49: April for rice

April is a very important milestone for Xiaomi because Dami Company was established in April 2010.

By 2013, Dami Company has been established for three years, leaping from an obscure small company to a large mobile phone manufacturer with tens of billions in annual revenue, and in April, Xiaomi also launched the Mi Fan Festival activities.

On the day of the Mi Fan Festival, Xiaomi officially launched several of its models for this year through various activities and a press conference.

First was the Mi 2s. As an upgraded version of the da mi 2nd generation, there was almost no change in appearance compared to the mi 2. However, at the press conference, Lei Jun deliberately compared this Mi 2s with last year's red star 2.

After all, Chen Chen had paid plenty of "tribute to rival companies" at his press conference last year.

“In terms of the camera, we have upgraded to 13 megapixels and fully support 1080p video recording. With six months of effort from our camera department colleagues, the shooting effect of the Mi 2s has made significant progress, making it more powerful than the mobile phone photography of our rival companies.”

“Take a look at these sample photos. When you go back tonight, shouldn't we give our camera department colleagues a chicken leg bonus?”

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“As for the processor, we have upgraded to the snapdragon 600 processor. The performance of this processor has significantly improved compared to last year's S4, and it is excellent in both image processing and core frequency.”

“On the Mi 2s, we have also adopted the type-c interface. You should already have a good understanding of the advantages of this interface. First of all, compared to the traditional USB interface, the C-port has a wider transmission speed, reaching a transmission bandwidth of 10Gbps, which is nearly twice as fast as the original USB interface.”

“Furthermore, the encoding loss rate has dropped significantly. Of course, the advantages of this interface don't stop there. The most important point is that it allows our charging power to become faster. The charging power of our Mi 2s has been improved once again compared to the mi 2.”

“It has reached 22.5 watts! At the same time, given our good cooperation with rival companies, our Xiaomi chargers will be fully compatible with Red Star's Xingflash Fast Charging Protocol, supporting a maximum charging power of 18 watts.”

After introducing the charging and processor, Lei Jun emphasized the newly upgraded MIUI v5. This system version underwent a very large upgrade and added some new functions and shortcuts, such as shortcut options that appear when long-pressing the home button, and a completely redesigned control center.

The pricing of the Mi 2s this time still followed Xiaomi's tradition. When 1999 appeared on the large screen, the audience at the scene already began to cheer loudly.

More features without a price increase—Xiaomi is really something.

But as Lei Jun said, 'You're happy too early,' the 1999 on the screen instantly changed to 1799, and the scene truly reached a boiling point.

The cheers and shouts were endless, seemingly about to lift the roof off the venue.

In addition to releasing the Mi 2s, there was also a lower-spec mi 2 this time, which is the mi 2 Youth Edition—the mi 2A.

This is also an old tradition of Xiaomi, using one model to cover different price points by launching a Youth Edition. This 2A uses Qualcomm's MSA8260A dual-core processor chip, while other configurations are similar to the mi 2. Of course, there are some downgrades in the screen and camera.

The biggest innovation of this machine is the addition of Near Field Communication technology—NFC. At this time in 2013, although NFC usage scenarios had begun to appear on the market, they were rare and not yet popular. But at this point in time when NFC was not widespread, the mi 2A was equipped with NFC functionality.

Chen Chen knew that in his previous life, this function was basically promoted by Xiaomi alone. NFC and Infrared were also Xiaomi's signature features. When Xiaomi reached a certain scale, their company went city by city to negotiate, allowing Xiaomi's NFC to access local subway and bus systems. Later, this promotion indeed yielded results.

Whether taking the bus or the subway, using Xiaomi's NFC was very convenient. It wasn't until Xiaomi had mostly finished its promotion and domestic mobile phone manufacturers began to compete fiercely that other manufacturers gradually started to support this NFC function.

Of course, ten years later, this function became standard. If you said your flagship didn't even have NFC, you'd be embarrassed to call it a flagship when you went out.

The pricing of the mi 2A was aimed squarely at 360 and Alibaba's Tianyu. The price of 1299 hit 360's weak spot perfectly. Both being internet phones, 360's special edition used a 14C interface, while the mi 2A with NFC was 1299, which would make 360 feel very uncomfortable.

“It seems we also need to hurry up and launch a model priced at just over a thousand yuan this year, otherwise we'll be a bit too passive facing these manufacturers.”

Chen Chen was already planning a new model because 2013 was an important time. At the end of the year, China would gradually begin to open up 4G networks, old-Brand manufacturers would start to exit the stage, and new giants would begin their performances.

As for Huawei's thousand-yuan phones, not only Chen Chen, but even Lei Jun didn't take them seriously. Their presence was even weaker than that of half-baked manufacturers like 360.

The Honor 8860 was beaten so badly by the red star 1 and mi 1 that it almost lost its way, directly wiping out the Honor series. Otherwise, Yu Chengbei wouldn't have launched the new Brand series.

At the press conference, everyone was still listening to Lei Jun talk about the low-income population in China and how everyone longed to own a real smartphone. Chen Chen knew that this press conference was definitely like a mouse pulling a wooden shovel—the big part was still to come.

Sure enough, after finishing his story, Lei Jun directly introduced Xiaomi's new series, the Hongmi series.

Since QQ Space had already been taken by Chen Chen's shining 2 for cooperation, Lei Jun sought out NetEase this time for Social Media Platform pre-orders and the first release. After all, they were old partners; the mi 1 had its first release on the Social Media Platform.

“This hongmi 1st generation, which we launched jointly with China Unicom, not only supports Unicom 3G but is also a dual-SIM dual-standby model.”

“In terms of the processor, our hongmi 1 also uses MediaTek's latest flagship processor. After several months of deep adaptation and tuning with MediaTek's Engineers, it can release its full performance. It can be said that once you take it back, you will find that running various software is very smooth.”

The configuration was actually just a rehash of old ideas because the overall configuration was indeed similar to the shining 2. The same processor, the same camera, the same shell and materials, and the battery was about the same size. The only difference was the charging; Lei Jun gave the hongmi 1st generation 10-watt charging.

In terms of the screen, Red Star used Huaxing Optoelectronics screens, while Xiaomi used cheaper Tianma screens. However, both were domestic screens and part of the 863 program. Everyone had a tacit understanding to use domestic components as much as possible.