Visible telephoto, invisible long knife. — Brother Shui

There are two ways to approach the 'backside' of a product in the world.

One is Apple's approach: In the Secure Enclave chip, which users never see, a physically isolated chamber safeguards encryption keys—even Apple cannot access them. Steve Jobs once marveled at the craftsmanship of a chest of drawers' back panel, and Apple engraved this philosophy into silicon—investing extreme engineering in unseen circuit boards and chip architectures to deliver long-term stability and security.

The other is OV's approach: Showcase telephoto capabilities where everyone can see them, while wielding a 38-meter-long knife in unseen areas. Then tell you this is called 'Pro decentralization' and the 'digital revolution.'

In May 2026, the vivo S60 and OPPO Reno16 were successively released—two devices, two telephoto lenses, and... two invisible long knives.

Take the vivo S60 Standard Edition (12+256GB) as an example, priced at a lofty 3,599 yuan.

Horizontally: It represents a 600-yuan surge over the previous-generation S50 Standard Edition in the same tier.

Vertically: It costs just 100 yuan less than the previous-generation S50 Pro mini.

From a pricing perspective, it has already become a 'Pro'; but from a configuration standpoint, the knife skills have just begun.

The first cut lands precisely on the chip.

The S50 Pro mini uses the fifth-gen Snapdragon 8—TSMC 3nm, all-big-core architecture, 3.28 million Antutu points, memory bandwidth exceeding 80GB/s. The S60 Standard Edition uses the third-gen Snapdragon 8s—TSMC 4nm, traditional tri-cluster architecture, 1.9 million Antutu points, memory bandwidth of only 64GB/s.

For 100 yuan less, performance shrinks by 42%, the manufacturing process lags by one generation, and the architecture lags by one generation.

That periscope telephoto lens, touted as a core selling point, is prominently displayed on posters and packaged as a ticket to flagship-level configuration through 'Pro decentralization' narratives. Users see the telephoto and believe in the sincerity. But the actual consequences are: local large models stutter, high-load games fail to fully utilize the 144Hz screen, and multitasking switches result in frame drops and overheating.

The chip is the most critical cost component and the fundamental experience of a smartphone. By cutting here, every future slide, load, and switch's smoothness over the next three years is sacrificed for that 100-yuan price difference.

The 'Pro decentralization' rhetorical trap: True 'decentralization' should resemble how the iPhone 11 offered the same A13 chip as the Pro at standard edition pricing. vivo's approach is to give you a Pro component (telephoto) while taking away the Pro's soul (flagship chip), then charging nearly Pro-level prices. Users think they're getting a Pro experience at standard edition pricing, but in reality, they're paying Pro prices for a standard edition that's been gutted in core and surface-level aspects.

This is like buying a luxury brand car with 'decentralized' leather seats, only to find an older-generation, low-power engine under the hood when you open it. You pay for visible 'luxury,' but the core experience—driving smoothness and responsiveness—is downgraded.

The 'perceptual violence' of the Vitality Edition employs 'extreme perceptual parameters' to launch a dimensionality-reducing attack on 'basic experience thresholds.' The ultra-large battery and ultra-high refresh rate screen create two extreme, immediately perceptible selling points, but the chip and telephoto lens that support smooth 3D gaming and AI model operation are axed. This creates a 'lopsided extremism': the phone's battery life is extremely long, but its capabilities diminish; the screen is extremely smooth, but the content that can fully utilize it decreases. Such product design doesn't aim to meet balanced needs but to manufacture overwhelming sales rhetoric.

Moreover, the S60 12GB+256GB Vitality Edition costs 200 yuan more than the S50 12GB+256GB Standard Edition, yet the processor downgrades from Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 to Dimensity 7500, and the telephoto lens is entirely removed.

The saved costs are exchanged for a 7,200mAh battery and a 144Hz screen—two numbers large enough to fill every poster.

Users instantly notice the battery capacity but only realize the absence of telephoto when shooting distant scenes and feel the GPU's weakness (with only 2 cores) when playing 3D games.

The S60's biggest selling points are '4K Native Live' and 'Starlight Live.' These are pure software algorithms with costs nearly zero when amortized per unit. In contrast, a telephoto lens costs 200-300 yuan per unit. The 600-yuan premium you pay isn't for hardware but for a set of filters.

vivo precisely identifies its target users—young people who love selfies and sharing but don't understand specs. It then makes precise choices: prioritize large batteries, waterproofing, and fingerprint recognition—features users notice immediately and are easy to market; abandon chip performance, telephoto lenses, and wireless charging—aspects users perceive weakly and won't notice short-term.

