Editor's note: According to previous years, it is already a period of siege for the Mate series, but for many reasons, Huawei's current blockbuster products on sale are the P50 series and the old Mate40 series. Today, Huawei released the news that it will bring a new product of the P50, which is named Pocket, and will also be another folding screen mobile phone of Huawei. However, at the current node, the folding screen mobile phone is still a very niche product, why should Huawei work hard?
The Huawei P50 Pocket is coming
Earlier today, Huawei Yu Chengdong and He Gang said on their respective social platforms: "From the birth of the first Huawei P series model in 2012 to the now household name P50 series, the P series has gone through 10 years. Many friends have met Huawei mobile phones from the beginning of the P series. Over the years, we have not forgotten our original intention and have always insisted on the exploration of scientific and technological aesthetics and intelligent images! This year we will make another breakthrough in the aesthetics and form of smartphone technology! On December 23rd, we will release the Huawei P50 Pocket, welcome to pay attention to the conference, when I will reveal the answer for everyone! ”
This passage actually contains some details, such as "another breakthrough in scientific and technological aesthetics and form", which means a breakthrough in design, including a breakthrough in form, such as some problems faced by the folding screen at present, the hinged part, and the choice of folding up and down left and right. We have already seen these problems on Samsung folding screen mobile phones, especially the crease part, which is almost an insoluble problem.
From Yu Chengdong's picture point of view, this time should not be left and right folding but up and down folding, a bit similar to Samsung's Flip3, very pleasing to girls, according to the P50 target users, this folding screen mobile phone should also be mainly aimed at female users, as for the core hardware part, it is now completely impossible to know, if it is the Kirin 9000 5G version, I am afraid there is still some attraction.
It can be said that the folding screen in today's era is still similar to the so-called "strange and obscene technique".
Is there a future for folding screens?
In fact, starting from the galaxy fold, the first folding screen mobile phone released by Samsung, the folding screen mobile phone has been born for nearly three years, but there is no wave in the entire market, but it is difficult for some manufacturers to ride the tiger, after mass production, sales are embarrassing, and a large amount of inventory is backlogged. Even Samsung, the industry leader, has not gained any benefits in folding screen mobile phones, and Huawei is naturally not spared.
Even, the folding screen folding up and down in addition to looking tall, there seems to be no practical role, this point is not even as good as the left and right folding products, after all, the folding screen products folded left and right, at least one dream is to one day be able to replace the tablet, and the up and down fold in addition to attracting female users, the crease problem of the folding is basically impossible to solve.
From the current technical conditions, the folding screen wants to have a breakthrough, at least in three dimensions there must be a revolutionary technological breakthrough, such as the capacity of lithium batteries, hinge part and screen crease part, but if the battery technology is broken, it seems that the entire industry has been liberated, folding screen mobile phone compared to the general large-screen mobile phone, there is no advantage. It can be said that tablets have the potential to be compatible with PCs, but folding screen mobile phones are compatible with mobile phones and tablets, more like a demand that has been artificially spawned.
What does Huawei want to do?
Therefore, from the perspective of practical difficulties, Huawei is also aware of the current bottlenecks and limitations of folding screen mobile phones, but it still wants to continue to make things on the folding screen, which has its own considerations. On the one hand, the mobile phone business has been hit hard, and it is difficult to recover in a short period of time, and Huawei has actually put part of its production capacity on tablets, PCs, and even Hongmeng systems.
This means that Huawei hopes to be able to connect everything through the Hongmeng system, and also hopes to be able to open up the problems of mobile phones, tablets and portable computers, which are pinned on folding screen mobile phones, so the characteristics of manufacturers, only manufacturers such as Apple and Huawei can do these things.
But perhaps too pessimistic, folding screen seems to be only a niche product in the next few years, will you buy folding screen products?