The first folding screen mobile phone has entered the market for three years, but the current folding screen mobile phone is still a very niche digital product, which is called "the toy of the rich" by many netizens.
Most of the folding screen mobile phones on the market are expensive, and a few products with excellent product strength can be called "sky-high prices", such as the two most popular folding screen mobile phones Huawei Mate X2 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 are priced at more than 10,000 yuan.
Although the folding screen mobile phone seems cool, but the excessive price always turns away ordinary consumers, if you want to really let the folding screen mobile phone enter the mass consumer market, it is imperative to reduce the threshold.
OPPO recently released a folding screen mobile phone Find N, priced at only 7699 yuan, and the price of conventional flagship mobile phones at the same level, greatly reducing the threshold for ordinary consumers to start folding screen mobile phones.
So, does the reduced price mean that folding screen mobile phones are finally going to be popularized? Will it replace conventional smartphones?
The author believes that after solving a series of "hard injuries" and sharply reducing prices, folding screen mobile phones are likely to become the mainstream smartphone form in the future, but will not completely replace the conventional form of smart phones, but go hand in hand with conventional forms of smart phones.
First of all, folding screen mobile phones want to further popularize, although it is critical to reduce the price, but also need to focus on improving the user experience of the product. At present, there are three major "hard injuries" in the folding screen mobile phones on the market: poor durability, obvious creases, and less software adaptation, let's see if OPPO Find N has solved these "hard injuries".
The durability of folding screen mobile phones is poor, mainly reflected in the hinge and screen, and the folding screen mobile phone can bend mainly depends on these two aspects.
Conventional smartphones cannot be bent because their flexible OLED panels are also covered with a layer of "rigid glass", and folding screen mobile phones need to replace this layer of "rigid glass" with CPI film (colorless polyimide) or UTG (ultra-thin glass). But unfortunately, the hardness of these two materials is far less than that of "rigid glass", and the Mohs hardness level is only about 2 levels, which is easy to leave irreversible traces on it.
At present, no flexible bending material with a higher hardness level has been found as an alternative, so to protect the folding screen, you have to start from the hinge.
At present, the common hinge structure on the market is a U-shaped hinge, followed by a teardrop hinge. The representative of the U-shaped hinge is Samsung's Fold series, the disadvantages of this hinge are obvious, that is, after the folding screen mobile phone is closed, it cannot make the inner screen fit closely, and there will be a large gap in the middle, which is easy to mix into the hard object to scratch the screen. Moreover, with the U-shaped hinge design, the creases indicated on the screen will be more obvious, affecting the aesthetics.
OPPO FInd N actually uses a teardrop-shaped hinge similar to Huawei Mate X2, the structure is more complex, the cost is higher, but the advantage is that after folding, the inner screen can be more closely fitted together, the gap is smaller, can play a better protective effect, and the crease is also shallower, and the aesthetics are guaranteed.
After solving the durability and crease problems, the last level is the software adaptation, to see whether a folding screen mobile phone is practical, mainly depends on whether its software adaptation is intentional.
Folding screen brings a larger screen, will inevitably bring different use scenarios and interaction logic, if there is no software for good adaptation, then the folding screen mobile phone software interaction experience will be very worrying.
As an old predecessor of the folding screen mobile phone market, Huawei has long brought functions such as "parallel vision" and "application split screen" to improve the software interaction experience of folding screen mobile phones. Oppo Find N has also done a lot of unique thinking on the basis of inheriting the design ideas of its predecessors.
For example, OPPO Find N can not only act as the role of a flat plate after unfolding, but also rely on its excellent Seiko quasi-vertebral hinge structure, freely control the opening and closing angle, and create a new use form. OPPO calls this the "free hover" feature. When the folding screen is expanded at an angle greater than or equal to 90°, you can use the upper screen to display the video screen, while the lower screen transforms into a trackpad to complete the drag and drop progress bar, increase and decrease the volume, and so on.
In addition, OPPO has also cooperated with a large number of third-party APPS to launch a customized version of the folding screen mobile phone APP. At the same time, OPPO also introduced a gravitational plan to attract more software developers to enter the large-screen ecology and adapt to large-screen for more applications. This significance can be said to be very significant, and it can even be said to accelerate the development of the folding screen mobile phone application ecology.
From the perspective of software adaptation, OPPO has indeed done a lot of homework, which makes the practicality of OPPO Find N affirmed, then with its exquisite, unique appearance and form and conscience price of 7699 yuan, the probability of success of this folding screen mobile phone will be very high, which will attract a large number of new users to contact the folding screen mobile phone and accelerate market popularization.
However, the author still feels that folding screen mobile phones will not replace conventional forms of mobile phones. Folding screen mobile phones may be favored by business people, because the frequency of use of the inner screen by such people is much higher than that of other users, after all, the large screen can display more information, the efficiency is higher, and the small screen mainly meets other daily needs, the so-called "one side of work, one side of life" is so.
However, for most ordinary consumers, the frequency of unfolding the inner screen is not much, and in many scenarios, the outer screen of the mobile phone with a size closer to the conventional form is more suitable for user operation, such as typing, answering the phone, and taking pictures. Therefore, the author believes that it is impossible to make everyone accept the folding screen mobile phone, and the conventional form of smart phone still has an irreplaceable advantage.