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Let me ask you a question first: would you consider buying a mobile phone made by a cross-border manufacturer, such as a mobile phone made by a car company?

After reading this question, you should know which mobile phone we are going to talk about today. That's right, it is the second-generation NIO Phone released some time ago.

Since the release of NIO Phone, there has been constant controversy surrounding it.

It’s also an 8 Gen 3 flagship, and there are so many mature “luxury houses” to choose from. Why should I buy a rough house made by a cross-border manufacturer?

But when I got the real phone, I knew where NIO Phone's confidence came from:

Whether it is placed in an ecosystem or pulled out alone as an ordinary mobile phone, NIO Phone is a mobile phone with unique charm.

Not only is the degree of completion very high, but it also has a kind of "pure desire" elegance that is rarely seen nowadays.

First of all, the design language of NIO Phone is very interesting. It did not follow the trend and choose the "trendy metal small vertical edge". It still has a comfortable rounded corner frame, and the screen has been upgraded to an "equal depth four-curve" dome screen.

The outside is made of expensive micro-area technology, and the inside is also expensive: 2K resolution, Samsung E6 material OLED, and the NIO mobile phone team also used a global 1440 Hz high-frequency PWM dimming technology on this screen.

The skyline design on the back also plays a significant role in improving the hand feel - there is a continuous slope from the camera area to the back panel, and it is very comfortable no matter how you place your fingers.

With this whole set of designs, although the NIO Phone looks unique, it will not feel out of place no matter how you use it in your hand.

The surprise of using it alone completely whetted my appetite. I had to take a closer look at the configuration of NIO Phone:

There seems to be nothing much to talk about when it comes to the 8 Gen 3, 2K screen, and 5020 mAh battery on a flagship phone.

But after further research, I found that NIO Phone has all the configurations that are easily overlooked by novice phone makers:

Infrared remote control, IP68, NFC are all good. Even the charging speed that was criticized in the previous generation has been changed this time, with wired charging up to 80W and wireless charging up to 50W.

It even has wireless reverse charging, which has been mentioned for a long time.The main focus is on balance and practicality.

You can spend money to build hardware, but it takes years to polish the software system. How does NIO Phone perform?

When I actually used it, I found that it had 0 system ads and 0 commercial pre-installed, which was really a bit scary.

Just swipe twice on the desktop and you'll see all the pre-installed apps. There are only 19 of them in total, and they're all basic apps like phone and weather.

After using it for a few days, I can't see any advertising push in the notification bar.

Negative one screen, weather, calendar, etc., can not find any patch psoriasis. What's more rare is that it does not require you to do a strategy to find the advertising switch one by one, the default state is like this, which is recommended that all its manufacturers learn.

If any of you have recently watched short videos and come across the review of the NIO mobile phone, you may find that this phone has eliminated all the splash screen ads of third-party apps.

And it’s not like “Li Tiao Tiao” helping users click the skip button, but it’s just not there at all…

The one on the right is the NIO Phone. Source: Gao Chen from Zhongzheng Review

This is actually because NIO has not officially developed a "splash screen advertising interface".

Here I have to talk to you a little bit about a knowledge point that may be relatively new to many friends: Under normal circumstances, there are many sources of opening screen ads for various apps on our mobile phones - the larger information apps(such as headlines, xx news, etc.)I will go out and solicit investment myself.

Smaller apps or those that are not primarily information-related will directly access the splash screen advertising interface provided by mobile phone manufacturers to app developers.

It is easy to understand why mobile phone manufacturers have this business. For example, if a food delivery software wants to make money by taking on some splash screen ads, it must first build an investment platform and hire people to place splash screen ads. In the end, it doesn't make much money from the ads and may even lose some money.

If this job is taken over by mobile phone manufacturers, then the tasks such as where to get placements, how to display ads, and how to settle payments will all be done by the mobile phone manufacturers on behalf of the food delivery software.

Moreover, mobile phone manufacturers are large in scale and may be able to attract more advertisements. App developers can make money by simply adding one more line of code from the mobile phone manufacturers. Why not do it?

NIO has promised 0 system ads, which means that NIO will neither put ads in pre-installed apps nor engage in this kind of "aggregate splash screen advertising service" as a mobile phone manufacturer.

