Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Carl Pei Discusses the New OnePlus Nord & How Smartphones Are Made From Concept to Market

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

In this special bonus episode, Marques interviews Carl Pei, entrepreneur and Co-Founder of OnePlus, about the entire process behind building a smartphone, from the price of all the pieces, to IP certi...fication, to how long a phone design is set in stone before launch. Don't miss out on everything you need to know before the official OnePlus Nord launch! Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by Kamren Barlow: https://bit.ly/2JSbKTd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:46 Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome to a bonus episode of the Waveform Podcast. So just dropped a video on the channel today, an exclusive revealing the design of the OnePlus Nord phone coming up and talking about prices of smartphones and product strategy, things like that. So for this bonus episode, it's the whole conversation. So I'm chatting with Carl Pay, co-founder of OnePlus, and we'll talk about product philosophy, their strategy on how things work over there, how they make decisions for a new product. And we really get into the weeds on all that stuff. So I feel like I learned a lot during this hour, even though we recorded this at 7am
Starting point is 00:02:20 local time. I will be keeping a lot of this info with me. Check it out. All right, Carl, thank you for joining me. There's a pretty big time difference between you and I, so I'm up pretty early, you're up pretty late, but we made it work. Yeah, thanks for getting in this early to do this. No problem. So I think we're here because you here because you get you guys are you're working on a new product line Oneplus Nord I think all we really know about it as of right now as we're recording This is the name is Nord and then there's all sorts of speculation about what exactly it is So why don't we just get right into it and just just tell me what you can about what oneplus Nord is what you've been working on
Starting point is 00:03:04 What we should know now. So over the past couple of years, we've been creating better and better flagship phones, and that has allowed us to grow and expand our business. But we also heard from consumers that they want to see a more affordable OnePlus phone. And back in the early days days we were only selling online and our phones were really great flagship phones sold at a really reasonable price. So we have some of those users from from back in the day
Starting point is 00:03:36 asking for a product once again in that price range. And we've been looking at this for a really long time and we didn't feel the time was right until now to enter the mid-range market. If you look at the timing now and if you look at the industry as a whole, most smartphone companies they really focus all their time and energy into creating a great flagship phone. The mid-range category is, it's kind of an afterthought. So the best and brightest go and make the flagship phone and the mid-range, it is what it is.
Starting point is 00:04:15 For us, we think we're ready now because the technology is ready. With the 765G chipset from Qualcomm, we finally feel like the mid-range chipsets are ready to deliver the experience that people have come to expect from a OnePlus product. So over the past couple of years, we've been really focused on creating a fast and smooth experience. And prior to this, this was done on the 800 series. Prior to this, this was done on the 800 series. But now, as technology is improving, we feel like it's finally time and the technology is finally ready.
Starting point is 00:04:54 So that now with the 700 series, we're able to deliver that same experience. So when you're scrolling through the OnePlus Nord, you won't actually be able to tell which platform you're on. All the animations, all the optimizations, we've kind of taken from the 800 series and brought to the 700 series. So that's what it is. Like we finally feel like there's a opening for us to take our flagship experience into a new price category. And we waited a little bit of time until we were finally ready to deliver this. So that's pretty big claims, I think. I mean, I'll be testing it, obviously, and trying to see if I can tell the difference. But I think when you talk about mid-range price, that gets me curious because OnePlus started in one place with price, then sort of moved up and is making a flagship. So now what is a mid-range price, I guess is my question.
Starting point is 00:05:47 And how do you decide where to jump in to this new product category versus the $900 phone you sell already? Yeah, so over the past couple of years, we've been working really closely with our community. They give us a lot of feedback and they've been wanting more and more from our flagship phones and as a result
Starting point is 00:06:06 They have become better, but they've also become more and more expensive we said before that this new product line is going to kind of go back to some of the Earlier philosophies we had when it came to product and also when it comes to price. So this product line will be below $500 again. And we've also announced that the OnePlus Nord is just the first product of a couple of new products in this new series. And over time, we'll be releasing more and more affordable products within this product line. So we might start at a price range below $500, but then gradually go down as time goes along. but then gradually go down as time goes along. Okay, so there's like a Nord flagship
Starting point is 00:06:46 inside of this new mid-range line that may eventually turn into other devices in the Nord family, is that accurate? Yeah, that's very accurate. So the first product is called OnePlus Nord, but the new product line is also called OnePlus Nord. Okay, got it. All right, I think I'm following so far.
