I remember that five years ago, when the Xiaomi MIX was released, the "full screen" design brought us a shock. Today, the pursuit of smartphone differentiation has entered a new stage. The dazzling color matching and high-profile personality design have been unable to satisfy the appetite of consumers, and the narrowing of mobile phone borders and the pursuit of extreme digging cameras have also begun to become common.
From the bangs screen, the full screen to the curved screen, the mobile phone screen has always been the most eye-catching concept. In the case that the road to screen ratio seems to have entered a dead end, the folding screen seems to have become the new darling of the mobile phone market. Nowadays, more than two years of market training and technology upgrading, the production capacity and user experience of folding screen mobile phones are increasing, and this product seems to be getting closer and closer to our ordinary consumers.
This morning, the official Weibo of Huawei terminal announced: "Light and shadow are intertwined, and all things coexist." At 15:30 on December 23rd, Huawei's winter flagship new product launch event witnessed the arrival of #Huawei P50 Treasure Box. "At that time, Huawei will bring us a number of new products such as the new flagship folding screen mobile phone P50 Pocket, the new notebook HUAWEI Qingyun L420, and the Huawei Watch D watch that supports measuring blood pressure."
Interestingly, although the folding screen mobile phone market has been developed for more than three years, no player in the entire market can come up with a mature enough program for other players to "emulate", and almost every manufacturer has its own characteristics. Huawei, which has rich exploration experience in the field of folding screens, is really looking forward to what kind of works it wants to produce this time.
Very different design concepts
Judging from the official publicity map, the product design of Huawei P50 Pocket should be not much different from the previous network exposure map. This product features a vertical folding design instead of a horizontal folding design. The folded form resembles a traditional flip phone, making it easier to carry; it becomes a slightly longer smartphone after unfolding the fuselage, similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip/Moto Razr series.
In addition, according to the mobile phone case exposed by Weibo digital blogger @digital chat station, the back design of Huawei P50 Pocket is consistent with the P50 series, using a double-ring design. Among them, the upper ring should be the camera module of Huawei P50 Pocket, and the lower ring is expected to be a circular OLED second screen, which can be used to display simple information such as time, weather, and notifications.
In terms of screen, it has been previously revealed that Huawei's P50 Pocket will adopt a "true full screen" design, that is, the inside of the fuselage is a complete large screen, and the front camera is set in the space under the screen. However, Xiao Lei believes that considering the immaturity of the camera technology under the screen and the requirements of folding screen mobile phones in terms of space stacking, Huawei is unlikely to adopt such a radical design on the Huawei P50 Pocket, and it is expected that the screen form of this product should still be a more conventional centered punch screen.
Although there is no off-screen camera, the Huawei P50 Pocket still has its own characteristics outside the screen. The first is the hinge, it is reported that huawei P50 Pocket will be equipped with Huawei Mate X2 with the same double spin water drop hinge, from the perspective of practical application effects, it can effectively solve the problem of large gaps in the folding, ensuring the flatness of the folding screen after unfolding and the aesthetics after folding.
In terms of heat dissipation, according to foreign media reports, a Huawei patent called "heat pipe for electronic equipment and its manufacturing method" has appeared in the World Intellectual Property Office, which shows that this new heat pipe is composed of copper, titanium, and aluminum materials, and even if the equipment is folded frequently, it will not damage the heat pipe. Reasonable guess, this heat pipe may be used on the Huawei P50 Pocket and Mate X3.
In terms of imaging, unlike the rumors in the previous market, Huawei's folding machine does not belong to the Mate series, but to the P series. According to Yu Chengdong, the machine highlights the adjustment of design and image. However, due to the internal space of the folding screen and the influence of the back of the second screen, the P50 Pocket's image hardware specifications should not be too high, and it is more likely to be optimized on the software algorithm.
In terms of core configuration, folding screen products are destined to be exclusive to high-end users, according to the digital chat station, Huawei's P50 Pocket engineering machine uses the Kirin 9000 4G version processor, and there may be a small number of versions that support 5G networks. Of course, if you want to achieve large-scale mass production of Kirin chips is certainly not enough, this product is likely to launch a version using the Snapdragon 888 processor at the same time.
Why folding screen, Why not folding screen
When it comes to folding screen mobile phones on the market now, most people have the impression of opening the folded screen horizontally, so as to obtain an experience similar to a small tablet, while Huawei adopts a vertical folding design that folds the screen vertically and folds in half along the horizontal axis.
Why did Huawei adopt this design? To clarify this problem, we have to start with the characteristics of traditional horizontal folding screen mobile phones.
