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reporter: he xinye, wu yangyang

map: cheng xing

editor: wu yangyang

Key Points

an unprecedented new button appears on the iphone 16 series of mobile phones - the camera button.

apple ceo cook called the iphone 16 a phone "designed from the beginning for apple intelligence" - from the camera button to the chip.

unlike apple, which once again emphasized that the iphone 16 is an ai phone, huawei did not talk much about ai at the press conference on the same day.

after smartphone innovation entered a bottleneck period, foldable screen phones are indeed a new growth point.

on the same day, apple and huawei held conferences to launch new mobile phones, respectively releasing the iphone 16 series of mobile phones and a tri-fold mobile phone called "huawei mate xt extraordinary master", with starting prices of 5,999 yuan and 19,999 yuan respectively.

although both phones are aimed at the high-end market, their core target users are obviously different. the mate 70 series phones that are rumored to be directly comparable to the iphone 16 did not appear at huawei's press conference.

according to the news obtained by "new cortex", the mate 70 will not be launched until the fall, but it is still unclear whether a press conference will be held at that time. this schedule is later than the launch of the mate 60 series. on august 29 last year, the mate 60 was quietly put on sale. in the press conference held in september, huawei only launched a new series called "extraordinary master" and did not mention any information related to the mate 60.

as chatgpt is about to celebrate its second anniversary, how to get big models out of cloud computing centers and into small devices such as personal computers and even smartphones has become the focus of competition among terminal manufacturers - users are also looking forward to this, and you can tell by listening to the voices on social media.

however, so far, the most advanced mobile phones demonstrated to users by apple and huawei cannot be said to meet user expectations.

apple has the hardware ready, but the software is far behind

there wasn't much new in apple's september 10th press conference. the latest features of the iphone 16 series phones were basically a repetition of the apple developer conference wwdc 2024 held in june this year, except for a new button - the camera button.

this button will appear on the side of the iphone 16 series phones, making the iphone feel more like a large-screen digital camera, but smarter than a digital camera - not only can it take pictures, but it can also realize the various "visual intelligence" that apple claims. for example, when you press it to point the lens at a restaurant and ask about the background information of the restaurant, the ai ​​behind it will identify the restaurant and provide relevant information and even a reservation link; you can even use it as a learning machine. similarly, when you press it to point the lens at difficult homework questions, the built-in ai can also answer your questions in real time.

on the back of the phone screen, there is an additional physical button specifically for controlling the camera.

this series of "visual intelligence" is part of apple intelligence, but it can only be enabled by controlling the camera button. at the early morning press conference, apple once again sold its fans the apple intelligence service that had already appeared at the apple developer conference in june: by reading the user's screen, the phone's built-in ai can understand the complex context of the user's current use of the phone and provide personalized services. for example, when using chat applications, users can use apple intelligence to generate emojis that adapt to the current context in real time, apple intelligence can more intelligently summarize important information in emails and display it in summaries, and can also directly connect to chatgpt to talk to siri when the user calls it. of course, it can also further interpret the content captured by the camera in real time, search for products, and even make reservations, realizing the "visual intelligence" controlled by the camera button.

it’s basically the same functionality that openai demonstrated when it released gpt-4o, except this time there’s an easier-to-use camera button.

apple intelligence, including "visual intelligence", is partially supported by apple's self-developed models, while complex tasks will call openai's gpt series models, especially gpt-4o. at the apple developer conference wwdc 2024 held in june this year, apple announced apple intelligence and its cooperation with openai.

however, users who bought the iphone 16 series as soon as it was released (pre-orders were accepted at 8 pm on september 13 and it was released on september 20) will not be able to experience the series of ai features claimed by apple intelligence. apple's timetable for the launch of apple intelligence is to launch a beta version in the united states this fall, which means that when ios 18.1 is released in a few weeks, users who use american english will be the first to use this feature.

