25: A 14mm phone? Are you kidding me?

On the contrary, Xiaomi's Lei Jun was the most relaxed. After several months of adjustment and production ramping in 2011, the da mi 1st generation could now basically maintain a monthly shipment of over 500,000 units. The entire Dami Company was already very satisfied with this sales volume.

Moreover, the development of the next generation model was also very smooth, thanks to the experience gained from the mi 1.

This month, in May 2012, Qualcomm held a global launch event in the USA to release their brand-new processor—the Qualcomm APQ8064. Lei Jun immediately contacted Qualcomm and once again secured this latest flagship chip, codenamed S4.

Due to the good cooperation between the previous generation products and Xiaomi, Qualcomm still sent its own Engineer to Xiaomi to help Xiaomi's Engineer develop and adapt this chip together.

Through a VPN, Chen Chen also learned about Qualcomm's S4 launch event.

Currently, Qualcomm was not like its later self or Intel, "squeezing out toothpaste"; they basically provided the latest processes and technologies.

Qualcomm announced this time that the S4 series chips would be the last generation named with "S".

In the future, they would be named according to numbers, with high-end chips being named after the 8 series.

Mid-range chips would be named after the 6 series.

Low-end chips would be named after the 4 series.

This naming convention would also allow manufacturers and consumers to intuitively distinguish the performance levels of different series.

The previous APQ and S series naming methods had led to weak consumer awareness of Qualcomm's various mobile processors.

Only consumers who truly researched these things could know if a certain phone was using a high-end flagship chip.

For example, some manufacturers in later generations would advertise things like "True 8-core processor" or "Qualcomm 8-core processor," essentially using low-end chips to masquerade as high-end series.

This time, Qualcomm directly named them according to numerical size, so consumers could know the processor's performance just by looking at the sequence.

At this launch event, Qualcomm focused on introducing the S4 chip, which was manufactured based on TSMC's 28nm process technology. The core had been upgraded from the original dual-core to a brand-new 4-core structure with a big and little core structure, and the clock speed reached 1.6GHz.

In terms of GPU, it was the Adreno 320, upgraded from the previous generation Adreno 310, with its graphics processing performance directly improved by 40%.

Overall, this was an excellent mobile processor.

After consulting with professionals from his own chip research department, Chen Chen learned that his Soaring Cloud S2 was basically not inferior to the Qualcomm S4 in terms of design performance. However, there was a deficiency in the GPU, with the overall graphics processing capability being about 20% lower than the Qualcomm S4.

But this was not bad; at least the new generation Soaring Cloud S2 had already added a DSP digital processor, which was a significant improvement compared to the Soaring Cloud S1.

Chen Chen believed that in the future, with the help of Xiao Ai, his own chip team would definitely be able to manufacture a complete SoC.

Unlike now, where there was only a standalone processor, and things like the ISP and baseband needed to be external, which also required paying patent fees to others.

The road ahead is long and arduous.

[We will once again debut Qualcomm's latest flagship processor, the S4 series! Please stay tuned.]

Looking at the announcement released by Xiaomi, Chen Chen couldn't help but wonder, was Lei-bus in such a hurry?

Qualcomm had just released the S4 in the USA, and Lei-bus immediately announced in China that they would debut this chip.

Actually, Chen Chen didn't know that Lei-bus was also suffering. Clearly, the da mi 1st generation was released first, and clearly, the da mi 1st generation was the first to enter the internet track.

As a result, due to production capacity issues, they woke up early but arrived late at the market.

All the spotlight was stolen by the Red Star Generation 1.

Since the sales of the 1st generation had met expectations and the development of the 2nd generation was going smoothly, Lei-bus couldn't wait to start the warm-up for the da mi 2nd generation this June.

However, Chen Chen was not in a hurry. According to the timeline, the Qualcomm S4 had not yet entered official mass production, and Xiaomi's launch events were usually set for August 16th, the anniversary of Xiaomi's founding.

Warming up now was useless.

He still had more than two months to prepare the new high-end series and the hongxing 2nd generation.

Current domestic mobile phone brands—Zhonghua Kuliang, Xiaomi, Meizu, Gionee, TCL, Bird, Tianyu, etc.—were in a gradual reshuffling process. Old-school mobile phone manufacturers were falling behind, while emerging ones were rising.

"For the screen of our hongxing 2nd generation, we will no longer use Sharp's screens. Although that Sharp screen has excellent display effects, its price is much higher than domestic screens."

"Due to the deep cooperation with Huaxing Optoelectronics, our R&D department and the Engineers from China Star's laboratory have mass-produced a 720p screen based on our screen technology. This time, we will use our own screen."

"Mr. Chen, the main cost of China Star's customized screen is in the mold opening. China Star has finished upgrading the production line and can start production at any time."

"Old Li is right. As long as our sales are high enough, the cost per screen will be lower. You've worked hard at China Star these past few months. I'll have the finance department give you a bonus in a few days."

After staying at the China Star factory for several months, Old Li returned to Red Star immediately after China Star finished upgrading the production line and trial-produced a batch of screens in June.

Now, the life cycle of the Red Star Generation 1 was basically half over, and the hongxing 2nd generation was already under development. Chen Chen naturally had high hopes for the brand-new hongxing 2nd generation, aiming for sales to exceed ten million units over its entire life cycle.

Looking forward to twenty million wasn't out of the question either.

Because it was still positioned as a cost-effective model, unlike the new flagship which used a metal body, it continued to use high-molecular nanomaterial—plastic.

Saving costs is nothing to be ashamed of.

However, unlike the rushed launch of the previous generation, the company's design team would carefully polish this phone.

First, they would apply a certain coating and matte treatment to the back cover. The resulting back shell, although still plastic, would have a certain texture in terms of overall feel.

Plastic has its drawbacks, but one advantage is its minimal impact on signal. For the new flagship model, Engineers had been troubled by this issue for a long time, eventually leaving plastic antenna openings on the metal middle frame of the body.

The hongxing 2nd generation didn't have such worries. Being all plastic, there was no blockage to the signal at all.

But no matter the design, everything had to give way to battery and performance. In the first version of the plan, the phone's thickness reached a terrifying 14mm.

With a thickness of 1.4 centimeters, Chen Chen really wanted to throw the design drawings in their faces.

Brother, it's 2012. What do you mean by a 14mm thick phone?

Didn't you see that Huawei's phones are less than 7mm thick?

Chen Chen finally knew why Red Star's market share had been decreasing before. With a development department like this, who wouldn't shake their head?