Starting point is 00:07:07 I wanna do a little bit of a twist because we talk about all these different phones so often on the channel. For me, I thought it'd be interesting to ask you, since you're in a position at OnePlus where you have a lot of these decisions to make, how does a company making phones decide where to make those trade-offs that are necessary to bring down
Starting point is 00:07:27 price? So you talked about OnePlus 8 Pro being more expensive because it's a better phone. Perfectly reasonable way to go about thinking about making a phone. But when you have to make a phone now that's sub $500, how do you choose what to go high end on and what not to? So for us, when we're building products, it doesn't necessarily start with a price. It's not like, hey, now we're going to make a phone for $500 or $300. It's more going back to the consumer. So when we started this new product line, the first thing we did was we looked at all the data we already had, all the insights we already had accumulated over the past couple
Starting point is 00:08:04 of years on what our consumers think a great smartphone is. And then we took these insights and went to the market to test them. We had focus groups where we discussed smartphones with a lot of regular consumers to validate our claims and we use these focus groups to kind of tweak our positioning. So for this product line what it comes down to is over the past couple of years there's a certain amount of consumers who feel like each iteration of smartphones aren't giving them as much a new innovation as before. They don't really perceive the difference between you between different generations of smartphones
Starting point is 00:08:45 anymore and they just want a phone that's great. They just want a phone that works. So for these consumers, what they really care about is basically three things, three big buckets. Number one is camera. I'm sure you're also aware from all the research we have. Pretty important. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:09:04 One of the most frequent use exactly one of the most frequent use cases probably the most frequent use case for a smartphone is its camera so we had to make sure that the camera is really good so for the for the oneplus Nord we're actually taking the same camera we have on the oneplus 8 and bringing it to the oneplus Nord so it's going to have a flagship level camera, which is really going to set it apart from all the other products in this price range. And secondly, we brought down the fast and smooth experience. People want a phone that just works and works really well. They don't want the phone to lag. They just want to have
Starting point is 00:09:43 a good and simple to use experience so it's going to come with the oxygen os it's going to come with all these optimizations but this time around on top of the 700 series chipset to deliver that same you know fast and smooth experience oh we got the 90 hertz amoled display as well to i was well to bring that all to life. Yeah. Okay. So for a OnePlus fan, I'm sure that when they use it for the first time, they won't really be able to tell that it's not an 800 series chipset. I think they'll be able to tell once they get into something really intensive like a 3D game on a higher graphic setting. But for the regular day-to-day tasks,
Starting point is 00:10:26 I've been using it as my daily driver for quite some time now. You can't really tell. And lastly, the third thing that we found is people, they wanna buy a smartphone from a brand they trust. So we're taking the same kind of quality testing and the attention to quality that we have from our flagship line to this mid-range line. So the exact same quality control.
Starting point is 00:10:51 So basically, to summarize, we found that people really wanted to see was one, a really great camera. Two, just a simple, easy-to-use experience that's smooth and fluid. And lastly, quality that they can trust. And that's what we've done with this product line. So these three factors then just became our product strategy. Once we had this product strategy as kind of like a high-level, kind of a north star for this product, we decided to see what kind of specs and what kind of features fit into it.
Starting point is 00:11:30 So it's kind of not the other way around. First we gotta find a direction, and usually that direction comes from speaking with consumers and analyzing the consumer feedback and turning them into insights. And then we fit the product into that within a certain price point. Interesting.
