avon b7

rogifan_new said:

How has Huawei pulled ahead in chassis design?

More than chassis, shell design.

Fashion counts (especially in China) even though phones end up in cases.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to some but one aspect of phones is design and your first contact with one is its design. Like food at a restaurant. It enters through your eyes first. The shell is important.

Last year Huawei took a gamble on gradient finishes and it paid off. The 'Twilight' gradient set a trend that many followed. We can say that 2018 was the year of the gradient in terms of phone shell finish.

However, Huawei has a long history of experimenting with phone finishes.

It releases so many phones a year (Huawei and Honor) that it is easy to test the waters with new ideas and see how they work.

They have been working on layering techniques, nano coatings, ribbing etc. for many years.

This year they have taken the P20 gradients and refined them. I have seen both the Amber Sunrise and Breathing Crystal finishes in person. They are both - stunning. Absolutely beautiful.

This doesn't mean Apple's are ugly. They suffer from being a little 'boring' with regards to what is on offer. The XR took a step in the right direction, though. There is no denying that, but your options of course are limited.

foregoneconclusion said:

avon b7 said:

The competition is more than fierce right now.

Largely a myth pushed by the tech press. Companies like Huawei are overly dependent on off-the-shelf technology. They're pretty far behind the curve when it comes to developing exclusive in-house tech. People like to talk about how Huawei has their own SoC designs now, but they're barely competitive with twice the cores. And nobody expects them to develop a mass market OS. 

I doubt you have anything to back that claim up, but Huawei is one of the phone industry's leading innovators. R&D is regularly above Apple's and just last year I believe they filed more patents than anyone else.

Everybody uses off the shelf components (Apple too) but Huawei is one of the world's most vertically integrated companies too.

To take a recent development. Rumours state Apple is moving up to 2,000 engineers to get working on a new modem. Currently it uses an off the shelf part.

Huawei has built its own for years and already has a 5G modem - shipping.

Apple uses off the shelf wi-fi. Huawei has developed its own. I believe it is currently the world's fastest wi-fi chipset on a mobile device.

I could go on.

Sagar said:

I wonder why Intel is even bothering to make a 5G modem chip when their only customer Apple itself is building it.

QC announced that the X50 would ship on 30 phones this year. They then announced the X55 at MWC2019.

Apple is one of many customers.

"it is worth remembering that both the Samsung Galaxy S10+ and the Huawei P30 Pro are relatively new devices, whereas the iPhone XS was launched in September last year"

It is also worth remembering that Apple has been losing ground to Huawei since 2017 and not just on  the latest flagships.

Huawei has pulled ahead in major areas:

Shell design
Battery tech
Modem tech
Camera tech

OS is a question of preference and EMUI is apparently a 'like it or loathe it' case but I much prefer it to iOS.

Huawei even did more with 3D depth sensing.

The Mate 10 brought us an - on SoC - gigabit modem. The P20 Pro brought the tri-camera and Night Mode. The Mate 20 Pro brought Live 3D with each refresh taking the previous models' highlights and improving on them.

All of that was already ahead of Apple. These new flagships have simply pushed them one step ahead again.

This means that if Apple releases a tri-camera this year end (2019 refresh), it will literally be a year and a half behind Huawei on that major characteristic.

As for image quality, most phones take more than good enough photos and have done for years. Now, quality alone is not enough. Now it is quality AND versatility. How can we even compare a Huawei phone camera - from a year ago - to the latest iPhone if the iPhone can't even take the same photo?

That versatility is where Apple is getting knocked out of the park when pitted against the P30 Pro for example and the P30 Pro will see a raft of updates to tweak its photo prowess.

Reviewers are even using the 50x zoom on the P30 Pro - as binoculars!

Having better video options is of little condolence when Apple's refreshed lineup will go up against both the new Note and Mate series on release. And Huawei has already demoed its its 'dual video' feature which could find niche uses.

Then, you have the little details like dual frequency GPS, AIIS, AI used for battery management, noise cancellation, call enhancement, nano card storage, true dual SIM etc. Many Huawei phones even have an IR blaster!

And then the 'boring' stuff like the ability to hold a signal in difficult scenarios or at high speed. The 2017 demo showed how, the then brand new, iPhone X lost its GPS tracking while passing through a tunnel under a river while the Huawei remained locked on. How the Huawei could handle tower handovers with ease on high speed trains. How the iPhone X stopped working at low temperatures (Alaska field trip) while the Huawei came back with the photos.

Apple has to deliver a major update this year and definitely review the 'S' cycle strategy. On top of that it will have to take a long hard look at pricing.

The competition is more than fierce right now.

I can guarantee that the biggest cheer at the 2019 iPhone refresh will be when they reveal it won't have a 5W charger in the box.

Any non-invasive  blood glucose reader/detector would be a game changer. I would get one for that reason alone and I am not a watch wearer.

This is one of the Holy Grails.