A service to physically increase the storage of smartphones has started
Huawei announced the flagship model "HUAWEI P50" series in China on July 29, 2021. However, at the recital, a service that could be said to be the first in history as a smartphone maker was also announced. It is a smartphone storage increase service. When you hear about increasing storage, you may think that it is a practical "expansion of storage capacity" by providing the cloud for free. However, Huawei offers customer service to disassemble the smartphone itself, replace the storage memory chip, and increase the amount. Of course, this is a genuine manufacturer's service.
Image photo.It will be modified to increase storage with genuine manufacturer
A long time ago, there was a time when there was no smartphone yet, and it was popular to modify the storage of PDAs such as Palm by yourself. The ancestors worked hard to increase the storage by various means such as replacing the memory chip and stacking it on top of the existing memory to create a "turtle child" structure. However, that was about 20 years ago. Today's smartphones are no longer easy enough to be modified by yourself, so it's basically not possible to increase internal storage after buying a smartphone. They will not send it to the manufacturer for repair and say "I want the 64GB model to be 128GB".
However, Huawei has embarked on a storage upgrade service to continue using older models. Behind this is the idea of having existing Huawei handset users continue to use the product for a while by increasing storage rather than replacing it, because it is not possible to develop new products as expected due to sanctions from the U.S. government. prize.
The amount of "HUAWEI P20 Pro" (left) and "HUAWEI Mate 20 Pro" (right), which are still popular, will also increase.
When Huawei announced HarmonyOS 2 in June, in addition to the upgrade schedule of the same OS of the old model, discount services such as battery replacement and rear replacement of the main body were also announced. Only Huawei, which has been the number one share in the Chinese market for several years, has "100 million" smartphone users in China. These life extension / enhancement services are good news for many existing model users, as high-end models can still be used with models from a few years ago.
In June, a battery and back replacement service were also announced.
The battery replacement service is also available in Japan. On the other hand, the storage expansion service is available only in China. I really want you to expand it overseas such as Japan.
We are also developing a battery replacement campaign service in Japan
By the way, the models that support storage upgrades are the "P", "Mate", "nova", and "Enjoy" series. Unfortunately, the "lite" model is not covered. Even so, I am grateful that they will upgrade from the 2016 "HUAWEI Mate 9" five years ago.
Accepting "P" and "Mate" from July, and "nova" and "Enjoy" after August
So how much does it cost? Huawei's web page clearly states the cost for each model. For example, if you look at the storage increase price of the oldest compatible model, HUAWEI Mate 9, ...
・ 4 + 32GB model → 4 + 128GB model: 459 yuan (about 7800 yen) ・ 4 + 32GB model → 4 + 256GB model: 659 yuan (about 11,200 yen) ・ 6 + 128GB model → 6 + 256GB model: 659 Yuan (about 11,200 yen)
As mentioned above, regardless of the original storage capacity, the price seems to be the same depending on the increased storage capacity. If the board is out of order, an additional fee will be charged. It's not a bad price for a 32GB model to reach 128GB for just over 10,000 yen.
HUAWEI Mate 9 storage increase charge.It seems that the price will be decided by the increased storage
This service from Huawei may be a painstaking measure, but it is not a bad thing from the perspective of "sustainability" such as global resources and global warming issues. For manufacturers, the real intention is to buy new smartphones one after another. However, in the future, I also want users who continue to use past products to be important.
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