Chapter 19: Our Volume System Experience – Ending the Lag Era Ahead of Schedule

A soft "click" sound.

Lao Li carefully inserted the paint-chipped USB drive into the bulky computer tower in the conference room.

The computer fan let out a heavy wheezing sound, and a reading window popped up on the screen.

Before Lao Li could lean in for a closer look, a black-and-white shadow suddenly darted out from the side.

Xia Weiliang, wearing an oversized white lab coat, shoved Lao Li aside.

Her entire face was almost pressed against the yellowing monitor.

Her fingers tapped on the keyboard like they were having a seizure, directly pulling up the underlying code folder on the USB drive.

Rows of blue and white code cascaded down like a waterfall.

Chu Xuan and Dazhuang craned their necks, staring at the screen as if they were reading an alien language.

"This... this code is as clean as if it had been washed!"

Xia Weiliang's voice cracked, and she didn't even bother to push up her thick black-framed glasses as they slid down her nose.

She gripped the edges of the screen with both hands, her knuckles turning white.

"No mountains of redundant commands, no conflicting process requests."

Xia Weiliang suddenly turned around, staring intently at Lu Jingming, two flames burning in her eyes.

"This architecture squeezes hardware resource utilization to an insane level! What is it called?"

Lu Jingming pulled over a tin chair and sat down with a commanding air.

"It's called Xinghai OS."

He picked up a whiteboard marker and tapped on the table.

"Why does Symbian OS lag? Because it's a pushover."

Lu Jingming glanced at the bewildered Lao Li and Chu Xuan, switching to plain language to explain.

"You open Penguin Chat, then switch out to check a text message."

"Symbian will run both apps in the background, eventually overloading the memory, and everything crashes together."

Dazhuang slapped his thigh hard.

"Exactly! Every time my crappy phone gets a call, I press the answer button several times and it doesn't respond. It's so frustrating!"

Lu Jingming smiled and pointed at the computer screen.

"Xinghai OS is different; it's an overbearing tyrant."

"As soon as you switch an app to the background, the system immediately freezes it, instantly clearing all running memory."

"Whoever is at the forefront of the screen gets exclusive access to 100% of the hardware resources."

Lu Jingming drew a sharp, clean line in the air with his finger.

"Just one rule: kill the background, keep the foreground silky smooth."

Xia Weiliang gasped.

This brutal logic, known as the "Tombstone Mechanism," was a subversive heresy in this era.

But it could perfectly solve the fatal flaw of old hardware unable to handle massive systems!

"Genius... this is absolutely a mad genius concept!"

Xia Weiliang yanked out the USB drive, clutched it tightly to her chest, and turned to rush out of the conference room.

"The lab is locked down tonight! Whoever dares to disturb me, I'll brand them with a soldering iron!"

Before the words had even faded, she was already gone.

Shen Qingqiu watched that sprinting figure, her eye twitching.

She turned to look at Lu Jingming, her gaze behind her gold-rimmed glasses somewhat complex.

"Can this system really bridge the hardware gap between us and the big international manufacturers?"

Lu Jingming stood up and brushed the cigarette ash off his pant legs.

"Once the engineering prototype is flashed, you can try it out yourself and you'll see."

For the next three full days.

The door to Laboratory No. 1 was locked tight, and the smell of strong Red Bull and instant noodles wafted through the door cracks.

When the few technicians Lao Li brought in came out to get takeout halfway through.

They all had deep sunken eye sockets, looking like they had been drained of their vitality by a demon.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, the tightly closed iron door finally opened.

Xia Weiliang, with a bird's nest of messy hair, stood barefoot on the anti-static mat.

She held a pitch-black plastic brick in her hands.

Lu Jingming, with Shen Qingqiu and Chu Xuan, arrived at the scene immediately.

On the laboratory table, the floor was covered with discarded test motherboards.

"It's flashed, the underlying drivers are perfectly adapted."

Xia Weiliang's voice was as hoarse as if she had swallowed sandpaper, and she slammed the crude engineering prototype onto the table.

"It's still using that same crappy first-generation hardware configuration. See for yourselves."

Lao Li rubbed the sweat off his palms, swallowed dryly, and leaned forward.

He took a deep breath and pressed the power button.

There was no long, laggy boot animation.

The screen flickered twice and went straight to a blue desktop.

The icons were all forced into rounded rectangles, arranged neatly.

Lao Li extended a calloused finger and placed it on the screen.

He tentatively swiped gently to the left.

There wasn't a hint of lag.

Wherever his finger slid, the screen image followed perfectly.

The smoothness of his fingertips sticking to the screen felt like silk brushing across his palm.

Lao Li's eyes widened, and his fingers began swiping wildly back and forth across the screen.

The screen switched as smoothly as flowing water, without even a shadow of frame drops.

"My God..."

Lao Li's lips trembled; he tapped the SMS icon, and it opened instantly.

He pressed the Home button to return to the desktop, then tapped on the contact list, and it still opened instantly.