Starting point is 00:11:54 I kind of wonder about the difference between like average consumer that, you know, you might be speaking to a lot of versus, you know, maybe the classic OnePlus fan is a little more tech savvy or a little more spec conscious in a way. I don't know if that's what you found. Um, but I I'll say when I think of what I look for in a phone, I mean, I have my five pillars, not necessarily in any order, but I'm of course looking for a great camera. I'm looking for fast and smooth like performance. I also want a great battery life or a great battery experience. And then there's just a whole bunch of things that wrap into the experience of using a phone,
Starting point is 00:12:32 all of which typically requires some sort of tradeoff. If I'm asking for a high refresh rate, nice screen, I'm probably going to get less out of whatever battery ends up in that phone, right? So I'm curious what kind of compromises you sort of lean into on the flagship versus on Nord, where like on the OnePlus 8 Pro you can say, all right, we can put a big battery and a high refresh rate screen in this phone. But on OnePlus Nord, maybe you don't have that ability to do both.
Starting point is 00:12:59 So how do you weigh things like those trade-offs? Right, so once you have your kind of product direction, your product strategy ready, then you know what you're gonna focus on. So we know that we need to have a great camera, so we put a lot of our budget into the camera. We know we have to deliver a fast and smooth experience, that's why we have a 90 Hertz AMOLED display, that's why we have the 765G chipset, that's why we invest a lot of R&D resource in the optimization of the software. So I think it all follows the strategy you have. At least that's how we approach it over here. Do you have like a, when you're making this new product line,
Starting point is 00:13:38 in order to differentiate it enough, do you have like a max price where you're like, we can't go over this because then it'll be too close? Like when you decide fast and smooth, you could have picked the 800 series, but you go with 765G because it's doing well for that price. But once you start packing all these features in, when you go from 90 to 120, you're eventually creeping up on the flagship itself.
Starting point is 00:14:02 So do you have like a stop gap or a certain number you won't go over? We have a sanity check. We don't spend too much time dwelling on it. But we look at all the other products on the market to get a quick understanding of what other choices consumers have in different price levels and then of course it can't be priced too close to our flagship phones because then there's no need to make a new product line. So in the beginning, I think we said, you know, around 500 or not above 500, so below 500 would be a good place to start.
Starting point is 00:14:35 All right, all right, sounds reasonable. All right, we're gonna take a quick ad break and then we're gonna come back and talk about the prices of features and phones, IP ratings and more. Let's be right back. of features in phones, IP ratings, and more. Let's be right back. how busy you get. HelloFresh makes it easy to get a home-cooked meal on the table. With flavor-packed recipes like crispy chicken parmigiana, you'll be filling your kitchen with the cozy aromas of a homemade meal in no time. Visit HelloFresh.ca and use code SPOTIFY for your exclusive offer.
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Starting point is 00:15:38 You. Give yourself the gift of better mental health. BetterHelp Online Therapy connects you with a qualified therapist via phone, video, or live chat. It's convenient and affordable and can be done from the comfort of your own home. Having someone to talk to is truly a gift, especially during the holidays. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more and save 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com. I also have a couple questions for you that are even more specific to a previous video I made. So I'm always wondering how much parts cost in a phone.
Starting point is 00:16:11 So I was talking about the sort of formula for a budget phone when you end up at a $350, $400, $450 phone. What sort of tradeoffs need to be made because they're simply too expensive. So I have a couple questions maybe you can answer about that. We'll see. Sure, I'll try my best. Sure, so generally, about how much does it cost to add NFC to a phone?
Starting point is 00:16:38 NFC is one of those things we've seen left out of previous phones, previous OnePlus phones, for cost reasons. Now they're in many phones, but still left out occasionally. What does that little NFC tag cost? Nowadays, NFC is pretty common. So it's not something we thought about a lot, but it costs around $4 to just add the NFC there.
Starting point is 00:16:59 Okay. And that's four bucks to you, the manufacturer that's putting them in the phones? Or four bucks to the end consumer? To you? Okay. Yeah, when we think about the cost of a smartphone, we talk in terms of BOM. B-O-M.