That periscope telephoto lens, touted as core evidence of 'Pro decentralization,' is vivo's gift to users—and the sheath for its hidden knife. What's visible is the telephoto; what's invisible is the long knife slashing the chip. This is the first blade.

If vivo hides its long knife within a physical telephoto lens, OPPO conceals its blade in another 'telephoto'—the 200-megapixel main camera plastered across posters. Its functional narrative is similarly 'shooting far, cropping clearly.' It's another 'telephoto,' albeit made not of glass but digits.

The Samsung HP5 sensor measures just 1/1.56 inches, with single-pixel areas compressed to 0.5μm. Algorithms cannot repay the debts of physical laws—smaller pixels capture less light, resulting in excessive noise in low light. The so-called 'black technology' of 16-in-1 pixel binning produces actual imaging of only 12.5 megapixels after aggregation. 200 million ÷ 16.

For the vast majority of users who don't crop images, daily perception is of 12.5-megapixel imaging quality—not the 40-60MB raw files that compress to 2-megapixel images on social platforms. More insidious is the 'storage anxiety tax': Manufacturers use high-pixel selling points to rapidly consume your storage, forcing you to buy higher-tier versions or cloud storage—a carefully designed commercial closed loop . In scenes truly testing hardware prowess, such as low light and high dynamic range, this algorithm-stacked lens cannot compete with flagship large sensors boasting exponentially greater physical light intake.

If vivo slashes the chip, OPPO dresses a 12.5-megapixel mid-range lens in the emperor's new clothes using this 'digital telephoto.'

A more sophisticated play than direct price hikes—internalizing national consumption stimulus policies as corporate profit buffers. The Reno16 12+256GB is priced at 3,499 yuan, a 500-yuan year-over-year increase; the Pro version jumps from 3,699 yuan to 4,499 yuan, an 800-yuan hike—the industry's largest price increase in the same tier. Yet the chip upgrades from Dimensity 8450 to 8550, a roughly 15% performance boost; the battery increases from 6,200mAh to 6,700mAh, both conventional iterations.

Raising prices by 500-800 yuan for conventional iterations, the state uses hard cash to encourage consumption, but certain manufacturers treat national subsidies as price-hike buffers and profit amplifiers. Consumers think they're reaping policy benefits, but in reality, they're the ones being harvested.

That 200-megapixel main camera is OPPO's 'telephoto'—making you think you can see far and shoot clearly, while the knife hides deep within the pixels, slashing expectations for true imaging quality. This is the second long knife.

In reality, the entire industry faces cost pressures from core component and storage price hikes. In 2026, storage chip costs skyrocketed, with memory unit prices surging over 300%—all vendors must adapt. Comparing the strategies of the 'offline trio': Honor's 600 entry-level model maintains pricing while scaling back specs, reducing memory to 8GB and chips to Snapdragon 7—the most restrained price hike but the most thorough scaling back. vivo S60 jumps 600 yuan, using 'Pro decentralization' to sell standard editions at Pro prices while drastically scaling back internal chips—the most concealed high-profit harvesting. OPPO Reno16 series sees the highest price hikes, using the 200-megapixel camera and 7,000mAh battery as bait, relying on national subsidies to reset psychological pricing—the most aggressive policy arbitrage.

Three paths, one knife skill: Place a 'telephoto' upfront to make you see, believe, and pay. Behind the scenes, the long knife has already fallen. vivo's blade targets 'unseen performance floors,' while OPPO's cuts into 'unfathomable experience ceilings.'

Apple invests in unseen areas, reaping long-term reputation dividends—three years later, users say, 'This phone is still so smooth.' OV saves costs in unseen areas, achieving short-term sales bursts—three years later, users say, 'This brand gets slower over time.' The former is an investment in 'time's friend,' the latter a loan from 'time's enemy.' This represents a fundamental divergence in values.

OV precisely identifies target users: prioritize perception, disregard specs, trust posters. They pile on materials where visible and cut costs where unseen. This isn't product evolution but systematic cognitive arbitrage exploiting information asymmetry. But as users gradually learn to read specs, understand long-term experiences, and as 12.5-megapixel imaging falters in low light, and two-generation-old chips stutter after two years:

Today's precise knife skills become tomorrow's brand liabilities.

Users won't analyze whether a chip lags by two generations in architecture; they'll simply conclude: 'This brand's phones get slower over time.' Such reputation spreads like a virus, crumbling brand empires built with hundreds of billions in advertising spending.

The 38-meter-long knife swung today will eventually wound the wielder tomorrow.