After 2020, the problem of whether to buy an 5G mobile phone in 2021 was once again pushed to users. On the one hand, 5G mobile phones have occupied half of the mobile phone market in 2020, and the price of 5G mobile phones that have fallen rapidly in 2021 is destined to promote the rapid popularization of 5G mobile phones, so 5G mobile phones are already the general trend. On the other hand, the low coverage area and high package price of 5G have made many users hesitate.
In the long run, the coverage area and package price of 5G will definitely be improved. In this way, the key to the problem becomes: there must be a reason for expensiveness. What else can 5G do besides being faster? In 2021, the answer to this question will determine how far the road to popularization of 5G mobile phones can go.
5G mobile phone industry changes
2021 If we talk about the choice of 5G mobile phones, we must turn back to the past 2020. The reason is that in this year, there have been too many drastic changes in the world of 5G mobile phones.
The epidemic in 2020 has reduced global mobile phone shipments by about 14%, but for all 5G processors and mobile phone manufacturers, the migration from 4G mobile phones to 5G mobile phones is a crucial opportunity. Therefore, within the 5G processor industry, manufacturers including MediaTek , Qualcomm , HiSilicon , Samsung and Apple have all begun to make efforts. Among them, MediaTek has become the biggest variable.
MediaTek has launched many good products in recent years, such as the MT6752 as a mid-range chip comparable to the flagship chip of the contemporary era, the P10 has been on the market for three years and has adopted new phones, and the P60 brings AI into the mid-range product line for the first time, etc. We can even say that MediaTek directly promoted the development and competition of the mobile phone chip industry, thus avoiding the emergence of the mobile phone processor market as a dominant situation. However, due to positioning issues, MediaTek's deepest impression in consumers is not a high-end flagship manufacturer. Even if it releases high-end flagship chips, it is difficult to get the popularity of mobile phone manufacturers. But since the end of November 2019, MediaTek released its first 5G SoC Dimensity 1000, and the turning point has really come.
5G SoC Dimensity 1000 demonstrates MediaTek's determination to fight the 5G track, and faced its rival Qualcomm head-on in the early stages of 5G development. The performance of Dimensity 1000 series processors can definitely rank in the first tier of 2020 processors. Among all major scoring software, Dimensity 1000+'s performance is second only to the strongest Snapdragon 865 on the market. Immediately afterwards, MediaTek's Dimensity 800 series successfully entered the procurement chain of mainstream manufacturers, and all the four major manufacturers of Huami OV used MediaTek chips.
The latest research report released by Counterpoint, an authoritative market research agency, shows that MediaTek's market share has increased to 31% due to its outstanding performance in the US$100-250 price range, while achieving growth in major markets such as China and India. With such a record, MediaTek became the world's largest smartphone chip supplier in the third quarter of 2020.
Under such a general background, on January 20, 2021, MediaTek officially launched the Dimensity 1200 at the online launch of the new Dimensity product, once again pushing the competition around 5G processors to a climax. Since the newly released Dimensity 1200 will obviously continue MediaTek's offensive in the 5G track, its performance has also attracted special attention from the industry.
From the perspective of performance, Dimensity 1200 is manufactured based on TSMC's 6-nanometer advanced process. The CPU adopts a flagship three-cluster architecture design of 1+3+4, including 1 ARM Cortex-A78 super-large core with the industry's highest main frequency of 3.0GHz, 3 ARM Cortex-A78 large cores with 2.6HGz, and 4 Cortex-A55 energy efficiency cores. Dimensity 1200 has increased CPU performance by 22% and energy efficiency by 25% compared to Dimensity 1000+. Combined with TSMC's 6nm process, it can effectively balance performance and power consumption. In terms of GPU, Dimensity 1200 uses the nine-core flagship GPU Arm Mali-G77, which increases the GPU performance of Dimensity 1000+ by 13%.
It is not difficult to see from this that Dimensity 1200 obviously balances performance and power consumption in terms of design. Although the Dimensity 1200 was released later than its competitors, its main competitors also had problems with power consumption. On the other hand, Dimensity 1200 overclocks the GPU, while the CPU uses the latest A78 core, which has little power consumption and cleverly avoids the problem of heating.From this point of view alone, the market opportunities of Dimensity 1200 are obviously much greater.
From the perspective of 5G performance, Dimensity 1200 has obtained the globally recognized German Rhine TUV certification, providing dual-mode support for NSA and SA, and also supports 5G dual-stop and dual VoNR under dual-mode. By supporting global Sub-6GHz band and 5G dual carrier aggregation, higher 5G rates and wider signal coverage can be achieved.
It can be seen that Dimensity 1200 will bring a more stable 5G network , which provides a seamless 5G experience in all scenarios including high-speed rail and elevator modes. In particular, the excellent performance of MediaTek 5G UltraSave power saving technology in 5G communication power consumption is indeed worthy of users' expectations.
