News on China's scientific and technological development.

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
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.

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

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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.
That's all good but for me, my Huawei would have to be inoperable for me to switch to anything else. Buying these BBK "Chinese" phones puts money in the hands of American chip companies who use that money to stay ahead of the Chinese competition. Buying Huawei puts your money in the hands of Chinese companies that will use it to forever break America's technological pull so that they may never sanction anyone again without being laughed at. As a purely technical comparison, what you wrote is all fine, but when I'm making a purchase, I see this Huawei vs Other phones issue as investing in bullets for my gun vs investing in bullets for the guns of people who want to kill me.
 

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
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.


Android is based off Linux. You got a UI and a virtual machine executing off over on top of a Linux kernel. OS kernel is probably the most complex and difficult thing for an OS, and the Linux kernel is equivalent of millennia in terms of man hour work by developers all around the world as an ongoing open source project. Linux has one legal obligation for all the companies that make their own distributions and flavors off from it --- that they have to contribute in this openness by releasing the source code of their own version. Some parts of the OS is allowed to be closed or private. Hence, Google in using Linux for Android is legally obligated to make an open source version of it. Each smartphone company that makes their own flavor of Android is also legally obligated to release their source code in public, ranging from Samsung to Huawei. Even vendors like Asus to Motorola need to do it.

Linux being open and this is why Google is working on its own proprietary OS called Fushia. Fushia in all irony were even tested on Huawei smartphones as their first testing ground. So even before Trump, even years before, there is talk about an Android successor and this got smartphone companies concerned since Google might make this OS more proprietary than Android. You wonder why smartphone companies are secretly working on their own mobile OSes long and years before Trumpnomics, and this is the reason for it.
 

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
That's all good but for me, my Huawei would have to be inoperable for me to switch to anything else. Buying these BBK "Chinese" phones puts money in the hands of American chip companies who use that money to stay ahead of the Chinese competition. Buying Huawei puts your money in the hands of Chinese companies that will use it to forever break America's technological pull so that they may never sanction anyone again without being laughed at. As a purely technical comparison, what you wrote is all fine, but when I'm making a purchase, I see this Huawei vs Other phones issue as investing in bullets for my gun vs investing in bullets for the guns of people who want to kill me.

I wonder how much money it puts in the hands of US chip companies, but at the same time, BBK might already be Qualcomm's number one customer and losing BBK can hugely damage the company. BBK notably tries to use as much of Mediatek as possible. Its not BBK's fault they have to buy Mediatek or Qualcomm; Huawei does not sell its Kirin chipsets to it. Do you think BBK, Xiaomi and ZTE's Nubia has any other choice? If Huawei is truly thinking of "China" and instead of just itself, it needs to sell Kirin to the other phone vendors. Lately Huawei is considering selling its Balong modems to other companies but Balong is a standalone modem whereas most SoCs incorporate their own modem already. Kirin as you see, differs from the Snapdragons that it does not integrate a modem into the chipset. For that reason its much more similar to Apple's A series or Samsung's Exynos series for having the modem separate. Speaking of Samsung, this company, even though it has withdrawn from manufacturing smartphones from China, is smelling blood and a major opportunity against Qualcomm by looking to sell its Exynos chipsets and modems to Chinese integrators. It has previously done so with Meizu but is looking to widen its market.

A company as big as BBK should consider making its own SoC by now, or buying up someone who does like Mediatek.
 

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
I wonder how much money it puts in the hands of US chip companies, but at the same time, BBK might already be Qualcomm's number one customer and losing BBK can hugely damage the company. BBK notably tries to use as much of Mediatek as possible. Its not BBK's fault they have to buy Mediatek or Qualcomm; Huawei does not sell its Kirin chipsets to it. Do you think BBK, Xiaomi and ZTE's Nubia has any other choice? If Huawei is truly thinking of "China" and instead of just itself, it needs to sell Kirin to the other phone vendors. Lately Huawei is considering selling its Balong modems to other companies but Balong is a standalone modem whereas most SoCs incorporate their own modem already. Kirin as you see, differs from the Snapdragons that it does not integrate a modem into the chipset. For that reason its much more similar to Apple's A series or Samsung's Exynos series for having the modem separate. Speaking of Samsung, this company, even though it has withdrawn from manufacturing smartphones from China, is smelling blood and a major opportunity against Qualcomm by looking to sell its Exynos chipsets and modems to Chinese integrators. It has previously done so with Meizu but is looking to widen its market.

