The perennial question about whether smartphone innovation has run its course was answered emphatically this week.
Samsung and Huawei released new flagship devices, announcing unexpected jumps in smartphone technology, developments that will help to rekindle interest in smartphone upgrades, following the lowest sales figures for the industry in a decade.
In 2022, according to Counterpoint Research, handset shipments fell to 1.2-billion, the lowest since 2013, and down 12% on the previous year. This allowed Apple to take over the number 1 spot in global sales from Samsung, despite a 14% decline in unit sales. Samsung fell by 16%.
Counterpoint says an increased mix of premium phone offerings by major manufacturers drove up the overall average selling price by 5% year-on-year in 2022, resulting in overall smartphone revenue declining by only 9%, to $409bn (about R7-trillion) – the lowest since 2017.
Apple was the only one of the top five players to increase revenue, by a marginal 1%. Says Justin Hume, vice-president for mobile at Samsung South Africa: “In 2022, the S22 Ultra accounted for 56% of the S22 series, showing the demand for higher specification devices.”
The stakes are higher for Huawei, which has been on the back foot since the 2020 US ban on its use of Google software. It has responded in software and hardware innovation.
For Samsung, which has seen Apple eat into its market share, it has also been imperative to show it can make a leap in innovation to differentiate itself from the incremental enhancements that have characterised recent Apple iPhone launches.
Huawei and Samsung were able to show this week that there is still much room for movement in smartphone camera technology.
On Wednesday, the former's Mate50 Pro went on sale in South Africa, offering the market a device that stands out aesthetically and functionally. It has produced a regular glass-back version and a “vegan leather” edition, with distinctive orange back and faux leather look and feel. A camera array of four main lenses and several sensors is positioned in a “Space Ring”, creating a rare symmetry for phone backs.
The biggest breakthrough for Huawei, however, lies in hardware specs, particularly on the camera array. The numbers don’t sound wildly impressive, with a main 64-megapixel periscope telephoto lens, a 50MP wide-angle lens and a 15MP ultra-wide lens.
However, it has introduced the first physically adjustable aperture on a phone, meaning one can physically adjust how much light is let in, rather than relying on software simulation of changing aperture. The 50MP lens can be shifted manually from f1.4 to f4.0 across 10 settings, depending on the required depth of field, hence the blurred background effect. The feature is cheekily named Ultra Aperture, using the nomenclature Samsung reserves for its top-of-the-range devices.
On that note, the Samsung S23 Ultra, unveiled globally on Wednesday night via a live stream from a San Francisco launch event, also delivered a leap in camera technology.
Huawei has had to go beyond the camera to convince the market outside China of its smartphone credentials. It has achieved this on several levels
Legendary movie directors Ridley Scott and Na Hong-jin were roped in to use the device to make short movies, previewed during the launch. Their endorsements highlighted the effectiveness of the new capabilities. The main camera array is led by a giant 200MP wide-angle lens with an aperture of f1.7, supported by a 10MP periscope telephoto, 10MP telephoto and 12MP ultrawide lens.
The sensor on the main lens, the IsoCell HP1, was developed by Samsung more than a year ago and has been installed in smartphones from rivals such as Xiaomi and Motorola. However, it is the first time it has been integrated with Samsung smartphone technology, for which it was originally designed.
The resolution means an image of a building can be printed out on paper the size of that building and lose little definition. Of course, no-one will print out building-sized images, but it means small portions of the images can be cropped out and used in high definition.
“You can be more creative in what type of images you take,” says Hume. “Often, I’m having to pull out the phone quickly to take the snap and then I’m zooming in and cropping. I was chatting to a colleague who said the fundamental problem he’s got when people take an image of him is his beard, because it’s scraggly. That blurs out to an unresolved, undefined mass. Suddenly you’re bringing up a resolution like 200MP on a camera, and it’s in sharp contrast and resolution.”
Meanwhile, Huawei has had to go beyond the camera to convince the market outside China of its smartphone credentials. It has achieved this on several levels, including creative workarounds to allow Google apps to be downloaded through its AppGallery.
It is charging capability though, that represents the biggest technology leap. The phone comes with a 66W Huawei SuperCharge wall charger, which charges the battery from zero to 100% in 41 minutes, to 80% in half an hour and from zero to 20% in five minutes.
That is not remarkable in itself, as rival brands such as Oppo and Vivo have pushed fast charging even further. The big breakthrough is its support of 50W wireless charging, in contrast to the S23 offering only 5W wireless charging. Wireless has traditionally been the slowest way to charge a phone, but Huawei has shown it is possible to bring it to similar levels as the wired version.
Akhram Mohamed, vice-president for operations at the Huawei Consumer Business Group in South Africa, says the increased capability is a result of huge investment in research & development. The brand devotes 15% of revenue to this, in contrast to 8% by Samsung.
“A few years ago, when wireless charging first became a thing, we were late to market and a lot of people asked us the question: why don't you guys have it? I said to them it's because wired charging is so superior. That unless we can do it right, we are not ready to do it, we won't bring it to market. We will bring it when we can do it right.
“When we did that and we brought our first wireless charging, we achieved 25W and then went very quickly to 40W. Now we have 50. How we achieved that is the time we spent and the effort we put in. You can’t discount that R&D investment.”
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