Cover news reporter Xu Hai intern Zhou Qiong
On December 14, at oppo 2021 Future Technology Conference, OPPO's first folding screen flagship Find N made a stunning appearance, which is also the mainstream brand that sells folding screen mobile phones after Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi and other brands.
In the past two years, the smartphone industry has developed and innovated rapidly, and eye-catching functions such as rapid flash charging, high brush era, and full-focal range mobile photography have allowed users to fully feel the rapid development of the mobile phone industry. But for major mobile phone manufacturers, sometimes it is inevitable to fall into the "smartphone what else to look forward to?" " status.
Where does the "folding screen" come from?
Folding mobile phones in the earliest and original form is now known as the "old antique" flip phone, when I was a child, if there was a Nokia or Motorola flip phone, it would really make people around see and say "wow". However, with the development of network speed, from 2G to 5G to the present, users are not satisfied with small screens, touch screens, full screens, mobile phone manufacturers racking their brains to innovate, and the expectations of smart phones have stepped into the era of folding screens.
JD.com is still selling Nokia flip phones
Folding screen mobile phones can be traced back to the concept machine released by Samsung at CES in 2013, but then the "folding screen" concept disappeared.
In October 2018, Royole Technology held a global new product launch conference at the Beijing National Convention Center and released a full-soft screen folding smartphone - the world's first folding screen mobile phone.
The world's first folding screen mobile phone "FlexPai FlexPai"
Since the beginning of 19 years, there have been brands stepping into the ranks of folding screen mobile phones. In October, the belated release of its first folding screen phone, the Galaxy Fold, but due to the immature technology at the time, the phone still experienced the fate of being recalled. Also in October, Huawei Mate X was launched, and the design of the folded out design and the full-screen program were almost perfect at that time, and it was difficult to find a machine after the sale.
Time to 2020, February Samsung Z Flip released, similar to the flip phone design 20 years ago, attracted the attention of users, let the public see the small screen folding market. In September, the Samsung GalaxyZ Fold 2 was launched, with a unique in-fold solution. At the end of September, Royole Flexpad2 was released, with a price of 9988 yuan, and the folding screen mobile phone debuted for the first time at a price of less than 10,000 yuan.
In February 2021, Huawei Mate X2 was released, changing the external folding scheme to inward folding, and since then, the folding scheme of the folding screen has also begun to move towards inward folding. In March, the Xiaomi MIX Fold was released, also using the internal discount scheme, and the price was also pressed below 10,000 yuan, indicating that the folding screen supply chain market gradually matured and the price began to decline. In August, Samsung launched the Z Fold 3 / Z Flip 3, and the product form was basically not updated. In December, OPPO released its first folding screen mobile phone Find N, with outstanding appearance, small "body", from 2018 after many generations of innovation, can be said to be the longest polished folding screen mobile phone, to the public's surprise is that this mobile phone with its own strength to folding screen 8GB + 256GB model price pulled to less than 8000 yuan, it is indeed a big step in the price of folding screen "innovation", users like to hear.
OPPO's first folding flagship Find N
In addition, brands such as Vivo also said that they will release folding screen mobile phones next year.
Will folding screens become mainstream in the future?
Since the advent of the first folding screen, all mobile phone manufacturers and users have been thinking about "whether the folding screen can become the mainstream in the future".
According to IDC statistics, the global shipment of folding screen mobile phones in 2020 was about 1.947 million units, while the global shipment of smart phones in the same year was 1.292 billion units, accounting for about 0.15%. According to Great Wall Securities, by 2022, the market shipments of folding screen mobile phones will reach 17.5 million units. According to CICC, it is expected that the mobile phone market will come out of the shadow of supply shortage in 2022, and many mainstream manufacturers plan to release a variety of folding screen mobile phones to lead the development direction of the industry.
Behind the seemingly huge growth of the number, it cannot be ignored that the current folding screen still has three bottlenecks that users care about the most.
