News on China's scientific and technological development.

Tam said:

With Huawei's dreams of global smartphone domination crushed, the BBK combine (Oppo, Vivo, Realme, OnePlus) is on its way to overtake Samsung as the world's largest smartphone vendor.

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What are you talking about? Are you being sarcastic? If they're combining, they're doing so to survive. Huawei just jumped 66% in the Chinese market and 29% internationally when all of these brands including Apple are in double digit or close to double digit decline. Other than Huawei, only Samsung is growing, but much more modestly.

manqiangrexue said:

What are you talking about? Are you being sarcastic? If they're combining, they're doing so to survive. Huawei just jumped 66% in the Chinese market and 29% internationally when all of these brands including Apple are in double digit or close to double digit decline. Other than Huawei, only Samsung is growing, but much more modestly.

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BBK is a combine but its not combining. BBK is already the umbrella group for all these companies mentioned --- Oppo, Vivo, Realme, and OnePlus. Think of it like Alphabet is to Google. BBK gives birth to these companies, not these companies combining to form BBK. Its fair to say that Oppo, RealMe, Vivo and OnePlus are really sub brands under BBK. Another way to think of BBK is the General Motors of smartphones, and brands like Chevy, Pontiac, Buick, Cadillac and Oldsmobile are the analogy to Oppo, Vivo, Realme and OnePlus. If these brands are not doing well, they will disappear, like Pontiac and Oldsmobile did. But the fact that BBK added the RealMe brand --- it used to be just Oppo, then added Vivo, then added OnePlus for foreign markets, and RealMe is the latest, originally launched under Oppo --- shows that they are thriving.

I doubt that Huawei will get significant momentum internationally without Google services. There are still significant amounts of Google serviced Huawei phones in Huawei's inventory for 2019 but what of 2020? That's when the expansion gets cold. Huawei may not get much traction outside of China; Xiaomi is leading in India for example, and OnePlus might be number three in the US and is also a strong player in the Indian market. Oppo and Vivo are both strong in south east Asian markets. Huawei makes very good phones --- but so are the BBK brands. Can you honestly say the top end Huawei phone is better than the top end OnePlus, Vivo or Oppo? I don't think so. Its Chinese craftsmanship and design vs. Chinese craftsmanship and design. But the other guy still gets the benefit of having Google services and Qualcomm chips.

Does not sound it may relate to China's tech, but it does in a profound indirect way, with Huawei.



Nokia made a bad call using FPGA for 5G base station chips.

Tam said:

Huawei makes very good phones --- but so are the BBK brands. Can you honestly say the top end Huawei phone is better than the top end OnePlus, Vivo or Oppo? I don't think so. Its Chinese craftsmanship and design vs. Chinese craftsmanship and design. But the other guy still gets the benefit of having Google services and Qualcomm chips.

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I really don't know much about phones and would never get a $1000 phone to use 5% of its capabilities but firstly, it's not just Chinese craftsmanship vs Chinese craftsmanship; it's Huawei craftsmanship vs BBK craftsmanship so it's not like cancelling craftsmanship out of the equation because they're all Chinese.

Regarding Google:
1. Can there still be a way to still load them onto the phone? I'm sure hackers can but can there be a simple enough way?
2. I see the world rebelling against US tech tyranny. America wanted everyone to stop buying Huawei; they could have just bought those BBK brands if they are indeed as good as Huawei, but everyone went with Huawei and Huawei's business shot up. I think there is some excitement to see what Huawei can do with some rebellion putting your thumb in the bully's eye by buying Huawei in the face of a US ban.


Regarding Qualcomm chips:
Huawei's Kirin can more than hold their own, no? I think these BBK mofos need to get the hell off of Qualcomm ASAP. If they're using it as an interim as they find a Chinese replacement, fine, but as a long term strategy, they'd have to be fools and deserve to go out of business if they plan to rely on American components.

I don't know either what will happen when Huawei sells its phones internationally without Google but so far, Huawei has never failed or disappointed. At anything.

Tam said:

Does not sound it may relate to China's tech, but it does in a profound indirect way, with Huawei.

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Nokia made a bad call using FPGA for 5G base station chips.

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Traditionally base stations love using FPGAs because FPGAs are flexible and you can reprogram them into anything you want. Most importantly FPGA substitutes ASICs and SOCs for applications that are far too low in volume to justify fabbing a large volume of custom ASICs or SOCs for it, and base stations, which are infrastructure and not consumer products, fit that volume profile.

The problem with FPGA however is cost, heat, power consumption and sheer performance out of the chip, compared to specifically created circuits for that purpose. And that's where it has started to bite for using FPGA as 5G is more cost and performance minded than ever.