From these data, it is not difficult to see that Dimensity 1200 has surpassed all flagship products in 2020 in performance. With its comprehensive strength, Dimensity 1200 will shoulder the banner of flagship experience. MediaTek has been pursuing a high-end dream that has obviously taken another step forward. Through steady efforts, MediaTek provides users with more choices in the 5G mobile phone market in 2021. New thinking on the breakthrough of homogeneous
was banned in HiSilicon processors. Samsung processors are satisfied with self-sufficiency, and the dispute over 5G mid-to-high-end processors in the Android camp is concentrated between Qualcomm and MediaTek. Among them, one dominant player will obviously not bring healthy development to users and the market. To avoid this situation, the outcome of Dimensity 1200 will become an important piece that will move the whole body. In order to analyze the application prospects of Dimensity 1200, we still have to return to MediaTek's own development history.
is not only MediaTek, but also the development of the entire Taiwan chip design industry, from the beginning, has been in a state of catching up with American chip companies. In this way, their development strategy can only be to create similar products at a lower cost if the speed of technology research and development cannot be lower than that of leading companies. MediaTek has also experienced a journey from low-end to mid-end in the research and development of smartphone processors, and then gained a foothold in the mid-end, and continued to impact high-end products. This process has always affected users' confidence in MediaTek products.
All of this has undergone fundamental changes since Dimensity 1000+. Therefore, users’ expectations for Dimensity 1200 are whether it can continue the Dimensity 1000+ win, and at the same time how many new surprises it can bring. In order to answer this question, let’s start with a relatively niche but most resource-consuming gaming mobile market analysis.
gaming phone, as the name suggests, is a mobile phone that is more suitable for gaming. To evaluate the quality of a gaming phone, it is necessary to take into account various factors such as performance, cooling, battery life, network, sound effects, screen, and auxiliary peripherals.
In a 2020 gaming mobile phone recommendation listed by high-end players, Redmi K30 Supreme Commemorative Edition, realme X7 Pro, and iQOO Z1 are all on the list. Except for Huawei Mate40 Pro, which uses Kirin 9000 processor, all other machines use Snapdragon 865. Therefore, in gaming phones, we can completely regard it as a showdown between Dimensity 1000+ and Snapdragon 865.
players gave the following evaluation of the Redmi K30 Supreme Commemorative Edition and realme X7 Pro that used Dimensity 1000+: At the price of 2,000 yuan, what these two machines do is completely massacre, because other models can do it, Dimensity 1000+ has done it. On the other hand, what Dimensity 1000+ can do is not possible for other models.
When Dimensity 1200 was released, MediaTek obviously realized the importance of compatible gaming phones, so Dimensity 1200 provided more support for the gaming experience.
Judging from several elements of gaming phones, Dimensity 1200 is more powerful than Dimensity 1000+ in performance. By equipped with flagship dual-channel uFS3.1 flash memory, the content reading speed is improved, thus bringing faster response speed to the game app.
Judging from the development trend of mobile games, for gaming mobile phones, many manufacturers have begun to launch cloud gaming modes, but this mode can only be run under the 5G network. To this end, Dimensity 1200 has passed the TÜV Rheinland certification in Germany, supports high-performance 5G connections, and through the high-quality 5G networking experience in all scenarios, making games with high-speed requirements smoother.
In terms of gaming experience, Dimensity 1200 can realize dual-slot parallel game calls through HyperEngine 3.0 on 5G network connection, and users can answer calls from the secondary card while playing mobile games on the main card.
In response to the high power consumption caused by games, Dimensity 1200 uses super hot spots in game mode to reduce the power consumption of mobile phones when sharing hot spots, and uses the 5G high-speed rail mode in game mode to reduce the latency of the game network, while saving power and long battery life of the mobile phone. Then, through high-flash power saving mode, smart healthy charging and Wi-Fi 6 power saving mode, the problem of high power consumption can be solved to the greatest extent.
It is worth mentioning that Dimensity 1200 also has ray tracing on the PC game rendering technology, bringing mobile game players a comparable game picture.
According to a research report released by iMedia Consulting, the number of domestic mobile game players has reached 532 million. When smartphones are plagued by homogeneity, market segments such as gaming phones and security phones have become a new direction for mobile phone manufacturers to break through after music phones and photo phones.
From this perspective, what Dimensity 1200 has improved is not only performance, but also more understanding and prediction of market segments. Products such as Dimensity 1000+ have already established advantages in the local market, and Dimensity 1200 has expanded this advantage by leveraging its stronger performance and understanding of user needs.
scenario-based application, the future path of 5G mobile phones, what new value can
bring to users? It is a question that the entire 5G industry must think about. The answer to this question is actually hidden in the various new needs of users. In this regard, even smartphone processor manufacturers that are at the upstream of the 5G industry cannot stay out of the matter. On this issue, Dimensity 1200's understanding of user needs is not only stopped at traditional gaming phones.