I specifically looked into it and found that after killing and restarting several mainstream apps multiple times, I could not see any splash screen ads.

This is equivalent to NIO actively giving up this part of the profits to provide users with a purer experience.

It is clean, but is it possible that this system has nothing?

I really didn't worry too much. Sky UI 2.0 has all the functions it should have. You can even press and hold the picture in the album to select text.（ OCR ）, Full-link HDR （ Ultra HDR ）Some of this year's more high-end items have also been arranged.

And the voice assistant on the phone is also NOMI, which is familiar to NIO owners.

Although NIO’s mobile phone was launched not long ago, the NOMI voice assistant is a veteran employee of NIO.

As an "old employee" who landed on NIO's flagship SUV ES8 as early as 2017, the maturity of the product is naturally guaranteed.

With the support of large models, NOMI is now not only responsive, but also more like a proactive assistant.

For example, if you ask it a question like "Is it okay to go out and play in today's weather?", it will not recite a bunch of cold weather data right away, but will give you an answer like a human speaking "The temperature is high today" and tell you some travel suggestions.

And after logging into the same NIO account as the car, NOMI's conversation records can also be synchronized between the phone and the car.

And I found that NOMI is quite good at chatting, and its emotional intelligence is even higher than some of my colleagues. When I was writing this article, I complained to it a few times, and it really comforted me. Looking at its tone, it is hard to imagine that it is just a mobile assistant.

Oh, I almost forgot... One of the most distinctive features of the NIO phone is that it has an independent car control button on the side compared to ordinary phones.

This button already existed on the previous generation of NIO mobile phones, but at that time it could only be used to control the car. This year, the NIO mobile phone team made a change. Short pressing still controls the car, but the corresponding function of long pressing can be selected by yourself.

I took a quick look and found that it can be set to switch between silent and ringing, and can also be set to turn on the flashlight, scan WeChat and Alipay codes, etc.

This is a smart move. The original car control button can only control the car, which is a bit useless for users who have only bought the NIO Phone but not the NIO car. Now with the short and long buttons, car owners can use this button as an "Action Button", and prospective car owners who haven't bought the car yet can also use the car control button.

Like me, I have set the long press to wake up payment in the past two days. I can also choose whether to scan or display the payment code. It feels more convenient than the previous shortcuts or long press of the icon.

In terms of performance scheduling, Sky UI 2.0 also shows a maturity that is inconsistent with its "age". In performance mode, the average frame rate of the 30-minute run of the original Shen Xumi City can be given to 56 frames.

After the test, the maximum temperature on the back of the fuselage reached 50.1 ° C, which is a little hot, but considering the performance release, it is acceptable.

In terms of imaging, which is the most challenging aspect for manufacturers, I can honestly tell you that compared with established mobile phone manufacturers with thousands of people in the imaging team alone, NIO, as a new player, is not able to compete head-on. However, it has shown its utmost sincerity in hardware.

The main camera uses Sony's LYT-T808. The most special thing about this sensor is that it uses "double-layer transistor pixel" technology, which changes the parallel-arranged photodiodes and pixel transistors into a stacked arrangement.

Simply put, with this technology, the sensor can get more light while reducing its size. This also explains why the lens module of NIO Phone is not particularly exaggerated this time.

Although it is not exaggerated, there is still potential and sincerity.

But in terms of image quality, it is indeed not as good as traditional mobile phone manufacturers who have spent several years building algorithms and jointly developing with equipment manufacturers.

But with enough hardware, it is ok for daily use. You can take a look at the simple samples we took during the past few days:

Like this close-up of flowers, the background blur is not particularly exaggerated, and the colors are not crazy saturated for the sake of rushing. The overall look is more everyday and practical.

After experiencing it this way, you will find that NIO Phone is different from what we worried about in terms of configuration and experience. It is not a rough house at all, but more like a simple house with a high degree of completion.

This is just looking at it as a mobile phone alone. If NIO Phone is put into its strong point of driver interconnection, it will be more interesting.