users of other english versions will have to wait until december, while the chinese, french, japanese and spanish versions of apple intelligence services will not be available until 2025. in june of this year, there were reports in the market that apple had contacted baidu, alibaba and baichuan intelligence to find local partners for its ai services. apple has never confirmed such rumors. if the world's leading models such as gpt, gemini, and claude cannot be used in the iphone 16, chinese users may not change their phones for this. according to the second quarter data released by idc in july, apple's mobile phone shipments in the chinese market have fallen out of the top 5, the first time in history.

it adopts a 3nm process and is said to be able to support running large models on mobile phones.

however, apple ceo cook said that the iphone 16 is a phone "designed for apple intelligence from the beginning." to support apple intelligence, the iphone 16 series phones are equipped with a18 series chips, which use a 3nm process. at the press conference, apple also said that this chip is "designed to run large models." this means that even if the model and ai services are not ready, this new phone is also prepared in hardware to support large models.

huawei's mate 70 is still a secret, and the three-fold phone is just an appetizer at best

unlike apple, which once again emphasized that the iphone 16 is an ai phone and talked about its apple intelligence package, huawei did not talk much about ai at the press conference on the same day.

yu chengdong, who released the "huawei mate xt extraordinary master" tri-fold phone, talked about a lot of things related to size, hinges, thickness, and materials, claiming that it is currently the world's largest and thinnest folding screen mobile phone, and can be used in three states: single screen, dual screen and triple screen, corresponding to different scenarios. when the three screens are fully unfolded, the size of mate xt reaches 10.2 inches, which is larger than ipad mini (8.3 inches). huawei believes that such a tri-fold phone can replace the demand for tablets and laptops in some scenarios. in order to meet the needs of office scenarios, huawei also released a folding touch keyboard this time, which is about the same size as a mobile phone after folding. yu chengdong said that when combined with the folding keyboard, mate xt will become a "laptop in your pocket."

yu chengdong said that mate xt is a mobile phone that "others can think of it, but can't make it." "we have been thinking about it for five years and finally made it." previously, many manufacturers have demonstrated prototypes or concept phones with three-fold screens. for example, samsung has demonstrated two three-fold mobile phones with different folding methods at ces in 2022, and transsion also demonstrated its three-fold concept phone phantom ultimate 2 at the end of august this year. however, due to technical difficulties such as screens and hinges, the yield of three-fold mobile phones is currently difficult to guarantee, and mass production is still difficult. yu chengdong introduced that it is very difficult for a screen to bend inside and outside at the same time. for this reason, huawei has created the tiangong hinge system to achieve double impact resistance. yu chengdong said that after the process is improved and the yield is improved, the product price may be reduced. according to wall street news, huawei mate xt has a stock of about 1 million units.

huawei opened pre-orders for the mate xt on september 7. on the morning of september 10, more than 3.4 million people had already made reservations for the new product at the huawei mall. after the press conference, the number of reservations exceeded 4.3 million - but how many of these reservation holders will actually place an order to buy such an expensive phone in the end may be another number.

the ai ​​capabilities that the outside world expects were not mentioned much at this conference. after apple released apple intelligence, huawei also launched a similar ai package, harmony intelligence, at the developer conference in june this year. at that time, in addition to demonstrating common functions such as ai raw pictures, ai sound repair, and ai cutouts, huawei xiaoyi was also upgraded from an ordinary voice assistant to an agent. huawei said it can achieve planning and task execution across multiple applications. but at this conference, yu chengdong only mentioned the integration of two ai functions on the new mobile phone, one is ai photo editing, and the other is how the assistant xiaoyi can better complete functions such as translation and split-screen summary.

after smartphone innovation entered a bottleneck period, foldable screen phones are indeed a new growth point. according to data released by market research firm idc, in the second quarter of this year, china's foldable screen mobile phone market shipments reached 2.57 million units, with huawei ranking first with a market share of 41.7%. huawei first launched its first foldable screen phone, huawei mate x, in 2019. in the past year, it has successively released a number of foldable screens, including mate x5, pocket 2, nova flip, etc.

however, if huawei wants to seize the entrance to the next era, users’ expectations for huawei phones are not just about how powerful the screen’s folding capabilities are.

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