Starting point is 00:17:13 It means bill of materials. So the $4 gets into the bill of materials. And then we have other costs to deliver the phone to the consumer. We have channel costs, marketing costs, operational costs, offices, staff, et cetera. So this is just the cost of components. What about IP certification? Because that's not a component necessarily, it's a couple of seals and a couple of things
Starting point is 00:17:37 you add to the phone that eventually qualify it for a certification. So an IP68 rating in a phone, for example, how much extra does that cost? Yeah, so an IP68 rating in a phone, for example, how much extra does that cost? Yeah, so this is a really interesting topic and it's quite complicated, so bear with me for a little bit. There's no official kind of body or third party organization that certifies phones to
Starting point is 00:18:00 be IP rated. It's just a set of standards that are commonly agreed upon in the industry. So take IP68, for instance. For a phone to be able to claim that it's IP68 certified, it needs to survive 1.5 meters underwater. Sorry for North American viewers. That's for like 10 minutes or something? For 30 minutes. 30 minutes? Okay. underwater. Sorry for North American viewers. That's for like 10 minutes or something? For 30 minutes. 30 minutes, okay.
Starting point is 00:18:29 For 30 minutes. So you mentioned the, yeah, we need to add additional seals to make sure that every port is waterproof, but that's actually only a very small part of the additional cost. The most of the cost here comes from the comes from the machines that we have to buy to test the devices. So that's the biggest cost driver. It's a big fixed investment to buy all
Starting point is 00:18:53 these machines that allow us to test the devices through blowing air into the ports to see if the air then comes out. It's not tested underwater. So that's the biggest fixed investment. The second cost driver is actually manpower. So every phone that's IP certified needs to undergo testing towards the end of the assembly line. So at the end of the assembly line, we have to add a few more steps to the process.
Starting point is 00:19:24 And this makes the phone take longer time to manufacture. And we also need more manpower and more people to undergo these tests. So that's the second biggest cost driver. The seals themselves, they don't really cost a lot. Right. So it's really testing all that stuff. So how much do you save by not having all that? Obviously the machines divide out over the cost of units, but I feel like if you just
Starting point is 00:19:54 put the seals in and toss it underwater and it seems to survive, you're close, even though you're not necessarily testing with official machines. Right. so it really depends on the volume, right? So if you sell a lot of phones or you manufacture a lot of phones and you just divide the cost of machines by a lot of phones and hence driving the price down. And also if your team is more experienced in building these assembly lines
Starting point is 00:20:17 that have IP certification tests, you can save time there as well to save costs. For us, it costs around $15 for each phone to do the IP certification. So for the OnePlus Nord, we chose to not do it. And as you say, we can still build a phone that survives the day to day. If you spill some water on your phone,
Starting point is 00:20:40 if you drop it in a pool of water, it still works. For the OnePlus Nord, we just decided that this is not a place where we should put cost because we're looking at the overall user experience. We're not designing for extreme use cases. We're not designing to cover kind of every corner of the user experience. Right. So it may like previous OnePlus phones that weren't certified, it may still have the seals. And like you say, it might still survive a spill or a rain or something like that, but it doesn't necessarily go through the same extra steps
Starting point is 00:21:18 in manufacturing and testing with those machines, which saves a bit of money and therefore takes the price down a little bit. Yeah. So for OnePlus Nord, for example, at every stage of our product development process, we undergo testing of 30 centimeters for 30 seconds, 30 centimeters of water for 30 seconds. Okay. And that, that should cover like all the day-to-day scenarios,
Starting point is 00:21:46 unless you're, I mean, you dropped your phone into the ocean or whatnot. Yeah, scuba diving. There's another trade-off, I guess, I'm curious about, which is battery. And I think a lot of people don't really think about the different types of ways that you can build a battery experience.
Starting point is 00:22:01 Usually we just think of how big is it, what's the battery life, And then that's the end. But there's how fast it charges, how fast it depletes. What does that look like on your end? You're buying a battery of a certain size or are you also considering the chemistry of a smaller battery charging faster or different styles of battery builds?