This is why dedicated SoCs for 5G has risen, and it conveniently aligns and in great timing with Huawei getting cut off from major US suppliers of FPGAs.

Here is Nokia introducing to its own 5G chipsets to get out from using FPGAs.



Huawei introduced the world's first 5G base station chipset earlier in this year, giving it a head start over all the rest.



By September 27, Huawei CEO has announced they are building 5G base stations without US parts, at the tune of 5,000 per month, and looking to build over 1.3 million by next year. At this point, Huawei has already installed over 200,000 5G base stations in the world.



Going away from FPGA and into inhouse chips allows Huawei to create differentiating performance advantages over its competitors in terms of size, weight, footprint, cost, and power consumption, including antennas small enough to be installed by a single person.



Huawei took a massive risk here because if you don't have sufficient production volume for fabbing the 5G base station SOCs, the prices for these chips would go sky high. But the high number of base stations being shipped and installed would greatly lower the production costs of the SOCs with ever larger fabbing volumes, creating a beneficial cycle which makes the base stations even cheaper and more attractive to buyers, that would spur further production of the chipsets.

By mid October of 2019, Huawei has already shipped over 400,000 5G base stations and has 60 contracts. In contrast, as the article stated, it took Huawei 4 years to shift 170,000 4G base stations in the past.

manqiangrexue said:

I really don't know much about phones and would never get a $1000 phone to use 5% of its capabilities but firstly, it's not just Chinese craftsmanship vs Chinese craftsmanship; it's Huawei craftsmanship vs BBK craftsmanship so it's not like cancelling craftsmanship out of the equation because they're all Chinese.

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A lot of phone from both companies are made by Foxconn. So that's going to boil down to company design and software.

Regarding Google:
1. Can there still be a way to still load them onto the phone? I'm sure hackers can but can there be a simple enough way?
2. I see the world rebelling against US tech tyranny. America wanted everyone to stop buying Huawei; they could have just bought those BBK brands if they are indeed as good as Huawei, but everyone went with Huawei and Huawei's business shot up. I think there is some excitement to see what Huawei can do with some rebellion putting your thumb in the bully's eye by buying Huawei in the face of a US ban.

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With Google mobile apps --- GMail, YouTube, Google Play Store, Search bar, Google Maps ---- you need the Google Mobile Services.

Good news:

GMail can be accessed through any third party email provider, such as Microsoft outlook. There are a ton of third party email apps in Android. Its not a problem if you are not using GMail, like if you are Hotmail or Yahoo Mail user.

Youtube can be accessed through third party apps too. There are tons of these.

Google Maps can also be accessed through third party apps without using GMS. There are other substitute map applications that are available, such as those using the OpenStreetMaps open source standard. A real popular maps app is MAPS.ME, which has gotten Google's own Editor's Choice award for excellent apps and is rated 4.6 out of 5. This app is by My.com, which is Russian.

Social networking? Who uses Google anyway. All that Facebook, WhatsApp, and so on, do not depend on GMS and can be downloaded separately by apk files. You use TikTok? That's Chinese.

The sticker is the Google Play Store, and because there are a lot of games there. Many of these games use Google Play Accounts for login to store player's information and back up files. Many of these games do offer alternatives such as Facebook logins, Twitter logins, WeChat logins and email logins. If games have PC or iOS equivalents that run on the same servers, I would advice using email logins so you can go cross platform.

Regarding Qualcomm chips:
Huawei's Kirin can more than hold their own, no? I think these BBK mofos need to get the hell off of Qualcomm ASAP. If they're using it as an interim as they find a Chinese replacement, fine, but as a long term strategy, they'd have to be fools and deserve to go out of business if they plan to rely on American components.

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BBK subsidiaries prefer to rely on Mediatek as much as possible and on the store level, their sales people tend to push that. But Mediatek lacks some of the high performance achieved by Qualcomm for the high end, and does not satisfy all the production demands, so BBK also has to resort buying low and mid end Qualcomm chipsets.

BBK and Qualcomm has legal issues regarding IP and licensing, but Qualcomm continues to ship them chipsets, because quite frankly, Qualcomm cannot afford not to, as Qualcomm will lose a huge, huge chunk of their business that it may even potentially kill them. Qualcomm is also facing legal issues around the world regarding its monopoly and IP use. Previous Qualcomm users like HTC, LG, Motorola and Sony are all reduced to near nothingness in the market, at least Motorola under Lenovo is still struggling. Samsung relies on its chipsets, so does Apple and so does Huawei. That leaves the BBK conglomerate. Qualcomm cannot afford to lose its biggest customer regardless of legal issues.