In this year of 2007, where you had to watch a two-second hourglass animation just to open a calendar on Symbian OS.

This kind of unreasonably silky operation feedback was simply a dimensional strike!

"How is this possible? This motherboard was assembled from that pile of scrap parts!"

Dazhuang leaned over, his eyes fixed on it, and subconsciously reached for the Nokia in his pocket.

He pressed the buttons hard, and the screen lagged for a full three seconds before lighting up.

By comparison, his prized name-brand phone looked just like a hemiplegic patient.

Shen Qingqiu walked over in her high heels.

She snatched the engineering prototype from Lao Li's hand and swiped it a couple of times herself.

Her cold fingertips touched the screen, and the images flowed with them.

Shen Qingqiu's breathing instantly lost its rhythm, her chest heaving violently.

She had seen too many product demonstrations on Wall Street that claimed to revolutionize the era, but they were all just ethereal PPTs.

And now, a monster capable of reshaping the logic of mobile phone operations was truly lying in her palm.

"Lu Jingming, do you know what this means?"

Shen Qingqiu looked up, her gaze behind her gold-rimmed glasses piercingly bright.

"As long as you put a decent color screen shell on it, it could rub the faces of all our domestic competitors into the dirt!"

It was like everyone was racing on broken bicycles in a mud pit.

Lu Jingming had just brought in a high-speed train with a full tank of fuel.

It wasn't even the same dimension of competition.

Lu Jingming leaned against the edge of the lab bench, picked up an unopened can of Red Bull, and pulled the tab.

A soft "hiss" sound.

"Already excited? The good show has only just begun."

He tilted his neck back and took a gulp of the drink, a glint like that of an old hunter flashing in his eyes.

With Xinghai OS as an impregnable software moat.

Even if those bastards in Huaqiangbei copied the roll cage and the large battery, they could only copy a hollow iron shell without a soul.

Chu Xuan was so excited he spun in three circles on the spot, messing up his hair with both hands.

"Boss Lu! This thing is insane!"

"Let's hurry up and order color screens from an OEM, then shoot a demo video and post it online!"

Chu Xuan's marketing radar was blaring—this was definitely a nuclear bomb in the digital world.

"As soon as the video comes out, with this kind of smoothness, I guarantee it will have users all over the internet drooling!"

Lu Jingming tossed the empty can into the trash bin, making a "clang" sound.

"We'll shoot the video, but don't release the whole thing."

He pulled the one-yuan lighter from his pocket and spun it nimbly on his fingertips.

"Just release a ten-second clip, the blurrier the better, and keep them on the edge of their seats."

Just as Chu Xuan was about to nod and take on the job.

The Xiaolingtong clipped to his waist suddenly began vibrating wildly.

Chu Xuan glanced at the caller ID, and his expression changed.

He picked up the phone, listened for a moment, and his brows twisted into a tight knot.

"I got it, keep an eye on them."

Hanging up the phone, Chu Xuan walked quickly to Lu Jingming and lowered his voice.

"Boss Lu, something's happened. Fatty Xu from Wave Mobile has started to fight back."

Lu Jingming didn't stop spinning his lighter.

"His offline channels have already been smashed by us; what kind of Waves can he still make?"

Chu Xuan swallowed hard and pointed to the phone in his hand.

"Fatty Xu is desperate; he spent a fortune hiring two A-list celebrities to endorse them."

"And he's forced the launch event for the new Wave phone to be moved up to 2:00 PM tomorrow!"

Lao Li frowned, looking puzzled.

"So they moved it up, so what? We'll do our own thing, we don't interfere with each other."

Chu Xuan was so anxious he slapped his thigh, his voice rising by an octave.

"It's not that simple!"

"Fatty Xu just posted a challenge letter under his real name on Tieba, saying he wants to have a real-device comparison segment at tomorrow's launch event."

"He threatened to strip our first-generation machine bare and let the whole internet see what a real phone is!"

The atmosphere in the lab, which had just been lively, instantly dropped to freezing.

A big manufacturer's foundation combined with celebrity effect—the intensity of this public opinion campaign was definitely not something those previous internet trolls could compare to.

Shen Qingqiu walked over with a cold face, her high heels clicking loudly on the floor.

"He's forcing us to fight. If we play the coward, the reputation that Xinghai has worked so hard to build will completely collapse tomorrow."

Everyone looked at Lu Jingming, waiting for him to make the call.

Lu Jingming wasn't panicked at all; instead, he shoved the lighter back into his pocket, the smile on his lips growing wider.

He looked at the engineering prototype with Xinghai OS on the table, as if he saw a huge Wave of 'defense-breaking' points waving at him.

"Chu Xuan, go put some money into Fatty Xu's livestream room and prepare a few big rockets."

Lu Jingming patted Chu Xuan on the shoulder, his tone filled with mockery.

"He wants to use us as a background prop?"

"Then let's help him build the stage higher. Tomorrow afternoon, I'll personally teach him a lesson in the comments section."