Actually for the last 6 month I have a dream to start a smartphone business startup after I read an article in Forbes or Bloomberg I forgot, there is a company in China that gave an opportunity to start our own mobile business starting from $1000. It’s crazy right? I mean you can start to build your own mobile business kingdom with a $1000. But, after I did some deep research, the problem is you can only put your own brand on the phone that already produced or designed by them.
That’s not what I want, I want to design and build my own phone. A phone that I love and hopefully make other people fall in love too and bought it.
Then why I didn’t launch a campaign on a crowd funding sites if the problem is money? Well, I’m not sure I will able to deliver the product if the campaign is success because I’m not an engineer who smart enough to build a smartphone and I don’t have a qualified networks for that. I only have the vision of product lineup, a long term marketing strategy and the visual design. That’s all I have.
Thankfully ZTE create project CSX that allow us to share our ideas, our vision in this red ocean of mobile industry. Hopefully one day my ideas became reality. Even though it won’t be my own company, I’ll still very happy to see it. Of course it’s only happen if the ZTE community likes it.
So what do I have?
ZTE BlackBird | Codename Z47
Why 47? Simply because it has 4.7 inches full HD 1080p AMOLED display with optimum pixel density for human eyes. Corning Gorilla Glass 4 will protect this beautiful display.
I know, before the 5+ screen lover screaming about this screen size, allow me to explain.
Fact: before iPhone SE released, Apple sold 30 million of 4 inch iPhone worldwide. And after SE released to the market, SE is succeed on helping his big brother the 6s in term of sales performance. Apple will be screwed in the first and second quarter of 2016 if there is no iPhone SE on their portfolio. Translation: many people still prefer the compact smartphone on their pocket. It’s not about which one is better between -5 VS 5+ screen sizes, it’s about personal preference and market availability.
BlackBird will not replace the Axon 7 which has a bigger screen, BlackBird will have its own positioning and market segment. This phone is not about over powered spec racer, but it’s about refinement, reliability and simplicity. Beautiful crafted Android smartphone that deliver great user experience, a stable performance and get the job done.
Beside all of that, the codename Z47 is just cool!
Design
Simple, flat and minimalist aluminum unibody without the odd antenna lines on the back. The superthin bezels will make this phone so compact and smaller than iPhone 6s, even though they have the same screen size.
Why flat, is it comfortable to hold? Yes it is and actually there is no significant user experience difference between the curve and the flat design in this compact size. Curve back design is everywhere right now, especially from the Chinese phone manufactures. Is it bad? No it doesn’t, it just overrated and boring. Not everyone is holding their phone for 3 hours in a row after all and remember that iPhone 5s is still the best design of iPhone that people love better than the 6s. People will tend to compromise for something that they love, and I think major complain will only come from the YouTube video review rather than from daily basic user.
BlackBird won’t be a phone that built and designed by 100% of market trend, but BlackBird is born to set a new trend and standard on the market. That’s why it has its own logo and its own identity. Brand identity is really important for the positioning and differentiation though.
Navigation
The capacitive home button and fingerprint sensor are seamlessly designed among the two vertical bars on the navigation area. While the right and left horizontal bars are controlling the recent and back navigation. The navigation bars also equipped with dynamic color LED backlit that adjusted with the main color of the wallpaper.
Physical Button
There are four physical buttons on this phone. On the lower right side of the body there is dedicated shutter button for the natural feels and experience of photography. Double press to launch the still camera and triple press for video recorder. Upper right is a power and sleep/lock button.
Move to the left side of the body, both in the upper side there are volume rocker and the silent button.
Camera
· Primary camera: 16 MP, f/1.8, phase detection autofocus with OIS and dual-LED flash.
· Secondary camera: 8 MP, f/2.2, 1080p
Audio
Single front-facing Hi-Fi stereo speaker on the top and the second stereo speaker are on the bottom.
Software
Android V7.0 Nougat will be in charge to run the BlackBird. But instead of stock Android software, I prefer a custom ROM, not just a launcher.
Flexibility to develop the specific graphical user interface, a solid operating system with good memory management for the specific hardware in order to deliver a stable performance and reliable device is the main reason why we need a custom ROM. Like a mention before, brand identity is really important for the positioning and differentiation. And software is one of the most important elements to get there beside the design.
I know that to develop a solid software is need a time and process. But maybe we can start from these areas of software.
Notification System
Before we dig in, let’s talk about some inspirations out there. Personally, I’m a big fan of Blinkfeed from HTC and there is also a BlackBerry Hub, but for me the Hub is just ok. Blinkfeed is beautiful, but I think they still can do better than that.
Wait, am I trying to suggest that BlackBird need to develop a similar Blinkfeed notification system?
miniYeah!
But that is copying? Well, I prefer to say it’s benchmarking, take the best ideas out there, make it perfect and deliver the better user experience. How? Ok, let just call this system as a BlackBird Reel (we can pick a better name later). What user can do with the Reel?
Simply swipe from left to right of the screen to launch the Reel, customize the content with your personal preference. News feed, social network, calendar, email, note, everything important information is presented in the simple grid or mosaic thumbnail with two scrollable pages max. The pages limitation on the Reel is need to set the priority of content/information. If you familiar with Flipboard, the BlackBird Reel will looks like your personal gird layout magazines on Flipboard or simple mosaic Metro style on Windows 10 Mobile.
Camera Software
One of the best feature on iPhone generation whether you like it or not is the auto mode on its camera software, it just get the job done. Everyone can make a good quality of picture just like that. I’m not talking about photo composition and any others professional techniques in photography, but I’m talking about the quality of the images in general. Perfect metering and autofocus in any lighting conditions, noise reduction, color balance and color reproduction etc. The minus side of iPhone camera is less advance setting for the professional.
The best Auto mode with precise metering system and other technical elements of photography will be compelling for the wide range market segmentations and in the same time it offer an advance setting for the professionals. BlackBird need to be a reliable device that gets the job done, “it just works”.
How to get there? By R&D of course, that’s how Samsung succeed on making the Galaxy S7’s camera systems as the best Smartphone camera in the world at this moment.
Cross branding with camera manufactures such as Nikon, Canon or Fujifilm also become a good option in order to create an outstanding camera system, both hardware and software.
BlackBird Desktop Management
To build a successful product in tech industry always need a good ecosystem. That’s how we can make this product not only presence in human life as a tool or device, but it’s became a part of their life, something more valuable than just a device, it’s their lifestyle.
BlackBird desktop management is the door to enter the BlackBird ecosystem; this is where you can manage all of your BlackBird phone content. File management (local and cloud), app and content synchronization with integrated Google Play, instant messaging, social networks and everything can be done in this simple and user friendly desktop management. Even you can make a video call using the integrated HD webcam both in PC or Mac over your phone.
Memory Management
No need a further explanation, it’s a damn-must have good memory management in Android device.
Well, I still have many ideas to share related to the design, ecosystem and marketing strategy actually, but it will be too much to share it in a row. Hopefully you already get my point with this first sharing article. Maybe we can elaborate the other things on the comment discussion.
Thanks for the time though. ))
Al
This article originally wrote on ZTE USA Project CSX https://community.zteusa.com/ideas/1865
