What does smart TV bring to OPPO?

Author | Wang Jinwang

Produced by | Leifeng.com Industry Group

It is no secret that OPPO wants to make smart TVs.

Even when OPPO announced its IoT ecosystem strategy, smart TVs were already shown as OPPO's key products for connecting to the home scene and were displayed in the core entry circle of the map.

However, now that Xiaomi's smart TV shipments have exceeded 10 million units and Huawei's smart screens are booming, what new ideas can OPPO bring to smart TVs?

This is not only a challenge faced by OPPO's emerging mobile terminal business unit, which has just been established for less than two years, but also a focus of industry attention.

On October 19, at the OPPO Smart Lifestyle Conference, OPPO smart TV was officially announced. Also unveiled was the IoT product matrix that OPPO has built over the past year or so.

Long before the press conference, OPPO had already begun pre-promotion for this product. The official even directly released pre-promotion copy and product renderings, which attracted the audience's attention.

What the real OPPO smart TV looks like is shown in the following figure:

This product is the smart TV flagship product released by OPPO this time - OPPO Smart TV S1.

When talking about smart TVs, the OPPO product manager also first emphasized picture quality, next-generation picture quality.

It is reported that OPPO Smart TV S1 uses a 4K quantum dot QLED screen, supports Super HDR, 120Hz refresh rate, 48-120Hz VRR variable refresh rate, 1500nits peak brightness, NTSC 120% color gamut 1.07 billion colors, and game delay as low as 20ms...

OPPO's video quality engine also supports MEMC, DCT, AI PQ, SR and other functions.

This kind of picture quality configuration has reached the current mainstream smart TV picture quality standards.

However, many people noticed that OPPO chose QLED instead of OLED this time.

Huang Shunming, general manager of OPPO's smart large-screen product center, said, "This is mainly due to the consideration of the color gamut and contrast capabilities of smart TVs. In this regard, we have achieved the world's leading NTSC 120% color gamut of 1.07 billion colors."

Although OPPO has entered the QLED camp in terms of picture quality, it has not been able to fully demonstrate the uniqueness of OPPO smart TVs.

As an acoustic expert, OPPO's real uniqueness in television is reflected in the sound quality.

Before introducing the smart TV, OPPO's product manager even used the Blu-ray player released in 2017, which cost nearly 10,000 yuan, as an introduction. According to official statements, the price of this product on second-hand trading platforms has now tripled.

OPPO seems to want to make the sound quality of smart TVs the best. It equipped the S1 with 18 speaker units and built a 5.1.2 surround sound channel. Many industry audiences at the press conference lamented, "OPPO is like pairing a screen with a speaker."

In addition, this smart TV is tuned by Dynaudio's chief acoustic expert Daniel Emonts and supports Dolby Atmos sound effects.

In terms of software, OPPO has also developed a dedicated system ColorOS TV for this TV, which supports 100+ APP content.

The system uses a 4K UI interface and is equipped with a linear four-microphone array and Breeno voice assistant, which can realize the function of a smart speaker with the screen off.

One of the software functions that OPPO has spent a lot of effort to develop is the screen projection function. The screen projection function of Smart TV S1 includes the following aspects:

Supports WeChat video calls, users can make WeChat calls through smart TVs;

OPPO cooperates with Xiaotiancai, which allows users to call their children’s Xiaotiancai watches directly through the TV, and even locate their real-time location directly through the TV.

In addition, OPPO smart TV also supports NFC one-touch screen projection.

In terms of content, it currently supports Aurora TV, KuaiMi TV, Mango TV, and Kiwi TV.

The official especially emphasized that OPPO has made breakthroughs in TV content, supporting full-content search function and continuous voice search function.

This means that the four content resource libraries can be used as one content resource library through intelligent voice.

Because of these capabilities, Huang Shunming said of the OPPO Smart TV S1, which is officially priced at 7,999 yuan, "This product is absolutely not inferior to the Huawei Smart Screen X65 in terms of performance."

In addition, OPPO also released the OPPO Smart TV R1 series equipped with the MT9652 chip and supporting WiFi 6, including two size versions of 55 inches and 65 inches, priced at 3,299 yuan and 4,299 yuan respectively.

How does OPPO officially think about the positioning of TV in its own IoT ecosystem?

In this regard, Huang Shunming also specifically mentioned, "OPPO has been thinking about making TVs for a long time. We regard TVs as the core entrance to smart homes."

OPPO officially entered the smartwatch market in March this year, and recently updated the ECG version.

This time, OPPO also updated its smartwatch product line again. Not only did it release a new system, it also announced the OPPO WATCH RX (43mm) with a round dial and a 1.28-inch AMOLED screen.

According to Leiphone.com, the highlight of this update is the system upgrade of the smart watch - ColorOS Watch 1.5 system.