The sudden outbreak of the epidemic in 2020 has made online live broadcasts show a blowout development momentum. After the epidemic has subsided, the maturity and popularity of 5G networks and the continuous improvement of mobile terminal performance will have greatly changed the usage habits and needs of mobile phone users. Videos and live broadcasts will surpass games and shopping to become the largest entertainment application for mobile phone users. Therefore, the video and audio functions of 5G mobile phones will become increasingly important.
In previous videos and live broadcasts, they often rely on the beauty and photo editing functions of related APPs, but the distortion effect has been widely criticized. In this regard, the real demand of users is that the mobile phone is as close to what the eyes see as possible. I hope that selfies and videos will be more beautiful than what the eyes see, and these needs eventually lead to the demand for AI multimedia mobile phones.
Most people think that the quality of mobile phone images and audio-visual functions mainly depends on the lenses and screens selected by mobile phone manufacturers. However, as the heart of the mobile phone, the SoC chip is the core basis for outputting all audio-visual functions. From the optimization of the underlying chip, it can greatly improve the multimedia experience of audio-visual images such as photography, video, etc.
Since the release of the Dimensity Series 5G SoC, MediaTek has used the computing power of an independent AI processor APU and combined with exclusive technology to improve the user experience of mobile phone photography and video. The Dimensity 1200 released this time has brought new upgrades and iterations in three aspects: photography, video creation and video display.
In terms of video playback and display, Dimensity 1200 uses AI technology to enhance the video quality, uses artificial intelligence to deeply learn a large number of videos, and trains the video images frame by frame from the director's perspective, bringing a dynamic range close to HDR to the SDR film source. The SDR to HDR technology under the support of AI can allow mobile terminals to present more exciting video images.
In terms of photography, Dimensity 1200 has increased the speed of AI night shooting by 20% with the AI computing power and high energy efficiency of independent AI processor APU3.0, combined with NN Model optimization and bandwidth compression technology. Dimensity 1200 uses AI multi-task concurrency scheduling technology to perform intelligent processing such as AI noise reduction, AI exposure, and AI object tracking on photos in real time, allowing users to record full-frame super panoramic night scenes on dim nights.
In terms of video creation, Dimensity 1200 supports chip-level single-frame progressive 4K HDR video technology. When users record 4K videos, each frame is fusion processed 3 times, which significantly improves the video quality in terms of color, contrast, details, etc. Combined with Dimensity 1200's HDR10+ video encoding technology, it can bring an end-to-end cross-screen HDR experience. In addition, it also supports AI multi-person blurring 4K video recording, based on Dimensity 1200's multi-core APU 3.0 acceleration and Imagiq ISP, further realizing mobile phone video shooting special effects such as portrait distortion correction, passerby removal, background replacement, and double exposure.
Every anchor wants to obtain a more layered live broadcast picture. In this case, intelligent focus of multi-deep field may become the function they are most interested in. Based on the chip layer MediaTek Imagiq ISP and high-precision autofocus (AF) function, Dimensity 1200 can detect and judge the subject and details of the picture in real time, make decisions quickly and complete subject focus and detail focus, and quickly switch focus smoothly. In various application scenarios such as live broadcast and video communication, the broadcaster provides efficient and convenient automatic focus function, with flexible and accurate focus, making the live broadcast screen more layered.
During video calls or live broadcasts, blurred and distorted images have always been a problem. The AI streaming media picture quality enhancement technology is based on APU 3.0. It compensates the image quality through AI, providing clearer picture quality for live broadcast, video conferencing, streaming and other video applications, and restoring the reality.
This shows that in the face of users' video and live broadcast needs, Dimensity 1200 has completed a pre-emptive layout through advance prediction. Faced with the user's question of "What value can 5G bring?", Dimensity 1200 has gradually moved farther and farther on the road to scenario-based application of 5G processors.
[Conclusion]
Currently, the penetration rate of 5G mobile phones has exceeded 18%, and this number will become 49% by 2022, and 5G mobile phones will eventually become mainstream. This shows from one aspect what does the 5G processor track in this year and next year mean for MediaTek to keep striving to be a high-end processor manufacturer? This will be a battle against MediaTek, which has successfully ranked among the top five in the global chip design industry.
Under such a background, the newly released Dimensity 1200 not only shows strong performance, but also has a deeper understanding and prediction of user needs. After the release of Dimensity 1200, many OEM manufacturers including Xiaomi , vivo, OPPO, realme, etc. have expressed their support for it, and have predicted that the terminals will be launched in 2021. This gives MediaTek too many possibilities in the 5G processor market in 2021.
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The author of the three best-selling books " Xiaomi Ecological Chain Battlefield Notes ", "WeChat Thinking" and "WeChat Power".
