Losing Money to Become a Tycoon: Starting with Games
Chapter 365: A 250 Gram Phone
December 23rd, Thursday.
With a bit of nervousness, Chang You once again arrived outside President Pei's office door.
The last time he came was two weeks ago.
Back then, Chang You had brought in his confidence-inspiring Otto OS for a presentation, only for a bunch of bugs to pop up out of nowhere. You could say the report was a total disaster.
President Pei had also criticized the system's stability, demanding that Chang You put stability first instead of piling on flashy but unreliable features.
This time, Chang You mainly planned to show President Pei two things.
First was the optimized Otto OS. The features were exactly the same as last time—no changes at all. In fact, for the sake of stability, they had even cut a small portion of features that weren't particularly useful.
The goal this time was simple: make sure the system was stable and reliable during the presentation—no bugs, or at least fewer bugs.
Second was the first prototype phone from OTTO Technology.
It had been nearly two months since OTTO Technology was founded. To be fair, as a top-tier domestic OEM, their efficiency was impressive—they'd already produced the prototype.
Still, holding the prototype in his hands, Chang You felt especially uneasy.
He had zero confidence in it.
Even though he felt it was a bit embarrassing to show, since the device was already made, he had to let President Pei take a look.
If President Pei wasn't satisfied, they could always revise it later.
Before going in, Chang You closed his eyes and said a quick prayer, hoping the heavens would be kind this time and that there would be fewer bugs. Then he gently knocked on the door.
After hearing "Come in," Chang You pushed the door open and explained why he was there.
Pei Qian nodded happily. "Sure, let me take a look."
Pei Qian was actually quite interested in this phone.
After all, this was the first physical product developed by Tengda Group.
Before this, they had developed many games, but games were ultimately virtual, you could only run them on a computer or a game console, not hold them in your hands and mess around with them.
ROF, as a prebuilt PC brand, wasn't much different from DIY desktops anyway.
But this new phone was different. Even though it was manufactured by an OEM, smartphones are highly integrated tech products. A customized phone is, by definition, one of a kind.
Then Pei Qian watched as Chang You placed a "brick" into his hands.
—So heavy!
Pei Qian clearly felt his wrist straining under the weight.
"How much does this phone weigh?"
Chang You answered awkwardly, "247 grams."
Pei Qian: "..."
He didn't even know what to say—other than, damn, that's impressive!
What does that weight even mean?
Phones currently popular on the market are still mostly small-screen models. For example, the flagship models of Apple's iPhone lineup usually weigh around 140 grams, and even the large-screen versions only reach about 190 grams.
In fact, once a phone hits 200 grams, it already feels heavy for many slimmer users, especially women.
Once you get to about 250 grams, that's straight-up a must-have for martial artists.
Pei Qian weighed it in his hand.
Yeah, if you used this thing to smack someone, it would feel amazing.
Chang You clearly knew the prototype was way too heavy and said a bit sheepishly, "President Pei, we really had no choice. We had to stack too many components into the phone."
"A high-refresh-rate display, a 5800mAh battery, a flagship chipset, a custom cooling system, a horizontal linear motor…"
"All of that… it adds up."
Pei Qian nodded.
If they wanted to keep stacking specs and push the price into the expected 8,000-yuan tier, there really wasn't any other way to do it.
If the specs weren't stacked hard enough, the phone's "value" wouldn't come close to 8,000 yuan, and the system wouldn't allow such an inflated price tag in the first place.
But stacking specs this aggressively would inevitably make the phone too heavy.
After all, other phones were still using 2000–3000mAh batteries, while this one went straight up to nearly 6000mAh. If it wasn't heavy, that would be the weird part.
For Pei Qian, heavier was actually better. Ideally, people would mock this phone as a "half-jin phone" or a "IQ tax," and it would fail to sell, piling up in inventory—that would be perfect.
Of course, Pei Qian did remember manufacturers doing something like this before—some gaming phone brands, for example.
But the current market environment was clearly different from when gaming phones first appeared.
First of all, gaming phones are ultimately a niche market.
Phones are very different from PCs—they're highly integrated tech products.
With computers, you can choose between gaming laptops and ultrabooks. Their form factors and use cases differ wildly, and they're hard to replace with each other.
But gaming phones and regular phones don't differ nearly as much in form.
At the same time, phones integrate way too many functions—photography, video recording, and so on. For most users, a phone's main purpose is everyday use: watching videos, chatting, taking photos and videos. Gaming is just one of many functions.
Paying the same price but sacrificing camera quality, video performance, and light, portable design just to get better gaming performance? For most people, that's not a great deal.
Sure, for hardcore mobile gamers, a gaming phone might be a decent choice.
But then comes the second problem:
In this world, the mobile gaming market isn't very developed yet.
The popular mobile games on the market are mostly card-battle types. A national-warfare game like Blood War Anthem: Enhanced Edition is already considered relatively hardcore and pretty rare.