Starting point is 00:22:24 How do you decide on a battery in a phone? I think battery is pretty standard, but you mentioned charging, right? And our phones have been known to have warp charging, and that has additional costs. The hardware is not exactly the same because it's a high amperage charging. The power conversion happens in the power brick instead of in the phone itself.
Starting point is 00:22:47 And that has some additional cost. Yeah. I mean, shipping a phone with power brick. Pretty important, some may say. Pretty important. Yeah. What about the display? So I've talked about displays a lot.
Starting point is 00:23:01 I'm always interested in a great screen. I've talked about displays a lot. I'm always interested in a great screen. What's the difference between a great screen and a not so great screen when you're pricing out something like a flagship versus a mid-range phone? When it comes to display, I think the biggest choice you have to make is whether you're using a AMOLED display or a LCD display.
Starting point is 00:23:23 AMOLED display is up to two times more expensive than a LCD display but it it depends on a lot of other factors as well so for instance if you want a curved display that cost even more because when when you're manufacturing these curved displays the there there's more prone to error in the manufacturing process. So the yield rate gets lower, hence the more expensive product. And does refresh rate seem to come down in price
Starting point is 00:23:51 a little bit every year? Like it was almost unusual to have a higher refresh rate maybe four years ago in a phone. Now it seems like you can get a higher refresh rate AMOLED display pretty readily. When it comes to display, it's a lot about volume. So now that 90 Hertz displays have become really common, that drives the volume up and then hence the price down.
Starting point is 00:24:13 But it's still a trade off because we spent quite a lot on the display for this phone to ensure the smooth scrolling. But we think it's worth it. Okay, I gotta ask, I have to, I'm sorry in advance, but I have to ask, how much does a headphone jack cost? Good question, headphone jack doesn't cost that much in the bill of materials. The cost of that comes from the mechanical design of the phone, the hardware design of the phone.
Starting point is 00:24:47 It takes additional space, space you can otherwise use for other things, for instance battery. And nowadays, true wireless earphones are getting pretty popular and they're coming down in price. So we see a smaller and smaller need for headphone jacks. I'm actually curious, how big of a difference do you think you actually gain in battery, for example? I think that's usually the cited biggest improvement once you get rid of that port. How much bigger do you actually get to make the battery in a phone by getting rid of the headphone jack? It's an overall balance,
Starting point is 00:25:24 I think I would say. I haven't really calculated how much that amount of space results in a milliampereage for the battery. But it's a balance of a lot of different things. For instance, we also want to make sure our phones are not too thick because one of the first things consumers react to is how it feels in the hand. And when you have a phone that feels really slim
Starting point is 00:25:46 or feels good in the hand, so in our case, we also, since the very beginning, we have these tapered edges on the back to make it more grippable. This is really important. So it's an overall balance. A larger battery or less space for the battery will also result in a thicker phone.
Starting point is 00:26:09 So when you look at, when you zoom out from all this, all these different trade-offs that you have to think about for a phone, if it's, I feel like there's like the myth of like a no compromise phone, but even at the highest end, when you're like, I'm going to put a great screen in here, I'm going to put a great battery in here. I'm going to, you know, put the 800 series in this phone. And even if you're gonna run up the cost, you still do have to make the choice of like, do we want these cameras and this software for it? Or do we want this big battery or this thick battery?
Starting point is 00:26:37 And then the phone's thicker. Like even at the high end, there are still compromises, right? So there's almost, I guess maybe you can speak to, is there a such thing as a no compromise smartphone? I think it's, hmm, this is more in the context of, I guess what you believe in as a product manager. What are the things that you really believe
Starting point is 00:26:58 that your products should embody, right? So if what you believe in is I need to have exactly everything available on the market, that's one way of looking at it. But usually when you create a product, it's much more about balance. It's kind of like, I guess one analogy is like cooking a dish.
