Your next phone may be in the 'cloud'

Cloud phones migrate all local storage, computing, and rendering to the cloud by virtualizing the mobile operating system on the cloud. The operating system and various applications run on the cloud to achieve hardware and performance decoupling

Cloud phones migrate all local storage, computing, and rendering to the cloud by virtualizing the mobile operating system on the cloud. The operating system and various applications run on the cloud to achieve hardware and performance decoupling. The local equipment will Uplink Synchronization synchronize the user's data such as each touch screen and each rotation of the gyroscope to the cloud; The real-time images of cloud phones will be transmitted in the form of audio and video streams to the local device for display.

Reporter Liu Yan from our newspaper

Nowadays, computing power has become a new productivity in the digital economy era, gradually changing the work and daily life of ordinary people.

On the significant milestone of World Telecommunications and Information Society Day on May 17th, China Mobile has promoted cloud phones as a landmark application of 5G computing power terminal products to the mass market. As the three major telecommunications operators in China accelerate the comprehensive and systematic promotion of cloud phone commercialization, many pain points and issues faced by users when using physical phones are expected to be improved.

Enabling cloud computing to benefit the public

As Wang Endong, an academician of the CAE Member, said, cloud computing supports a steady stream of data with "cloud". Using powerful "computing" as energy, data creates updated and higher value, which is a strong support for the digital construction of industries and enterprises, and a pillar industry in China's digital economy construction.

But how can cloud computing better integrate with the information life of ordinary people?

As a hardware device, mobile phones have always been difficult to decouple from software. According to data from mainstream e-commerce platforms, the market threshold for 5G phones with basic configurations of 8G storage and 128G memory has dropped to around 1500 yuan, and the trend of 5G phones benefiting the public has become a reality.

However, with the massive emergence of various applications in China, the disadvantage of the non scalability of mobile phone hardware storage space is becoming more prominent. At the same time, the limited computing power of mobile hardware is also limiting the user experience. High performance processors are usually only suitable for flagship models of various mobile phone brands, and the price gap between flagship and entry-level models often makes consumers hesitant. This contradiction poses a higher challenge to inclusive computing power, and cloud phones have emerged.

Cloud phones migrate all local storage, computing, and rendering to the cloud by virtualizing the mobile operating system on the cloud. The operating system and various applications run on the cloud to achieve hardware and performance decoupling. The local equipment will Uplink Synchronization synchronize the user's data such as each touch screen and each rotation of the gyroscope to the cloud; The real-time images of cloud phones will be transmitted in the form of audio and video streams to the local device for display.

Zhou Wu, Deputy General Manager of China Mobile's Market Operations Department, introduced that China Mobile Cloud Phone is a virtual phone running in the cloud, an extension of the 5G era physical phone, responding to users' computing service needs of "lighter, faster, more secure, and more convenient". It is an important content of China Mobile's latest "Digital Benefiting the People Plan", It is a digital application product that China Mobile provides for the launch of digital benefits to the people, which is "visible, tangible" and easily accessible.

China Mobile emphasizes that with "storage enhancement, security privacy, and end-to-end cloud collaboration" as key features, China Mobile's cloud phones will become a new entry point for individuals to access the digital world, a new channel for enterprises to carry out digital business, and a new secure and controllable grip for government services.

With the deepening of the 5G era and the advancement of cloud network integration, the application stage of cloud phones has become broader. However, previous popular products with cloud phone concepts have shown weak performance. Currently, only telecom operators have the power and ability to promote cloud phones. This is not only because of their key position in the industry chain, but also because no product can more directly reflect the important development strategy of "cloud network integration" as a telecom operator.

Breaking through the constraints of mobile phone configuration

Mobile phones have become an indispensable tool for people's work and life. Faced with various types of mobile phones springing up like mushrooms after a rain, the important factors people choose are still hardware indicators such as strong performance, large capacity, and long-term battery life.

Although major mobile phone manufacturers are trying their best to improve the cost-effectiveness of their phones, the pain point always exists. No matter how good physical phones are, storage space seems to be increasingly difficult to meet consumers' application needs, and for mobile phone users who have the need for "separation of public and private", there are even more troubles.

