The Honor Magic9 series launch event was held in Beijing on September 28. This new phone, which was supposed to be released in October, was moved up to late September. Even before the launch event, Honor had already revealed the price of the Magic9 16GB+512GB version at 5,999 yuan, laying its cards on the table first. Honor is not the only player jumping the gun. Within one week, vivo and OPPO also launched new-generation flagships. The domestic bar-type flagship battle, which originally would not have intensified until mid-October, has been pulled forward to September this year.
Rising storage costs over the past year have pushed overall device prices higher step by step; on the other hand, the phone market has long entered stock competition, with users replacing their phones less and less frequently. Price increases are unavoidable, but raising prices too quickly could push already limited upgrade budgets to competitors. This has made this year's autumn flagship battle particularly tense, with entry-level versions eyeing each other's prices while high-end versions keep approaching the 10,000 yuan mark.
But phone makers' anxiety no longer stays confined to the phones themselves. As stacking more specs in chips, imaging, and screens yields increasingly limited experience gains, manufacturers have begun extending their battle lines outward. Portable screens, telephoto lenses, gimbal cameras, and AI lapel devices are starting to appear in flagship launch events and product plans. Fighting for limited upgrade budgets while seeking new growth around phones is becoming the other side of this September's domestic flagship battle.
The Battle Starts Early
This year's domestic flagship battle has arrived earlier than usual. From September 21 to 23, vivo, OPPO, and Xiaomi Corp. (ADR) (XIACY) held new-generation bar-type flagship launches on three consecutive evenings; the Honor Magic9 series was scheduled for September 28. Compared with the previous generation, vivo and OPPO's launch events were moved up by 22 days and 24 days respectively, and Honor also planned to move up by 17 days. The flagship battle originally concentrated in mid-October was pulled forward to before National Day.
Looking at this year's new products alongside the previous generation, one obvious feature is that although manufacturers are all raising prices, their main entry-level versions are still closely watching competitors, with increases basically kept around 1,000 yuan. The 12GB+256GB version of the XIAOMI-W (01810) 18 Pro rose from 4,999 yuan to 5,999 yuan, an increase of 1,000 yuan; the same-capacity version of the vivo X500 rose from 4,399 yuan to 5,499 yuan, an increase of 1,100 yuan; the 12GB+256GB version of the OPPO Find X10 also rose from 4,399 yuan to 5,499 yuan, likewise up 1,100 yuan. Costs need to be passed on to end users, but no one dares to be the first to push mainstream tiers too high, for fear of ceding limited upgrade demand to competitors.
The higher the configuration, the bolder manufacturers are in testing prices. The 16GB+1TB version of the XIAOMI-WR (81810) 18 Pro rose from 5,999 yuan in the previous generation to 8,999 yuan, an increase of 3,000 yuan in one generation; the same-capacity version of the 18 Pro Max rose from 6,999 yuan to 9,999 yuan. The 16GB+1TB version of the vivo X500 Pro also rose from 6,699 yuan for the previous-generation X300 Pro to 8,999 yuan, an increase of 2,300 yuan. The price ceiling has continued to move upward accordingly. The Xiaomi HK SDR 2to1 (HXXD.SI) 18 Pro Max transparent special edition with 16GB+1TB has reached 10,999 yuan; the vivo X500 Pro Max 16GB+1TB satellite communication version is priced at 9,499 yuan, while a creator bundle paired with imaging equipment reaches 12,999 yuan. The latter cannot be directly regarded as a bare-device price, but the 10,000 yuan mark is becoming an increasingly frequent price reference for domestic bar-type flagships.
But the more prices rise, the more manufacturers dare not easily abandon price-sensitive users. OPPO's choice is to proactively add a lower-priced entry. Although the starting price of the Find X10 standard version has already risen from 4,399 yuan in the previous generation to 5,499 yuan, OPPO added an E version to the Find X series launch lineup for the first time this year, holding the sub-5,000 yuan price band at 4,999 yuan. More interestingly, the 16GB+512GB version of the Find X10 E and the 12GB+256GB version of the Find X10 are both priced at 5,499 yuan. With the same budget, consumers can choose larger memory and storage, or choose higher-spec chips and imaging, effectively leaving a buffer zone for the price increase.