My colleagues from the car department next door helped me experience it for two days. Their feedback to me was that the relationship between NIO Phone and NIO cars wasIt’s not about who makes whom more useful, but more like empowering each other.。

Let’s talk about controlling the car with a mobile phone first. This generation of NIO Phone uses a better UWB antenna, and the success rate of controlling the car to unlock has increased from 99% to 99.5%.

If you happen to be wealthy and own many NIO cars, you can also unlock them all at the same time with the same NIO Phone. It's absolutely great to have one person responding to hundreds of calls.

After getting in the car, the navigation in the map can be seamlessly transferred to the car, and the addresses copied from WeChat and Dianping on the mobile phone can also be automatically transferred.

On the other hand, due to its deep integration with the car, NIO Phone also has more possibilities as a mobile phone.

At the press conference, NIO showed us a feature called on-board broadcasting. For example, there are many travel bloggers now. If they use NIO's car + mobile phone, they don't need to bother with things like mobile phone holders.

Because NIO Phone can directly call the camera on the NIO car, compared with the solution of sucking a mobile phone holder on the screen, if an accident really happens, it can reduce the risk of being "shot in the head by foreign objects".

Of course, in addition to live streaming, you can also transfer the WeChat video call with your family to the car and continue the chat using the camera on the NIO car.

I just don't know if this camera in the car can beautify my photos if I use it to take selfies?

After looking at the camera linkage, let’s take a look at the sound.

Why do I mention this separately? Because I recently discovered that when I was driving, my wife did not play music directly on the car computer, but would first connect to the phone via Bluetooth and then play the music on the phone. . .

Her reason was simple—she was used to it.

But as we all know, the bit rate of Bluetooth is not very high, so using Bluetooth to connect the car headphone to play music is a bit of a waste of the dozen surround units on the car. . .

Therefore, NIO designed the sound flow from mobile phone to car computer for this scenario, transmitting the audio to the car computer losslessly through the Wi-Fi channel.

And it’s not just as simple as lossless transmission. Because NIO’s car audio supports Dolby Atmos, NIO has taken one more step:

If the audio source being played on the phone is in Dolby Atmos format(For example, Apple Music), NIO can transfer this audio stream with more than two channels to the car computer in its entirety, and then restore it through the dozen or so speaker units in the car.

NIO also gave this technology a special name - "NIO Link Immersive Sound" to distinguish it from the audio flow between other car machines and mobile phones.

But I am still more concerned about another thing - is it possible to transfer the game sound effects to the car as well?

You won’t believe it, it really works, with such immersive stereo sound, playing games is simply a pleasure.

The NOMI voice assistant we mentioned earlier can be used in more ways when it comes to the car. For example, you can use NOMI on the car computer to control your phone, and more complex operations are also possible.

For example, you can control WeChat on your mobile phone, send your location to your friends, etc., and the whole process can be controlled by voice without clicking on the screen of the mobile phone or the car computer.

OK, let's stop here for the second generation NIO Phone. After a few days of experience, I feel that this phone is not only highly finished and elegant in use, but more importantly, it shows us,In a "dual king" ecosystem with both cars and mobile phones, what should a qualified mobile phone look like?

Controlling car computers with mobile phones is not a new thing. Long before NIO launched its mobile phones, various automobile manufacturers have been working on driver-driver connectivity.

However, few manufacturers are researching how to enable deeper interaction between mobile phones and cars beyond "car remote control".

And among these manufacturers, NIO may be the one that has gone the earliest and furthest.

First, there was NOMI’s cross-terminal function, then UWB automatic distance sensing parking, “immersive sound flow” that went one step further than others, and in-car playback that can freely call upon car hardware…

What NIO has done between mobile phones and smart cars is not only to make the mobile phone a true "external car brain" to bring users a better car experience; it also allows the hardware in the car to, in turn, assist the mobile phone, our personal smart device, to expand more possibilities.

This idea of ​​taking one more step and continuing to dig deeper can be regarded as a different example for the industry.

So I am very curious about when NIO will release a tablet. If it does, I will definitely buy one to show my support.

Written by: Shiang

edit: Milo

Art editor： Xuanxuan

photography: Xiang Yu

Image, source：

Bad reviews for X.PIN and NIO