A week after Apple's iPhone 7 was unveiled, Apple officially began shipping and selling it.
Public opinion around the iPhone 7 wasn't especially warm this time, but sales were still explosive at some Apple Stores, and lines formed as people waited to buy one. Seeing that scene, plenty of buyers quietly accepted Apple's decision to remove the 3.5 mm headphone jack. Complaints aside, the iPhone 7 was still viewed as a step ahead of most phones on the market.
Apple had finished its move, and its old rival wasn't about to let Apple dominate the premium phone conversation uncontested. Samsung responded by releasing its newest flagship, the Samsung Note 5.
This time, Samsung skipped the usual global launch event. Instead, it announced the key specs and opened sales directly.
Samsung had taken a serious hit in the Chinese market the year before, but its influence remained significant. It was still a globally recognized brand, and that brand weight alone ensured the Note 5 would draw attention from both consumers and competitors.
Heifeng Lu was paying close attention as well. Huaxing Technology had only beaten Samsung's sales in China the previous year due to a perfect storm of timing, local conditions, and execution. Even with that win, many tech reviewers and consumers still believed Huaxing trailed Samsung overall.
Heifeng understood that perception better than anyone, which was precisely why he cared about Samsung's flagship this year. What mattered most to him were the Note5's parameters, because those numbers would answer a single question: could Huaxing's third-generation Hongmeng X flagship still stand above Samsung on paper?
If Huaxing's new phone still had stronger specs than Samsung's, then Huaxing had a real shot at winning the year's flagship battle. And if Samsung was going to pull the spotlight in October, Heifeng was happy to use that attention to redirect consumers toward Huaxing's own release.
In many buyers' minds, Apple and Samsung still sat in the top two slots. When people thought "premium phone," those were the first names that came up.
The Note 5 was Samsung's second release after pulling back from the Chinese market. The first, the Samsung S6 Pro, had been a disaster in China, reportedly selling only about 500,000 units. Globally, though, it was still popular, moving more than 200 million units. Even without China, Samsung's international volume was enough to make any manufacturer jealous.
Samsung's share in China might have been shrinking fast, but there were still plenty of buyers watching closely for what it would do next.
From Heifeng's read of the published specs, the Samsung Note5 used a large 6.5-inch full-screen display with a notch. Its screen-to-body ratio was listed as 91%, making it the most prominent display used in the phone market that year.
Large 6.2-inch phones had appeared the year before, but big screens still weren't the default. Most releases that year stayed roughly in the 4.7-inch to 6.0-inch range. A 6.5-inch device wasn't just "big," it was a statement, and it implied the internal layout would be packed with the kind of engineering Samsung liked to show off.
The display material itself was also a key part of the story. Samsung's screens were widely regarded as ahead of most competitors worldwide, and the Note 5 leaned into that advantage. It shipped with Samsung's in-house second-generation OLED display, described as one of the strongest panels available.
The listed parameters were aggressive: 110% of the P3 color gamut, a claimed 30% color-gamut improvement over the previous generation, 360 ppi pixel density, and a peak brightness of 425 nits. It also supported a 2960 × 1440 resolution, a proper 2K OLED display by phone standards, and an easy way for Samsung to outclass many competitors on display alone.
Heifeng saw those numbers and only smiled.
Earlier in the year, he had started building Huaxing's own display capacity, Huaxing Screen, as a joint effort between Huaxing Technology and Audi, with Huaxing Laboratory contributing funding and technical support. The scale was nowhere near what the major display giants could produce, and current output wasn't impressive by industry standards, but it was enough to cover Huaxing's own needs.
Even so, Heifeng admitted to himself that Samsung's panel was genuinely strong. Without Huaxing's proprietary advantages, Samsung might have had enough leverage to pressure every Chinese manufacturer with the display alone.
Beyond the display, the Note 5 also used a split chipset strategy.
The international version shipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 900, while the China version used Samsung's in-house Exynos 820.
On paper, the Exynos 820 still lagged slightly behind Qualcomm's Snapdragon 900 and Apple's A10, mainly because it used a 14 nm manufacturing process. Still, it represented a meaningful step forward. Samsung claimed roughly a 25% uplift over the prior generation, with an AnTuTu score around 220,000 to 230,000.
As for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 900 in the international model, that was positioned as an actual top-tier flagship chip.
Samsung also pushed imaging. The Note 5 used a 16 MP front-facing portrait camera. On the rear, it featured a 40 MP camera supporting 3x optical zoom and 10x hybrid zoom, paired with a 5 MP wide-angle camera.
Charging, however, was relatively conservative. Samsung is stuck with 20 W fast charging, which made the device feel slightly restrained compared to the more aggressive charging specs other brands were beginning to advertise.
Heifeng's summary of the Note5 was blunt: a top-tier display, top-tier performance, first-class cameras, strong battery life, an "ultimate" industrial design, and a UI system that was hard to love.
Still, when this phone met Huaxing Technology, Heifeng believed it was destined to become the stepping stone that would elevate Huaxing's third-generation Hongmeng X to a higher level of recognition.
In terms of configuration, Huaxing's upcoming flagship was not inferior to the Samsung Note 5.
Samsung had brand power, but price was a factor that couldn't be ignored.