A company as big as BBK should consider making its own SoC by now, or buying up someone who does like Mediatek.
Perfect, that's all I needed to know. I understand that having previously seen the US as a reliable supplier, they could have built quite the need around Qualcomm and cutting off cold turkey could be disastrous both ways but as long as they are avoiding Qualcomm as much as possible and looking at all the other options (including self-development), I see that as doing as much as they can. I agree with you that Huawei is being selfish and should sell its Kirins to these companies; it if did that, this trade war casualty could easily be the US crown gem Qualcomm. That would be beautiful but... who knows what Ren is thinking...
 

jimmyjames30x30

Junior Member
Registered Member
Perfect, that's all I needed to know. I understand that having previously seen the US as a reliable supplier, they could have built quite the need around Qualcomm and cutting off cold turkey could be disastrous both ways but as long as they are avoiding Qualcomm as much as possible and looking at all the other options (including self-development), I see that as doing as much as they can. I agree with you that Huawei is being selfish and should sell its Kirins to these companies; it if did that, this trade war casualty could easily be the US crown gem Qualcomm. That would be beautiful but... who knows what Ren is thinking...

I don't think this is Ren's idea. This move is made with a higher strategic vision than what someone in Ren's position would be thinking. Selling Kirin to other Chinese phone makers might be a nice come back against Qualcomm. But that would be a petty move. China's real vision is to disintegrate with the US, and re-integrate with the rest of the world. Why do you think that Taiwan's TSMC never even made any move in this whole China-America technology war? Why do you think Japan is all of a sudden quickly thawing its relation with China? This is because this China-America War is NOT a full scale China-West war. Both China and America is looking to disintegrate with each other, and reshape their own spheres of technological/industrial alliance.

The US wants a culturally homogeneous anglo-sphere alliance. This will include English speaking nations. Because the US now is becoming more and more right wing, and became more and more xenophobic. It will start to discriminate against non-WASP nations. This is when powerful nations like Japan, Germany, Russia, will revert to Great Power dynamics. Right now, China's vision is actually inline with the majority of countries in the rest of the world, even thought many of these countries doesn't look like they are supporting China on the surface. This is because they do not want to be targeted by the US.

Therefore, right now, the priority for China is not meaningless retaliation against the US. The priority now is to re-integrate with as much major countries as possible, even if they were former competitors. Right now, China need to integrate Japan, Korea into her own supply chain. Kick the Americans out, while keep the others in. That's the game plan. This is why I think Huawei didn't make the move to take Qualcomm's business in China. Qualcomm will be out of China sooner or later, even if the company itself doesn't want to be out. The US government and Chinese government will keep on fighting, and this will destroy Qualcomm's business in China. Right now, China need to lay out the cheese and wait, and let the smaller guys come in, take bites, and be integrated with Chinese economy and industry.
 

supercat

Major
China gives conditional OK to its first self-developed Alzheimer's drug

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has granted conditional approval to its first self-developed treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, a move that may point to revived opportunities in a therapeutic area where drugmakers have burned billions of dollars without yielding a validated new drug.

Oligomannate, which uses extract from marine brown algae as raw material, received a conditional green light to treat mild-to-moderate level AD, the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) said in a statement on its website late on Saturday.

An effective treatment for Alzheimer’s, which is estimated in 60%-70% of around 50 million dementia cases worldwide, could become one of the best-selling drugs globally.

“Trial results demonstrated that Oligomannate statistically improved cognitive function in mild-to-moderate AD patients as early as week 4 and the benefit was sustained at each follow-up assessment visit,” Shanghai Green Valley Pharmaceuticals, which developed the drug along with two academic institutions in China, said in a statement.

The outlook for a cure is clouded with theoretical uncertainties and high-profile failures. Pharmaceutical giants including Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Pfizer have ditched their projects on unsatisfactory data.

Biogen last month revived its plans to seek U.S. approval for its aducanumab treatment after announcing in March that it would terminate two large clinical trials for the drug. But some analysts believed FDA approval is highly unlikely.

China is fast-tracking approval for innovative drugs at home in a bid to offer more and cheaper options to patients, as many in the rapidly aging country struggle to find alternatives to costly treatments sold by multinational pharmaceutical firms for chronic diseases.

In an August overhaul to its drug administration law, Beijing said conditional approval could be granted to some still-under-research medicines of “predictable” clinical value for life-threatening diseases for which effective treatment is not immediately available.

Further research on Oligomannate’s pharmacological mechanism and long-term safety and effectiveness is required, according to the NMPA statement.

Green Valley said it would launch the drug “very soon” in China. The company also aims to roll out a phase-3 clinical trial with sites in the United States, Europe and Asia in early 2020 to facilitate global regulatory approval of the drug.

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Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
US to reopen tap of US components for Huawei. This may include Google to license Google apps again.

Huawei May Soon Have Google Back: Huge Boost For Mate 30 Sales

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Maybe this one of the reasons why.

Huawei to spend US$40 billion on supplies from Europe in five years to offset U.S. ban

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Huawei getting into blockchain and fintech.

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Tech giant Huawei inks deal with China’s digital currency unit
As China races to adopt blockchain technology for various uses, including digital currency, Chinese tech giant Huawei has struck a deal with China’s Digital Currency Research Institute.

 
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