Recently Meizu and Vivo Announced unusual smartphones: without connectors, slots and physical buttons. These concepts are another attempt to find an answer to the eternal question: what are the most important people - a form or content? Only this time the company urge consumers not to vote in words, but by what lies in the wallet. Do you like the idea of a nice smartphone? If yes, get ready to pay. But how much did this purchase be justified?
In September 2016, Apple has released the first iPhone without 3.5 MM connector for headphones, and the Internet exploded. Sites Pedreges angry articles. An extraordinary act Apple was called "nonsense and disrespect for the user." There was not a single person who would remain indifferent to him. And this can be understood.
From the 50s of the last century, the minijack was one of the main elements of consumer electronics. At first, the 3.5 mm nest appeared in transistor radio receivers. In the next sixty years, they were equipped with almost all types of media devices, including portable tape recorders, cassette players and radio, laptops, computers, mobile phones, tablets, consoles, and much more. The minijack has become a mandatory attribute of various devices. And Apple thrown him down.
"Today, the space is of paramount importance, therefore, to maintain an ancient analog large-size connector, performing a single function, meaningless," said Phil Schiller, Chief Operating Director Apple, on Presentations iPhone 7. Schiller stated that Apple had to abandon the minijack for the sake of the IPhone 7 moisture protection. He stressed that the company needed non-lawn courage to become one of the first manufacturers who went to such a bold decision. Despite the loud resonance, Apple still flourishes and sells smartphones by millions.
In trouble, any output is good
, as it were, Apple has created a precedent, and other manufacturers followed the example. Google abandoned 3.5 mm of exit USB-C, together with it Motorola, Huawei and OnePlus. At the same time, each manufacturer began to put an adapter for headphones with a USB-C in the minijack. Trend is gaining momentum, but this does not mean that people are happy to him.
What they started Meizu and vivo goes to a new level of "disrespect for the user".
There are no absolutely no holes and slots in the recently announced Meizu Zero. Absolutely not. Neither minijack, nor USB-C, nor slot under a SIM card, nor under microSD. Sits the battery? Here is support for wireless charging. Want to listen to music? Turn on Bluetooth. Do you need to transfer files? Throw over the cloud. What about mobile internet and services? Very simple: inside it is ESIM. Meizu has answers to all questions. That's just not let the Chinese impose your logic to you. At least now.
"Designers dream of ideal monoblocks without holes and buttons. But the reality is such that the wireless connections can not be used everywhere, "said Avi Greenaret, director of consumer research director in GlobalData. - "Adapters will help to accept the lack of a nest under the headphones, but until the dots of wireless charging will not be widespread, deprive the consumer of the charging cable, which is also used to transfer files and other purposes, simply impractical."
Mainstream, which we deserve?
Today, USB ports for charging smartphones are in some cars and public places like Starbucks. Wireless meals are a niche technology that has not yet received sufficient distribution. As long as complete with each smartphone will not lie the wireless charging station, consumers will use wires. They will do it also because wired charging is still faster than wireless.
The idea of a smartphone without a physical SIM card also has its difficulties. ESIM assumes that to access the cellular operator in the smartphone will be a special programmable chip. In words, everything is simple, but the technology is not yet well implemented.
Apple put ESIM in iPhone XS and XS MAX, but US mobile operators very slowly responded to the introduction of new technology. AT & T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless added support for electronic SIM cards only a few months after the exit of the flagships. Sprint still does not work with ESIM from Apple. But there are still hundreds of other operators who do not think about the introduction of a new service.
Among all other things, Meizu Zero will not have physical buttons. Volume control will be carried out with the help of squeezing the housing. Such technology was used in HTC U12, and precisely because of its poor-quality work, the smartphone received negative feedback. Can Meizu succeed where HTC fails? How to know.
"Apple designers hope to ultimately remove most external ports and buttons on the iPhone, including also charging port," said last year on the Bloomberg website. This is this Apple intended to do when developing iPhone X in 2017, but later the company had to abandon the part of ambitions due to the high cost of wireless charging. All this means that sooner or later we will see the iPhone without ports and buttons, and then the example of the cumenitzers will follow their competitors.
Meizu and Vivo clearly want to get out time. Will people buy innovation smartphones? Of course, where to go. But will this purchase justified? In the near future, it is most likely not. However, in the end, we all will once we have the owners of non-profit technique. I like it or not, manufacturers move in this direction.
