Before the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, OPPO announced in a high-profile manner that it had officially entered the era of mobile phone AI. To be honest, I had never expected this move. You have to know how important the CCTV Spring Festival Gala is in people’s minds. And the Spring Festival Gala is not only watched by people in China, but also by overseas Chinese and even foreign friends. Taking this opportunity, OPPO also tied itself to the keyword of AI mobile phone.
Then, while everyone was still immersed in the festive atmosphere, OPPO launched the first volume of the new year – announcing a new AI strategy, which can be regarded as a more detailed presentation of Liu Zuohu’s content before the Spring Festival Gala to users. OPPO not only pushed the Spring Festival special version of firmware to a large number of Oujia models before the Spring Festival, but also jointly released an AI mobile phone white paper with IDC at the press conference, which is definitely the king of volumes. It is not difficult to see from these actions that OPPO has made a great determination in this regard, and All in AI is by no means an empty slogan, but has actually been put into action.
Of course, this press conference is actually more industry-oriented, telling the market OPPO’s next determination, but for the user side, what does AI mobile phone mean? Is it just a word game about naming? In the group interview after the meeting, we seem to get some answers.
Since we are talking about the keyword “word game”, I would like to share a small episode with you. The guests participating in this group interview are the very familiar OPPO Chief Product Officer Liu Zuohu and OPPO AI Center Product Director Zhang Jun. At that time, I asked a question. At the press conference, I saw that OPPO described AndesGPT as “OPPO’s self-trained large model”. Why did OPPO choose such a rigorous description?
Zhang Jun heard what I really wanted to ask – why didn’t she use the term “self-developed”. Her explanation was actually very simple. She believed that “this is not restraint but objectivity”. Then Brother Hu also explained it in four words – seek truth from facts, and added, “We definitely have self-developed big models. In the future, big models will not say that there is only one model in the world. There will be multiple models, and even some models based on our big models that are better in a certain vertical domain. In fact, we may have some knowledge and encyclopedias. The effect of our self-developed model training is also very good. But you may not be the best in a certain field. We just work together to train a model together in this regard. After all, no one’s model today is completely self-developed in every line of code, so I think this objective statement is fine.”
Zhang Jun, Product Director of OPPO AI Center
Although Brother Hu added some explanations later, in fact, to some extent, the two keywords “objective” and “seeking truth from facts” are enough to express OPPO’s attitude on this matter. I would rather summarize it as – no empty talk. Let’s get back to the point. I believe that the concept of AI mobile phones is a concept that more C-end users are curious about. Will we buy mobile phones in the future, such as smartphones and AI phones? Will AI phones be more expensive? Will only flagship models have AI phones? Regarding these issues, they were mentioned frequently during the group interview, and I also systematically summarized them for netizens.
Let’s start with a point that is most closely related to consumers. Brother Hu clearly expressed that “AI itself should be inclusive, and should enable everyone to quickly enjoy the benefits of technology. This goes back to our philosophy of making products, and we must always use products to drive technology.” In his opinion, the current large model-related functions still have certain requirements for the computing power of the end-side chip, but this is also related to the scale of the large model itself. If it changes from 7B to 1B, will it be possible to run on mid- and low-end chips? And now the chip performance iteration is still very fast, and mid- and low-end chips are likely to catch up in the future, which means that they can run large models.
OPPO Chief Product Officer Liu Zuohu
As for the definition of AI mobile phones, Hu Ge expressed his hope to explore China’s AI mobile phones together with the entire ecosystem. “We can’t simply talk about the changes in the form of mobile phones or the changes in the mobile phone interaction interface. These are only superficial things. The core of OPPO has always been thinking about the industry changes brought about by AI mobile phones and the value to users.”
OPPO believes that AI phones must have four elements
Regarding the definition of AI mobile phones, Brother Hu said that it is the four points mentioned at the press conference – creative ability, self-learning ability, real-world perception ability, and efficient use of computing power. Only with these four functions can it be called an AI mobile phone. AI mobile phones will truly turn mobile phones into user-centric, like a super-helper role, without the need to switch between isolated apps, providing one-stop service. But the reason why it is still called a mobile phone is because Brother Hu believes that “in the next 10 years, mobile phones will still be the most core terminal form.” AI mobile phones bring a leapfrog improvement in user experience, not a change in product form.
After answering these two questions, what OPPO wants to tell you is actually clear. Based on OPPO’s judgment on the AI and hardware industries, this strategy has been formulated and has been put into action. It has also found many partners to work with it. At the same time, OPPO is willing to improve the product experience down to earth, rather than just talking big. This may be OPPO’s attitude towards AI.