Xiaomi, however, has moved in another direction. Last September, the Xiaomi 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max appeared at the same launch event, with the standard version still serving as the lower-priced entry for the numbered series. By September 23 this year, Qualcomm (QCOM)-powered Xiaomi released only the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max, with the standard version absent from the launch lineup. Xiaomi President Lu Weibing later confirmed that the Xiaomi 18 standard version still exists but will be released separately later. This means that at least during this year's most intense flagship upgrade window, the starting threshold for Xiaomi flagships directly begins at 5,999 yuan for the Pro.
After its price advantage weakened, Xiaomi placed more chips on core hardware. The 18 Pro debuts Qualcomm's sixth-generation Snapdragon 8 Extreme Edition, while the 18 Pro Max debuts the higher-spec sixth-generation Snapdragon 8 Super Extreme Edition, whose CPU peak frequency reaches 5GHz and which adopts a new-generation GPU, NPU architecture, and Offset PoP packaging. But interestingly, the "more specs at the same price" approach once led by Xiaomi is now also becoming a weapon for other manufacturers to counterattack.
This time the Magic9 added an Ultra Edition, with the 12GB+256GB version priced at 4,499 yuan, and with national subsidies it can even go as low as 3,999 yuan; the 16GB+512GB version of the Magic9 is set at 5,999 yuan; horizontally, also at 5,999 yuan, the vivo X500 and OPPO Find X10 offer only 12GB+512GB; Xiaomi's launch threshold this round is also 5,999 yuan, but the 18 Pro offers 12GB+256GB. Regarding this pricing consideration, Honor CEO Li Jian candidly told media including Wallstreetcn's全天候Tech: "We still keep reducing our costs and improving efficiency, trying to keep the difficulties to ourselves. It is indeed impossible not to make any adjustment at all. This decision was truly difficult."
Although the positioning of these products is not exactly the same and their overall value cannot be judged by capacity alone, Honor's move to place 16GB+512GB at 5,999 yuan in advance already carries a clear price-positioning signal: when peers are all raising prices, it tries to make this price point attractive again with larger memory and storage. Beyond price, Honor is playing two cards: AI and imaging.
One card is AI. The Magic9 will debut MagicOS 11, and the new-generation YOYO supports long-range tasks of more than 100 steps. Honor hopes to push phone AI from answering questions further toward proactive service and task execution. The other card is imaging. This year Honor partnered with professional cinema camera manufacturer ARRI to build a cinematic industry imaging laboratory, and the Magic9 Pro Max is equipped with ARRI's dual 200-megapixel imaging system, a cinema-grade shotgun microphone, and audio quality. "Honor will firmly invest in imaging," Honor CEO Li Jian told media including Wallstreetcn. "Including our cooperation with ARRI, there will be greater room for imagination in the future."
Some worry about losing users due to price increases and choose to expand their product lines downward; some accept a higher price entry and concentrate resources on the Pro series; others take advantage of peers' price increases and proactively seize position with more aggressive capacity combinations. In a market where replacement cycles keep lengthening and costs keep rising, launching ten or twenty days earlier means entering consumers' candidate list for this round earlier. What phone makers are fighting for this year is limited upgrade budgets.
From One Phone to an Ecosystem
As flagship phone growth comes under pressure, phone makers are pushing into the accessories business. Imaging is the most obvious line. At the Magic9 launch event, Honor debuted 500mm and 200mm giant telephoto lenses, focusing on concert photography. At the X500 series launch event, vivo introduced a 699-yuan "portable shooting screen." It can magnetically attach to the back of the phone and wirelessly transmit images within 10 meters. When using the rear main camera for selfies, recording spoken content, or setting up special camera positions, users can directly see the composition and control shooting. Around the X500, vivo also continued to expand compatibility with Zeiss telephoto lenses and professional imaging handles, turning the phone into a shooting platform that can continue adding lenses, screens, and control devices.
