniuses are just working harder, more patiently, and more fully prepared than others. You see that others can achieve the perfect combination of technology and design. They really started to investigate and study long before others, and then started to work on the project. It is really the result of being able to endure loneliness and long-term precipitation. I don’t know how many tugs of war and compromises have been experienced behind the scenes!

The problem with Meizu phones is that they have form but no "spirit": it's not that they don't put enough effort into it (compared to the rougher domestic manufacturers, they do pay enough attention to the first impression), but it's a problem of product priority. They went straight for Apple's Think Different. The non-mainstream resolution, the "mysterious" feel, the proud Flyme OS, and the customized Smart Bar are indeed very impressive, but the stability in daily use is actually a big problem. You have a phone that uses higher-end materials and is more willing to spend money, with more refined workmanship, and a lot of knife work on chamfering edges and corners, but you often can't answer calls, freeze for no reason, and the built-in system applications are unstable. A smartphone is for use, but you made it into a work of art, for viewing, and you dared to do this from the beginning!

OGS screens combine the protective glass and the touch glass, which allows for better light transmission and smoother touch. The screens of the MX2 and MX3 generations of machines can't stop jumping. How did these invisible third hands control the screen? Oh, it turns out that there is just some dust and moisture on the surface. At the press conference, you will tell everyone that you use TOL (Touch On Lens is an enhanced OGS). Why don't Apple and Samsung use such an awesome technology? You talk about the outstanding display effect and touch sensitivity of OGS, but you don't tell others that this is the lowest-cost solution. Didn't Apple, which uses In-cell, and Samsung, which uses On-cell, conduct in-depth research on the characteristics of OGS? Or are you just really "ignorant" and only discovered the practical defects of OGS after the product was mass-produced?

The screen frame is super narrow, and the black border is super thin, almost invisible. This is another example of Meizu's "nitpicking" on product quality. In contrast, this year's iPhone and Galaxy cannot do this. Is it because they do not insist on "user experience first"? After getting the MX4, I found that the screen occasionally accidentally touched just by holding the metal frame. I instantly understood that Meizu ignored the obvious defects of the phone and pursued "look and feel" first. My colleague's iPhone 6 Plus also has a narrow frame, so why doesn't it have the problem of accidental touches? Apple previously emphasized at the press conference that some problems with the narrow frame need to be improved. Why did Meizu ignore these "public reminders"? You laugh at the big black border of the Mi 4, but they admit that the technology is not good. In order to avoid this situation that greatly affects the real experience in daily use, they honestly use a mature and complete touch module and make a compromise.

Others have been complaining about the poor call signal of Meizu phones. I have only used MX4 for more than a month and have not experienced missed calls yet, so I will not comment on it. I just saw that the WiFi signal is one bar less than that of my Galaxy S4. Before, whether it was the screen jumping or missed calls, Meizu always used the imperfect firmware as an excuse. After I consulted some friends in the hardware industry in detail and looked through some outdated posts, "Please wait for the firmware update to solve it", haha.

Huang Zhang likes to show off his achievements. There are too many examples of Meizu's "castles in the air" products. I even began to wonder whether this was a kind of stupidity or whether there was a deep "marketing" motive behind it. It was intentional after knowing the truth. On the contrary, Xiaomi, which I have always criticized before (well, I know that the Red Guards must think that I am writing soft articles, please go back and look at my previous articles), started with the stability of the machine and the ease of daily use, highlighting the experience in MIUI, compromising the appearance design step by step, and finally achieved some success from Mi 3 and "transformed", and the brand sense became clearer. Mi 4 and the recently exposed Mi 5 really touched me slowly, and made me start to reflect on my previous "shallowness".

Huang Zhang regards Apple and Steve Jobs as his master, but he has only learned a few superficial things. From products to marketing style to management, he is always authoritarian, overbearing, and arrogant. The master once suffered a lot because of this and encountered major product failures. It took him ten years after leaving Apple to improve his practice, but Huang Zhang seems not to have done so yet. Acting according to one's own likes and dislikes and not conducting user surveys, Steve Jobs did so, and so did Huang Zhang. I don't know why Steve Jobs did so, or was it the kind of "differentiation for differentiation's sake"? I always think that Steve Jobs dared to go against the trend in some parts of the product because he saw some things that everyone ignored, and from the heart, he saw the "irrationality" of some things that everyone took for granted, so this is an opportunity discovered by real insight. And what can be homogenized and what can be differentiated, the fundamental basis of differentiation is still based on strength: you can gather more and better talents, you have real insight, foresight, and foresight, and you have laid out many years ahead of others. If you can't do these, you are just a poor imitator.

Finally, I want to say one more thing to those Red Guards who are unhappy with this article: Meizu does seem to work harder. Just because you work hard, should I ignore your shortcomings?

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.