Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “HTC Design interview: Claude Zellweger at MWC 2015”.
So what we’re trying to do here is to really build a lineage, and so what we’ve done is created phone, that from a distance, is going to be clearly identifiable as a one product. So it’s an icon, that’s been established in the market and we want to continue that. But if you come up close to it, you’re going to notice all the subtle details that we’ve evolved. This is obviously a good franchise working out where you have you taken icon and you keep refining the things that need to be refined. You don’t overhaul the basic gesture, the fundamental expression of the phone, if you don’t have to, if it’s really really good, and so what we’ve done is to look at a lot of different aspects of the phones areas that could be improved. So the m7 got a lot of accolades for its precision aesthetics and then the m8 got a lot of accolades for being really comfortable in the hand, but people tend to lose it a little bit too easily, including myself. I dropped mine too many times, and so what we did with m9 is really to combine the best of both worlds. We were able to take the sort of crisp edge of m7 and left precision, look and then also add the softness of m8 and create a product that really is going to feel great in the hand scooters a little bit about the manufacturing process and that how That has changed between the one I made in the one in mine yeah. The manufacturing has evolved quite a bit. Actually we’re not making things easier on ourselves. You can see our just a pure machining time, for instance, for our main unibody has gone from 150 minutes on the original m7, all the way to 300 minutes on their line, and that’s because we’re doing a much more complex process.
This is a kind of an industry first, if we’re doing a dual anodized a on the main housing. So we wanted to show of different qualities of the metal, but we also didn’t want to introduce multiple parts on the phone because, of course, we’re well known for our unibody, and so what we’ve done is the whole process gets done twice over the anodization, the machining And then the finishing, so we see the iphone 6, the new galaxy s6 and you need advice all have cameras that protrude slightly from the body. Do you think that’s a new trend, that’s about it! Well, a lot of being a designer is about making trade off, especially in the smartphone space, because we have a limited real estate that we can work with, and so every item has to be considered very very carefully. As you go bigger sensors, everybody wants to have a great camera on their phone, so I feel bigger with the sensors. You inevitably come up to certain limitations and – and I think we’re willing to make that sacrifice right now is a little bit of a bump.
I would say our bump is minimal and it’s elegant and there’s sort of a limits to how much we would be willing to to grow over the rest of the product. Everything is driven by the same design philosophy. You know we have a global design team, we’re not sort of separated into this insular organizations, and so everything is driven by a dedication to to simplicity.
You know moving removing elements, it could be between you and Technology and then also as an honesty to the material and – and you know, a dedication to the craft. So I think a product like grip, it’s not an all metal unibody product. It wouldn’t make any sense. There so we really picked the right kind of high quality plastics that are going to feel great on you on your wrist and then don’t compete with your watch. If you want no, I think it’s really important that we keep our heritage. We keep our lineage, but we every time you start a new design process.
We forget about all of it and we way outside of it, and so I can tell you’re going to be seeing some really exciting things coming and some unexpected things as well. .