I don't know either what will happen when Huawei sells its phones internationally without Google but so far, Huawei has never failed or disappointed. At anything.

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BBK is a tough competitor, and by using subsidiaries that are fairly independent, these organs are also very agile. They know their marketing, they know their distribution. They got stores anywhere, everywhere in Asia, in India, and in China. They will spend bucks to hire celebrities to promote their phones, like Vivo did with Stephen Curry. They are fast in their production introduction, in meeting market trends, and in innovating (see Vivo's NEX phone). Their prices are competitive on top of all that, and their quality is generally very good as you can see with OnePlus, which some regard as the finest Android phones. On top of all that, they still have Google and Qualcomm behind their back. In fact, I think Samsung needs to watch out for BBK the most. Sure, Samsung will bring out the K-pop groups, Vivo brings out the NBA stars.

I've owned a Xiaomi Mi4 (Snapdragon 801), Xiaomi Redmi Note2 (MediaTek Helio X10), Huawei MediaPad X2 (Kirin 930) & Xiaomi MiMax 2 (Snapdragon 625).

Of all those, I felt the Huawei using the Kirin chipset gave me the smoothest performance, while maintaining relatively low CPU temperatures. The worst is the MediaTek, and the Snapdragon 801 overheats like crazy too. The Snapdragon 625 is not bad, but it's not a top of the line chipset anyway.

Of course, these aren't the latest devices on the market now, but I'm going to guess that the overall performance comparisons should hold for the latest iterations of these chipsets.

Tam said:

The sticker is the Google Play Store, and because there are a lot of games there.

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Do you guys remember back when Android first came out? It was to the iOS what the PC was to the Mac. You could do anything you want with it, and install apps from anywhere.

It was only as Google started building its own Walled Garden that the difference between Android and iOS shrank, and Google did this to protect its own financial stake in the game.

Now, however, Trump has opened the Pandora's box. You *don't* need Google to run Android, Google just wants you to think that way. Again, this goes back to hardware vs software. The smartphone industry has shown that, historically, hardware drives the software market, not the other way around. People had no trouble switching to Android when iOS was the only game in town. It'll take a few years, but the pay off is big.

The ecosystem argument is exaggerated. There are already a lot of software distribution platforms out there, and in modern days, it doesn't take that much effort to port a piece of software from one OS to another. I could easily see Huawei make a deal with one or more of those distribution platforms to distribute Android apps on Huawei devices.

Shaolian said:

I've owned a Xiaomi Mi4 (Snapdragon 801), Xiaomi Redmi Note2 (MediaTek Helio X10), Huawei MediaPad X2 (Kirin 930) & Xiaomi MiMax 2 (Snapdragon 625).

Of all those, I felt the Huawei using the Kirin chipset gave me the smoothest performance, while maintaining relatively low CPU temperatures. The worst is the MediaTek, and the Snapdragon 801 overheats like crazy too. The Snapdragon 625 is not bad, but it's not a top of the line chipset anyway.

Of course, these aren't the latest devices on the market now, but I'm going to guess that the overall performance comparisons should hold for the latest iterations of these chipsets.

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I got a Huawei Mediapad M4, and this tablet feels hot under high stress, such as playing games. I also got the M5, which runs a lot cooler and I play games on it everyday. My devices with Snapdragon 835, 845 and 855 are also a lot cooler than previous Snapdragons, each generation is cooler and faster than the previous. I do feel that Huawei makes better tablets than Samsung, and the Huawei version of Android is better than Samsung's. The M6 no longer has Google Play Services and I cannot use that for gaming since I rely on a Google login for some games.

BBK's version of Android such as Color OS still feels closer to vanilla Android than Xiaomi's or Huawei's version of Android that tries to overlay and mimic iOS features and look. Android has its own community of enthusiasts, and in the US, the OnePlus line is the one that is most sought after, and this is long before Huawei lost Google support. OnePlus remains, and is considered by this community to be the pinnacle of Android phones, even against Google's own flagship Pixel line and whatever Samsung has put out this year, last year, and the year before.



Compared to other smartphone companies, each BBK subsidiary produces high end phones and they even compete against one another. All these are beautiful phones.




Xiaomi made a big hit in the US last year with the Pocophone F1. It quickly developed a legendary reputation in the US, but Xiaomi failed to deliver a successor for this phone this year.



Last year, we saw the birth of the dedicated gaming phone, just like we have dedicated gaming PCs.



This is perfect if you like to run mobile shooter hits like PUBG mobile, Fortnite or Call or Duty mobile, which people nickname as Mobile Duty. Note that Tencent plays a big factor in all three games, and that's a separate story of how Chinese companies have risen to dominate mobile gaming.