One is the price, which is the biggest pain point of folding screen mobile phones. "Expensive is a word, I only say once" This is the evaluation of netizens on the price of folding screen mobile phones. The high price is not affordable for the working class, let alone the maintenance costs caused if there are any accidents in the process of use. Zhang Yang, a senior analyst at Beijing Bo Ruiheng Consulting Co., Ltd., said: "At this stage and for a period of time in the future, the user positioning of folding screen mobile phones is high-end consumers, and its high price is not affordable to ordinary consumers, even ordinary high-end mobile phone users. From this point of view, the concept and display attributes of folding screen mobile phones are greater than their commodity attributes. ”
The second is the life of the folding screen. "Is the folding screen easy to break?" This is a problem that cannot be ignored when searching for folding screen mobile phones. How many times can the screen withstand folding? What is the anti-drop, temperature-resistant and other capabilities of the screen? Can problems such as screen cracking be avoided?
Official release oppo find N number of folds
The third is the use status of the folding screen mobile phone. Including the folding screen of the obvious crease, fuselage thickness and weight, battery life problems and so on. Taking the battery life problem as an example, the digital blogger "Science and Technology Guest Review" conducted a battery life test for the recently released folding screen mobile phone OPPO Find N - "In accordance with the usual usage habits, I use the inner screen to play 60 minutes of video on the B station, the outer screen brush vibrato short video for 1 hour, the inner screen to play the "Glory of the King" game for 1 hour (open high frame rate, high resolution, anti-aliasing, HDR special effects default, turn off the dynamic frame rate), external screen brush Weibo, internal and external screen photography, After 30 minutes each and a total of 5 hours of heavy battery life testing with the external screen chat software, oppo Find N has 44% of the remaining battery. "Does the battery life meet the needs of users?" How much room for improvement is there in the future? These are all issues that all mobile phone manufacturers need to consider.
Blogger "Tech Review" tests OPPO Find N endurance
Zhang Yang, a senior analyst at Beijing Bo ruiheng Consulting Co., Ltd., said that from the current point of view, folding screen mobile phones meet the future trend of smart phone development and consumer expectations. The price and screen folding life are the key pain points at present, and after improving these two points, the folding screen mobile phone will truly enter the stage of large-scale promotion and may become mainstream. Before that, folding screens still have a long way to go.
What else do we think about folding screens?
The reporter interviewed a large number of mobile phone users - do you need a folding screen mobile phone? The most answered is still not needed, the reason is nothing more than the three pain points of the folding screen mentioned above, in the life of the general public can not stimulate a thousand waves, then the emergence of folding screen What is the significance?
When the first folding screen mobile phone was released in 2018, among the comments made by netizens, "cool", "sci-fi", and "the end of the full-screen era" were the words that appeared the most. With words like "ending the last era" to show the expectation of the arrival of the folding screen, does the folding screen really have such an important significance?
Discussion on folding screens in 2018
Our gesture of answering the phone changed from "6" to slap on the ear, and netizens laughed and said that it was "tears of the times". The times change so fast, from the flip phone, to the touch screen, and then to the touch screen in the process, constantly breaking through the limits of design, in the user thought that the full screen is already the best state of the mobile phone, the folding screen turned out again. At the same time of scientific and technological innovation, mobile phone manufacturers have looked back and seen the mainstream form of mobile phones - flip phones, and the current folding screen is also a tribute and response to the past. But unlike the simple and rough of flip phones, the folding screen folds a flexible screen, which is a proof of technological progress.
For domestic brands, the significance of folding screens is more to enter the high-end market and establish a high-end brand image. From 2019 to 2021, after 3 years of development, the folding screen supply chain has become increasingly mature, but the folding screen mobile phone products themselves still need to grow. What users need is not to fold for folding, what they want is by no means a "brick", and any innovative iteration of science and technology should aim at practicality and be close to user life.
In the future, there may be more mobile phone forms, but "user demand" as the center is the eternal consensus of major manufacturers. In this way, scientific and technological innovation has its true significance, and users can truly enter the "folding era" with mobile phone manufacturers, and even the "multi-form era" such as the future scroll screen.