You see the curvy bar thing fill up and meet somewhere in the middle and then a beam shoots out.
How is that an improvement on phasers that just fire? What if the curvy bar thing is damaged? No more phasers?
>>83737660
The strips allow for firing anywhere along their length
The phaser cannons (like the Enterprise from ENT, or the Defiant) are more powerful
So strips = more flexible firing trajectories but less powerful beams & cannons = more powerful beams but less flexible targeting
the phaser beam array allows for a wider arc of fire than the phaser beam mounts on the Constitution class ship.