It is reported that the ColorOS Watch 1.5 system already supports 30+ APPs, 50+ watch faces, can be connected to a treadmill, supports SOS emergency calls, and even supports Baidu Maps independent navigation function.

However, as a "big power consumer", Baidu Maps will inevitably affect the battery life of the smart watch to a certain extent if used too frequently. This function on the smart watch is obviously the same as the SOS emergency call function and exists as an emergency backup.

As for the comparison of power consumption when using/not using Baidu Maps, OPPO did not provide data comparison at the press conference.

OPPO pointed out at the press conference that this system will be upgraded and applied to all OPPO smartwatches, including 41mm, 46mm, stainless steel and ECG versions.

Before introducing the new OPPO Enco X headphones, OPPO first used the 2005 OPPO X3 MP3 to warm up the audience, and OPPO Enco X also incorporated some of the design ideas of OPPO X3 MP3.

According to OPPO's internal user survey data, when using smart headphones, more than 60% of users are still more concerned about sound quality.

As OPPO's flagship TWS headset, this product adopts the dynamic balance acoustic engine (DBEE 3.0) whose ideas originated from the OPPO X3 MP3 in 2005.

The engine adopts a coaxial dual-unit design, an 11mm three-layer composite diaphragm, and cooperates with Dynaudio. OPPO completed the acoustic development of OPPO Enco X at Dynaudio headquarters and Daniel Emonts designed 30 sound prototypes in 207 days, which ultimately led to the current sound quality of this product.

For example, in terms of noise reduction, OPPO uses ultra-wideband deep active noise reduction capabilities, which increases the noise reduction processing speed by 20% per second and has three noise reduction modes:

• Strong noise reduction mode can isolate noise from subways, high-speed trains, airplanes, etc., allowing you to experience immersive music in a noisy environment;

• Weak noise reduction mode, suitable for use in weak noise environments such as offices and cafes;
  

• Transparency mode: in this mode, users can hear the sounds of the surrounding environment while listening to music.

According to the official introduction, OPPO Enco X uses a new dual-core noise reduction chip, which can also switch between strong noise reduction and weak noise reduction modes according to different noise environments, and adds a one-click switch to transparent mode function, making the noise reduction experience more humane.

As the smartphone market becomes increasingly saturated, players at the top of the mobile phone market are beginning to think: What will be their second growth curve?

Unsurprisingly, the hardware, scenarios, and services brought by the Internet of Things have become the chosen ones at the right time.

On January 14, 2019, OPPO's emerging mobile terminal business unit was officially established. This department is OPPO's "IoT Business Unit".

In the past two years, although OPPO did not release the "1+8+N" and "1+4+X" IoT full-scenario strategies like Huawei and Xiaomi, according to Leifeng.com (official account: Leifeng.com), OPPO, also a leading mobile phone manufacturer, plays a similar role in the IoT field as Huawei and Xiaomi, which can be understood as follows:

Based on smartphones, expand core hardware (entry-level products), open the Internet of Things platform, and build scenarios and ecosystems.

It now appears that OPPO has completed the three core hardwares of smart headphones, smart watches, and smart TVs, and has launched 5G CPE for home networks.

As OPPO's first offline launch of its IoT product line, OPPO also ingeniously brought together IoT products and directly created a "family bucket" during the pre-conference warm-up. This OPPO IoT hardware family bucket, which is different from the KFC family bucket, covers four products:

OPPO Reno4 series 5G (mobile phone), OPPO Enco X (earphones), Smart TV S1 (TV), OPPO Watch RX (watch).

In fact, at the press conference, OPPO did not particularly emphasize this "family bucket", but instead focused on introducing a function called "OPPO Share". Leifeng.com believes that OPPO Share is the "underlying logic" of OPPO's family bucket.

It is reported that OPPO Share can realize the interconnection, intercommunication and interaction of OPPO IoT product matrix.

For example, users can use smart watches as TV remote controls to control the TV; they can connect smart watches to TWS headphones and listen to music while running; they can connect smart watches to the TV to sense sleep and automatically shut down when they sense that the user has fallen asleep...

According to official sources, OPPO has developed more than 20 similar innovative interconnection functions.

From the outside, it seems that OPPO attaches great importance to smart TVs, especially holding its first offline press conference this year for smart TVs. In fact, from another perspective, OPPO's basic IoT product architecture has been completed, which is also a new starting point for OPPO in the IoT field.

Yi Wei, general manager of OPPO's emerging mobile terminal business unit, said, "The launch of TV products means that we have initially built a basic framework for the three major scenarios of entertainment, health and family. We will continue to develop based on this."

So, if we make a bold guess, will OPPO's next emerging mobile terminal be VR glasses?