Starting point is 00:27:17 When you're cooking a dish, you don't want to throw in everything you have in the kitchen. That's not going to be a very tasty meal, but you kind of have a... I got to try it sometime. everything you have in the kitchen. That's not gonna be a very tasty meal, but. That's how I like it. I gotta try it sometime. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:31 But yeah, I know that's the balance. It's more about, you know, having a vision of what you wanna create and finding the right ingredients to get there. Makes sense, makes sense. So how do you, what's the most important feature of Nord? If I'm looking forward to this phone coming out sometime later this year, what's the number one thing?
Starting point is 00:27:48 I think you said camera at the beginning was one of the highest considerations in this market. Is that the most impressive feature of the Nord? I would say it's the overall package. I think we've come to a stage and, you know, a lot of the mid-range phones, they heavily promote one feature. And I personally don't really think that's how you should build a phone
Starting point is 00:28:11 because if you look at how people use their phones, they're on their phones for hours and hours every day. They use it for a variety of different things. They're not just here to use your camera or any other feature. So at the end of the day, we just wanted to create a really good all-rounder, a good day-to-day phone. It's easy to use, easy to recommend. So, and with that comes great cameras, you know, great experience, fast and smooth experience, and really good quality. Okay. So you decide on all the specs and all the internals of the phone.
Starting point is 00:28:45 You lock that up, and then you start. What comes after that? Is that the design afterwards, or how does that process continue? Yeah, so this is also a little bit complicated. So usually there's two stages. It's not a very linear process that some people might think. There's two stages. One is the concept
Starting point is 00:29:05 stage and one is the kind of realization or execution stage. The execution stage is very linear, step by step. But in the concept stage, actually a lot of teams work at the same time. So while the product team is speaking to consumers and studying the market and trying to figure out how to position this product, what the product strategy is, the industrial design team is already also working on a lot of different prototypes. At the same time, the hardware team is making sure that each of these prototypes will actually work.
Starting point is 00:29:37 Like we can fit all these product specs into the hardware itself. So it's a lot of teams working in parallel and only once everybody reaches an agreement when we kick off the project do we move into a very linear kind of product development process and kicking it off also involves other parts of the business like the marketing team, the sales team, everybody needs to be on the same page that we're doing this, this is why we're doing it, doing it this is what we're doing this is how it's gonna look so how
Starting point is 00:30:08 much it's gonna cost and then we move into the realization stage so I can just show you quickly some of the the prototypes we we explored before deciding on their final design so I have some of them here. So this is like a, when you say prototype, this is like you make a sort of a mock-up of a potential design to fit the phone into. Yeah, when I say prototype, I mean design mock-ups. So as I was saying before, when the product team is kind of working on
Starting point is 00:30:42 their product strategy, the industrial product team is kind of working on their product strategy, the industrial design team is also working on different paths to take the design. So all the prototypes, all the mock-ups are actually of, they have the same camera kind of configuration. You see a very unique style camera configuration, but the finish is different. Here you see like three squares. On the previous one it's the matte frosted glass. Yeah. Which one of these two would you like the most? I'm gonna go with that Dave 2D teal over there on the side. I feel like I would be into that. This one? Yeah. Teal.
