Recently, the news about folding screen mobile phones has once again become the focus of everyone's hot discussion, on the one hand, because many bloggers have revealed that there will be a number of folding screen mobile phones coming out, on the other hand, it is also the traffic attributes of the folding screen mobile phone itself, and today we also take the opportunity of the folding screen mobile phone to come to talk to you about the "twists and turns" of the folding screen mobile phone over the years, and discuss why the folding screen mobile phone has always been in the niche market but favored by manufacturers.
History
Perhaps many friends do not know that the first manufacturer to release a folding screen mobile phone is not Samsung, nor Huawei, but Royole Technology Company from Shenzhen. Royole released the world's first folding screen mobile phone - FlexPai in October 2018, but at that time, it was complained about the simple shape and hard experience, and the "U-shaped hinge" made the phone folded unable to fit, affecting the perception experience. Royole Technology as the first company to eat crabs, seems to pay less attention to the sales of folding screen mobile phones, some analysts said that Royole Technology does not currently have the ability to face consumers, continue to release folding screen products, to a certain extent, hope to actively release products, to show its flexible screen technology to the industry, in order to seek cooperation opportunities.
At the beginning of 2019, the two giants of Samsung and Huawei officially entered the folding screen field, and successively released the folding screen mobile phone Samsung GalaxyFold and Huawei MateX. Samsung GalaxyFold uses the in-screen folding scheme, and uses the "gear mechanical structure" in the folding technology, so that the two sides can be completely close to each other after folding, and the experience is much more comfortable.
Although Samsung has released the Samsung GalaxyFold in February 2019, due to a series of screen failures, it did not really land in the Chinese market until November. In October, Huawei also officially released the first folding screen mobile phone Huawei MateX, which uses the off-screen folding scheme, in February of the following year, Huawei launched Huawei MateXs, and smaller creases became a highlight at that time.
It can be said that the early folding screen mobile phone form is the use of left and right folding, and in September 2020, Lenovo's Motorola also entered the field of folding screen mobile phones, launched the Motorola razer, but its form belongs to the up and down folding, as if to let people return to the era of the clamshell machine, full of nostalgia, but in addition to the newness of the style, other aspects have not been eye-catching performance.
And in early 2021, Xiaomi also released the first folding screen mobile phone - Xiaomi MIXFold, MIX series as a pioneer of Xiaomi's exploration of black technology, the launch of a folding screen mobile phone is also reasonable, coupled with Xiaomi's "corporate culture", all of a sudden the price of folding screen mobile phone hit below 10,000 yuan, it is also a major breakthrough, but unfortunately this product is lackluster, and it can only be regarded as an experimental product of Xiaomi's exploration of folding screen.
The advantages and disadvantages are clear
There should be many friends who are reading the article who have thought about this question, "Why do we need folding screen mobile phones?" "First of all, we need to clarify two points: one is that a major trend in the development of mobile phones in the past decade or so is that the screen is getting bigger and bigger; the other is that mobile phones must be portable. And we see that these two points are precisely the advantages of the current folding screen mobile phone, when unfolded is a large screen, folding can be held with one hand, which also makes people understand why the folding screen mobile phone is called "the next outlet of the smart phone" in the industry.
Although the advantages of folding screen mobile phones are very distinct, we can not ignore its shortcomings at the same time, from the user's point of view, the most obvious disadvantage is its obvious crease. As a folding screen mobile phone, the crease in the middle of the screen seems to be an insurmountable gap, although the manufacturers are trying their best to smooth this mark, but limited by the flexible AMOLED screen many technical obstacles, as well as the complex hinge structure design, basically can only weaken the crease. At present, in order to better solve the crease problem, in addition to the teardrop hinge design, two pieces of shrapnel are often introduced into the hinge. On the one hand, when the screen is folded, it will press the two metal shrapnels inside the frame without affecting the closure of the screen; on the other hand, when the screen is unfolded, thanks to the elasticity of the two shrapnels and the hinged hinge shaft to form an effective support surface, which greatly reduces the crease effect of the screen after folding.
From the perspective of the manufacturer, there are still many technical upgrades to be broken in folding mobile phones, such as the number of folding, crease treatment, hinge technology, panel flexibility and so on. At present, the low yield rate, imperfect supporting ecology, and high price are always high-frequency words associated with folding screen mobile phones, and these also greatly affect the popularity of folding screen mobile phones.
Outlook
Perhaps most users are not optimistic about the prospects of folding screen mobile phones, but market research agencies are giving a more optimistic attitude, market research agencies StrategyAnalytics gave data showing that in 2019 the global foldable smartphone shipments are less than 1 million, and market research institute Counterpoint expects that in 2021 folding screen mobile phone shipments will be about 9 million units, an increase of 3 times over 2020, and according to IHS forecasts, In 2025, global folding screen mobile phone shipments will climb to 53.4 million units.
Xiaolan believes that the current 90% of the screen ratio of smart phones has reached the extreme that the two-dimensional form can reach, and then expanded to exceed the limit of the human palm, want to replicate the era changes brought to people by Apple mobile phones more than a decade ago, the three-dimensional folding form of intelligent terminals may be the answer, and now the closest is the folding screen mobile phone.
epilogue
Although from the perspective of manufacturers, the road ahead of folding screen mobile phones is indeed very tortuous, but we still see that everyone is committed to research and development and breakthroughs, on the one hand, the spiritual core driven by the exploration of breakthroughs by technology companies, on the other hand, the scene of the collapse of Nokia's "empire" in the era of smart phones is still vivid, and if you do not follow up, you will fall behind, and finally you can only become the next manufacturer who "did nothing wrong but still lost".