If mobile phones can surpass terminal performance and provide consumers with higher performance services, the aforementioned pain points will be easily solved. And this is precisely the advantage of cloud phones.

Cloud phones have made the concept of 'mobile phones' no longer an inherent entity in people's minds. In theory, with cloud phones, the storage space of physical phones can be very small, and hardware performance unrelated to the network can also be less emphasized. This is because, with the support of cloud computing power, users can access additional storage space and cloud collaboration experience through multiple controls such as apps, H5, and mini programs when using cloud phones, expanding applications and data storage, and achieving the extension of physical phone applications.

Science and Technology Daily reporter learned from Beijing Mobile that compared to physical phones, China Mobile's cloud phones have four improvements.

Firstly, the computing power is enhanced, allowing users to easily apply and enjoy large-scale games. Based on cloud services with powerful computing power that can be accessed anytime and anywhere, cloud phones can easily complete complex computing processing, image rendering, and other tasks with the help of cloud graphics processors, enabling low-end phones to enjoy high-end games. In addition, due to the completion of computation and rendering in the cloud, the terminal's heating and battery life issues have been greatly improved, and there is no battery anxiety during the whole day of hanging up, while saving a lot of mobile phone storage space.

Secondly, mobile phones' slimming down '. Cloud phones provide application backup space, which does not occupy local storage. Users can upload applications that are not commonly used or occupy large storage space to the cloud with one click, freeing up local phone storage.

Thirdly, triple protection of user security and privacy. Cloud phones can achieve public private separation or meet personal private social needs through triple protection and data isolation; The application is installed in the cloud, which can reduce the collection of critical privacy information such as personal location and address book, and prevent privacy leakage.

Fourthly, one machine with multiple numbers and separate applications can improve efficiency. A cloud phone can be bound to multiple account cards. Each ID card can be used for application avatars, multiple game openings, and multiple accounts can be online simultaneously to avoid frequent switching. Based on the above functions, it can also achieve the separation of public and private, with clear boundaries between work and life, and high efficiency in opening multiple accounts.

Multiple measures to protect cloud information security

Cloud phones are not new. As early as ten years ago, Alibaba proposed the concept of cloud phones, but due to the inability of the network to match demand, it affected user experience and did not develop.

The popularization of cloud phones is inseparable from the strong driving force of communication "arteries" such as 5G and gigabit networks, as well as the "heart" of computing infrastructure. According to Dong Xin, the general manager of China Mobile, China Mobile alone has opened over 1.55 million 5G base stations, covered 300 million households with gigabit broadband, and had a total server computing power of over 8EFLOPS (floating-point operations per second), with over 650PB of high-value data.

However, the construction of 5G networks and computing power facilities has become relatively mature. Why did the early manufacturers of cloud phone business not achieve success?

In the view of independent analyst Huang Haifeng in the communication industry, there were three main challenges in the development of early cloud phones: insufficient network capabilities, difficulty in breaking through the experience threshold, and challenges in scale development; Key cloud technologies such as cloud rendering technology for public clouds have not been broken through; The ecological development is lagging behind, the adaptability of apps is insufficient, and there is a lack of application support.

The unique capabilities and advantages of telecom operators, such as network resources, computing power node distribution, professional technology, number of users, traffic, number cards, and secure storage, have broken through the development difficulties of cloud phones and extended the capabilities of physical phones to the cloud.

Huang Haifeng emphasized that as an information hub, various types of information are summarized on mobile phones. Multiple phones seem to solve the problem. However, on the one hand, information is not completely disconnected from each other. On the other hand, carrying multiple mobile phones simultaneously also increases consumer usage and management costs. In order to make mobile phones more lightweight and diverse, cloud phones will be a new trend in future development.

How to ensure the information security of cloud phones when both data and hardware have been moved to the "cloud"? The answer of China Mobile is that it can use technologies such as data cloud encryption storage to protect the processing and circulation of information in the cloud; At the same time, cloud phones will provide triple encryption, including device locks, application locks, and cloud phone one click hiding, to protect user privacy. Finally, the data generated by cloud phones is' non landing ', which means that the information isolation between the digital world and personal life can also ensure information security to a certain extent.

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