Starting point is 00:31:25 Yeah. Dave 2D teal. Yeah. But then towards the end, we settled on this design. So we did something you're usually not allowed to do, which is we changed design really late in the process. And that caused the entire project to be delayed by around a month. And the reason why we did this is because in the beginning we saw this new product line as more of a test or an experiment but as we were looking into the data and the consumers we realized that this would be a really good
Starting point is 00:32:02 opportunity that we would sell a lot more phones than we originally envisioned. So then we had to really rethink our design strategy. Are we doing this as an experiment? If it's an experiment, then we can be much more daring with our industrial design. We can try this camera setup that looks really unique, L-shaped camera setup. But if we wanna sell a lot of phones, we want to target a much broader user base,
Starting point is 00:32:28 we need to make sure that it's immediately recognizable as a OnePlus phone. So we have the same camera setup, vertical camera setup you see in other OnePlus phones, and we have the same kind of tapered edges on the back of the phone. It really reminds you of the OnePlus design philosophy. That reminds me of a question I've always had. I am so curious about this. So how long before it's revealed is the design locked? Because I'm always thinking like sometimes phones get leaked and then there's all this
Starting point is 00:33:01 feedback online suddenly of a phone that you haven't announced yet, and you have maybe, if it's early enough, the ability to react to it. But like you said, once you've started manufacturing and tooling and everything, it's almost impossible to change it without delaying it massively. So how long before you get on stage with that final product is the design finished? Ideally, we should finish it nine months before the launch. In this case it's it's gonna be six months. Okay. Because after we you know decide on the concept and we kick off there's a
Starting point is 00:33:40 lot of other work we need to do. Should I go into a little bit of detail maybe? Yeah definitely. So the the first thing we need to do. Should I go into a little bit of detail maybe? Yeah, definitely. So the first thing we need to do after we kick off the project is we need to create the molds. The molds that then create the different components inside of the phone. So product development when it comes to smartphones, we have a few different stages. So we have the T0 stage. We call it T0 and basically the industrial design team has a design,
Starting point is 00:34:07 the hardware team knows how to fit all the components in, the product team has defined the product. Now we just quickly assemble it to make sure that it works. We do a couple of drop tests to make sure that the structure is sturdy enough. So that's the T0 stage. After the T0 stage comes the EVT stage. So in the EVT stage, what we need to ensure is that all the simple features work, all the features work.
Starting point is 00:34:33 So for instance, the camera. We need to make sure that the camera can turn on, but in our case, for the OnePlus Nord, when we're using the front-facing camera, sometimes the people, they became purple. So at this stage, you just need to make sure that the features work. There may be 30%, 40% done.
Starting point is 00:34:53 And this is the EVT stage. And the EVT stage is also where we start doing more testing. So the full suite of quality testing that we do on OnePlus flagships, we also do on this OnePlus Nord product line. The drop testing, the bend testing, heat testing, and different types of water resistance testing. So the goal of doing all these tests is to see whether there's areas to improve.
Starting point is 00:35:25 And throughout this process we keep tweaking the hardware to make sure that it can pass all these tests in a better and better way. And after the EVT stage, we go into DVT stage where we make sure that the features are more and more ready for prime time. So after DVT stage, they should be 80% or 90% ready to go. And here we really focus on the test assembly line. So think of the test assembly line as a, you just build a very small amount of assembly lines,
Starting point is 00:35:56 like a beta almost, and you keep tweaking it to make sure that the process goes smoother, the yield rate becomes higher and higher, and it gets faster and faster. And then after the DVT stage comes the PVT stage, and here it's all about production. So we have this test assembly line that we've perfected, now it's all about replicating it on a larger scale and getting it ready for mass production, which is the next stage. So after we design, design the product and decide on the concept, there's a whole host of different stages to make sure that we can deliver the product to
Starting point is 00:36:33 the market. It's a comp, it's a complex piece by piece process that has to fit sort of together like a puzzle. Otherwise you're going to be delayed because basically even if you have to finalize that design six to nine months before you end up getting into those stages of testing designs you've already thought of maybe like right after you've just you know revealed the phone a year before so that's it almost requires like a future it requires a vision of what you want in the future long before you're actually
Starting point is 00:37:02 going to share it so that that is really interesting to note. That's why it's really helpful to have a product strategy. So when you're building a roadmap, you make sure that you always follow this strategy that you built. Awesome. Well, look, I appreciate the time and all the info and background on how these phones come together. I feel like I've learned a lot.
Starting point is 00:37:23 I'm hoping everyone who's listening has also learned a lot about how this stuff works. But any closing words, any final parting teasers for Nord you wanna drop on us before we get out of here? I'm really just really excited to see what everybody thinks about the product. When this video drops, it's only a couple of days left to the launch.
Starting point is 00:37:40 So we're really excited and a little bit anxious here. So here's hoping that everything goes well. For sure. I wish you guys the best of luck and stay safe out there. Thank you. Waveform was created with Studio 71 and our intro outro music was made by Cameron Barlow.

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