"More modes, more official applications, and possible support for more other phone products are all already on the way. Our peripherals will expand outward around mobile imaging; this is a long-term path," said Zhao Dian, senior director of vivo's X series products. The portable screen itself is not an entirely new idea. In March this year, Insta360 already launched the Snap phone selfie screen, which also solved the problem of not being able to see composition when using the rear main camera for selfies through magnetic attachment. It started at 499 yuan and emphasized broad compatibility with Apple and Android phones; only two months later, the Honor 600 series also launched the magnetic secondary screen "Magic Little Honor Screen," supporting composition preview, shooting control, and four-level fill light.
Not only that, vivo and OPPO also plan to launch standalone cameras. On September 7, vivo officially announced that it would enter the gimbal camera category and said it hoped to bring products next year; OPPO is also eyeing the same market and has internally launched a gimbal camera project codenamed "Fuyao," planning to invest substantial resources. Gimbal cameras are indeed one of the few consumer electronics categories still maintaining rapid growth. IDC data shows that in the second quarter of this year, global handheld smart camera shipments exceeded 5.88 million units, up 57% year on year, with sales approaching 15.7 billion yuan. Among them, gimbal camera shipments approached 2.8 million units, up 87% year on year, making it one of the markets with the most obvious growth among major categories.
Phones still have limitations in scenarios such as motion tracking and long-duration shooting, while gimbal cameras are lighter and easier to use than mirrorless cameras, leaving a new imaging demand beyond phones. For vivo and OPPO, this is also a relatively familiar business. Over the past few years, both companies have accumulated sensor tuning, computational photography, color, and video capabilities on phones. As it becomes increasingly difficult for mobile imaging itself to stand out simply by adding another camera, extending these capabilities to standalone devices has become a natural choice for building an imaging ecosystem.
Another line extending outward is AI. OPPO's "AI Mind Ball" launched this time is a very representative product. It is a 9.8-gram lapel-style AI device that can be worn all day to record information users hear and think of in daily life, and then use AI to organize, associate, and review it. Its experience price is 499 yuan. The AI Mind Ball can work with office software and supports scenarios such as meeting notes; it also plans to open an MCP ecosystem so developers can connect commonly used AI tools to it. This leaves greater room for imagination for such small hardware: if it is further connected with office agents in the future, a sentence a user says during a meeting, a client visit, or even while walking can first be captured by the hardware, then handed to the agent for organization, to-do generation, and even continued completion of follow-up tasks.
OPPO has not currently announced direct cooperation between the AI Mind Ball and a specific office agent, but the entire office agent industry is already moving along this path. In September, Tencent WorkBuddy launched an open platform and simultaneously introduced nine co-branded smart hardware products, with partners including Plaud, Insta360, iFlytek, Anker, and Moma. The connected hardware already covers more than ten categories, including smart glasses, recording cards, microphones, earphones, and smart wearables. Hardware is responsible for "listening, seeing, and recording," while WorkBuddy is responsible for understanding, planning, and execution behind the scenes.
It is still difficult to judge which of portable screens, gimbal cameras, or AI lapel devices will ultimately grow into a truly major category. Phone makers themselves may not know the answer either. But after growth in their main phone business came under pressure, they have become more willing than before to pay attention to these once-inconspicuous businesses: when they see demand for selfie screens, they launch products deeply adapted to their own phones; when they see gimbal cameras growing rapidly, they extend mobile imaging capabilities outward; when they see agents beginning to need new voice entry points, they try AI lapel devices.
This is more like a broad trial-and-error effort around the phone ecosystem. As the marginal returns from continuing to compete on internal phone specs keep declining, adding a screen, a lens, a camera, or an AI hardware device around the phone to create new experiences with new devices is also beginning to become phone makers' solution for finding the next space for growth.
Comments