The characteristics of traditional horizontal folding screen mobile phones lie in the integration of tablets and smart phones. Taking the Huawei Mate X2 as an example, a tablet with an 8-inch screen after unfolding and a smartphone with a 6.45-inch screen after folding. In an ideal situation, such a product can not only meet the daily call needs of users, but also meet the needs of users' split-screen applications, office codewords, and entertainment movies in the expansion mode.
The problem is that while this idea of "merging tablets and smartphones" sounds great, it may actually be completely different from what you imagine. As early as the beginning of 2019, Google abandoned the Android tablet business. This brings a significant problem, that is, the current application ecology of Android tablets is essentially a direct stretch of Android mobile phone software, which also leads to a poor experience of horizontal folding screen mobile phones in the expansion mode. In other words, there's a reason why Android tablets are not popular.
Not only that, because it is necessary to meet the two major needs of "tablet" and "smart phone" at the same time, the horizontal folding screen mobile phone needs to be equipped with a screen equal to about three times the area of the traditional smart phone, making the cost of this product very expensive. Until today, the starting price of traditional horizontal folding screen mobile phones on the market is the lowest 9999 yuan, which is much more expensive than the top flagship launched by many mobile phone manufacturers, which is the object that ordinary consumers cannot climb.
If the horizontal folding folding screen mobile phone is to obtain a larger screen after opening, the vertical folding folding screen mobile phone has a completely different idea: the existing screen size is reduced by folding, thereby improving the convenience of storage. Compared with horizontal folding screen mobile phones, vertical folding screen mobile phones are more like a "normal" smart phone, and the application ecology of mobile phones is still used.
Not only that, the vertical folding screen mobile phone only needs to be equipped with a folding screen equivalent to the size of the traditional smart phone, plus a small size of the second screen, which is quite advantageous in cost. For example, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 5G, which also features a vertical folding design, starts at just $7599, which is half the starting price of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 5G released at the same time. Xiao Lei believes that the price of Huawei P50 Pocket should also be relatively more people-friendly.
Some people may ask, if you look at it this way, isn't the vertical folding screen mobile phone not have much practical value? In fact, the biggest selling point of folding screens in the market is not how practical, but to change the rough and unrestrained design style of traditional mobile phones in the past, and bring a stronger sense of refinement to mobile phones through folding design. There is no doubt that when you slowly close the phone with both hands and tuck this small and exquisite square into the pocket of your pants, the sense of refinement comes more intensely, and the product is more high-end.
"Beauty is the first productive force", which is also the biggest advantage of the vertical folding design.
Folding screen mobile phone market is about to break out?
The emergence of Huawei's P50 Pocket not only means that the folding screen technology on the market continues to advance, but also may also mean that the time is ripe for other manufacturers to enter the market.
In the current folding screen mobile phone market, Samsung undoubtedly occupies an absolute dominant position. As the only manufacturer in the world to mass-produce and sell folding screen smart machines, Samsung's shipment share is as high as 93%, almost monopolizing this special track.
However, if the folding screen mobile phone market wants to become bigger, it is obviously not enough to rely on Samsung alone. Recently, the term "folding screen mobile phone" has appeared more and more in people's field of vision. In addition to Huawei's official folding new products, OPPO has also recently officially announced its first folding screen mobile phone OPPO Find N, and Honor, realme, and vivo are also developing folding screen mobile phones with full horsepower, which is likely to be released in the peak season of electronic consumption next spring.
Affected by the new track of domestic mobile phone manufacturers scrambling to enter the folding screen mobile phone, related supply chain enterprises have also ushered in a wave of demand explosion. According to the domestic media "Securities Times" report, at present, among the domestic manufacturers, there are supply chain enterprises BOE, Visionox, Shenzhen Tianma, Royole Technology, Huaxing Optoelectronics that supply or lay out flexible AMOLED, and Dongmu Shares, Yian Technology, Jingyan Technology, and Hongxin Electronics that lay out mobile phone hinges have all said that the product supply in the field of folding screen mobile phones has increased significantly.
The influx of mainstream manufacturers and the significant increase in product supply not only mean that many new folding products will emerge next year, but also mean that the sales of "folding screen mobile phones" in 2022 may usher in explosive growth. According to the screen agency DSCC forecast, in the fourth quarter of 2021, the sales of folding screen mobile phones will continue to climb, and the shipment volume can reach 3.8 million units, and the annual sales of folding screen mobile phones in 2022 are likely to reach 17.5 million units.
Although the current folding screen related technology is still not mature enough, although the screen yield, hinge technology, and high price, is still hindering the folding screen mobile phone to the general public, but this does not prevent the head manufacturers in major industries from continuing to invest in this technology and constantly exploring innovation. Xiao Lei believes that with the passage of time, with the continuous iteration and maturity of technology, folding screen mobile phones will sooner or later get rid of the name of "early adopter" and move from a niche market that seeks novelty and difference to a mass market.
The folding screen mobile phone market may really be about to explode.