For these lightweight mobile games, you don't need a high-refresh-rate screen, and you definitely don't need a massive battery.
So, from a typical consumer's point of view, this phone would seem… kinda weird.
An unknown no-name brand, and ridiculously heavy—just these two points alone would be enough to scare off a ton of potential buyers at first glance.
Seeing President Pei sink into deep thought, Chang You assumed he was unhappy with the prototype and quickly said, "President Pei, this is just a prototype. We haven't started mass production yet."
"If you think it's too heavy, we can think of other solutions. For example, we could cut the battery down to around 4000mAh. That should significantly reduce the weight to just over 200 grams—"
Pei Qian immediately raised a hand. "No, it's perfect as it is!"
"No matter how powerful a phone is, once it runs out of battery, it's just a brick. It can't do anything. We must make sure our phone always has plenty of power—people should never have to worry about battery anxiety ever again!"
"The current battery capacity is great. This is our phone's highlight, and it has to stay, got it?"
"Overall, I'm very satisfied with this prototype. This is exactly what my ideal phone looks like!"
"The hardware is basically fine as it is. Let me try the system a bit more."
Pei Qian experienced Otto OS for the second time.
Chang You had been feeling uneasy inside, but seeing President Pei's reaction—unexpectedly satisfied—he was stunned.
He quickly said, "Sure, President Pei. If you have any feedback at all, just let us know."
"And also, we're currently customizing the exterior—like the back cover colors and the phone logo—trying to make it look nicer and attract more consumers…"
Pei Qian scrolled on the phone while shaking his head. "Back cover colors?"
"Don't make it all flashy. Just do a solid color."
"If you think it looks ugly, just slap the logo on it."
"That's what Appl– Pineapple does, right?"
Chang You felt a bit dizzy. "Then… what if it's still ugly?"
Pei Qian looked up at him. "Then make the logo bigger. Let it cover things up a bit."
Chang You: "..."
What the hell does "make the logo bigger" even mean—does that mean if the logo is big enough, people will only look at the logo and stop paying attention to the back cover color?
Right now, most flagship phones come in a variety of back-cover colors, often with very poetic names. This is basically the current trend in the domestic smartphone scene.
Yet President Pei's taste was… unique. Not only did he forbid those kinds of fancy colors, he insisted on solid colors only.
Solid colors alone would be one thing—but on top of that, he wanted a huge logo slapped on the back.
At the moment, the only brand that puts a big logo on the back and still sells like crazy is Pineapple.
Because a large logo reflects strong confidence in one's own brand.
For an unknown brand, making the logo too big could be awkward. When consumers pull out their phones, they might get hit with questions like, "Uh… what brand is that?"—which is peak embarrassment.
That's why most domestic phone brands place their logos relatively discreetly and pair them with flashy, colorful backs, clearly differentiating themselves from Pineapple.
Otherwise, it's very easy to get accused of being a knockoff.
If Chang You were deciding on his own, he would probably go with the usual domestic-brand approach: low-key logo + colorful back cover.
But since President Pei had made his stance crystal clear, Chang You could only rack his brain to fulfill President Pei's demands.
Pei Qian continued fiddling with this "half-jin phone," feeling genuinely surprised inside.
This time, there really weren't many bugs!
It looked like Chang You and his team had truly put in serious work during this period, fixing basically all the previous bugs and greatly improving system stability.
After playing with it for ten minutes, he only managed to find three or four bugs—and they were all minor ones that didn't affect actual usage.
Chang You's posture visibly straightened.
It's not easy at all!
Last time, so many bugs were found that his face might as well have been slapped swollen.
This time, after grinding it out with his team, they'd finally fixed most of the bugs.
And to prepare for this presentation, they'd even done several more days of intensive testing. Only after they truly couldn't find any more bugs did they come in with confidence.
Even so, President Pei still found three small bugs, which left Chang You deeply shaken.
Did President Pei just naturally attract bugs wherever he went?
But no matter what, this presentation counted as a success.
After thinking it over, Chang You asked, "President Pei, now that the system stability is basically there, can we start working on those new system features?"
Pei Qian: "..."
Still not giving up, huh!
Pei Qian's face darkened as he said seriously, "Being too ambitious will get you nowhere!"
"We're not even close to done yet. The native Android-based system still has so many areas that can be optimized. You think fixing a few bugs is already enough?"
"Go back and keep refining it. The fine details are nowhere near good enough yet!"
Chang You took the phone back in confusion.
The details still weren't good enough? This was already on par with most domestic brands—how could it still be lacking?
But he didn't dare ask more. He could only silently take the phone back, planning to go home and figure it out himself.
This trip still didn't manage to push the system development into the next phase.
Even though the product form of this phone was becoming clearer and clearer, Chang You couldn't shake the feeling that it was drifting further and further away from what he had originally imagined…
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