Whenever Cheng Lei unfolds his folding screen mobile phone, it will attract a series of different inquiries, and he will become the focus of everyone every time, looking back at the whole of 2021.
Cheng Lei, a 28-year-old product manager at a major Internet factory, has liked to tinker with various digital products since he was a child, and has a natural curiosity and yearning for novel technology and digital products. When the folding screen mobile phone was just released in 2020, the idea of eagerly trying to taste it made him the first person to eat the "crab" of the folding screen mobile phone.
After using it for a period of time, Cheng Lei's impression of the folding screen mobile phone changed from fresh to helpless. Problems such as poor experience, obvious creases, and unsuitable software followed, so that Cheng Lei gave up the idea of using a folding screen mobile phone as the main machine, and became more of a talking point. Folding screen phones, it seems less practical.
Since the folding screen was pushed to the front of the stage in 2019, mainstream manufacturers have acted uniformly and regarded it as an important "technical outlet" for future development. Especially in the recent period, many manufacturers have released the latest generation of folding screen mobile phone new products, and other manufacturers that have not launched folding equipment are also running into the market, which is becoming more and more intense.
Manufacturers have always been eyeing this blue ocean market and plan to complete the layout of the folding screen track within the year. In 2022, folding screen mobile phones may usher in their own real explosive period, completing the development from "early adopters" to "main machines".
The folding screen mobile phone market has great potential, prompting major mobile phones to enter the game
Source: Counterpoint
How much potential there is for folding screen mobile phones, the market is the most objective answer. According to data agency Counterpoint Research, from 2018 to 2020, global folding screen mobile phone shipments increased from 198,000 units to 2.8 million units, an increase of more than 14 times in 2 years. According to the agency's forecast, by the end of 2022, this number will reach 18.3 million units.
The spring of folding screen mobile phones is coming? In the future, if the folding screen mobile phone wants to strive for the position of "main force", what characteristics are needed to meet the daily needs of users?
According to Wang Xi, research manager of IDC China, the evolution of the full screen form of smart phones has basically ended, the appearance of mobile phones has been solidified, and in 2022, in addition to the existing images, fast charging, and screens, there are not too many new technology tracks that can have an immediate effect and reflect differentiation.
On this basis, the folding screen has enough recognition, and some use scenarios can indeed bring a better experience. From the demand point of view, it can stimulate the demand of consumers to change machines, from the perspective of technology, it can promote the accumulation of R & D strength of manufacturers, and it is also helpful to the establishment of a high-end brand image from the perspective of the market.
In the early development of folding screen mobile phones, both mobile phone manufacturers and users will focus on folding screen technology. However, with the maturity of technology and the popularization of market concepts, folding screen mobile phones will usher in industry breakthroughs, forming a new situation of paying more attention to experience and turning to the main force.
After maturity, how to fight for the folding screen to become the "main machine"
Source: Tmall platform
For folding screen mobile phones when they were just launched, users like Cheng Lei who "eat crabs" will encounter various problems. In the black cat complaint platform, in the complaints about the folding screen, the screen crease, display failure, poor manufacturing process, hinge damage, etc. are all "the price of innovation" brought about by the folding form.
In the era of folding screen mobile phone 1.0, its accompanying innovative technology must have a period of testing the water, but as mobile phone manufacturers pay more attention to folding screen technology, and the technical solutions of upstream suppliers are also constantly iterating, these problems have been well solved.
Honor Magic V ultra-thin suspended water droplet hinge
In particular, several new generation folding screen mobile phone products recently released, the upgrade in maturity is visible to the naked eye. From the perspective of hinge alone, OPPO Find N uses teardrop hinge technology to make the crease in the middle of the screen relatively flat. Honor Magic V is equipped with the industry's thinnest ultra-thin suspended water droplet hinge, which not only uses aerospace-grade innovative materials including zirconium-based liquid metals, high-strength carbon fibers and high-strength titanium alloys, but also allows the screen to sag freely in the hinge structure of suspended water droplets, achieving the industry's smallest bending radius. While solving the crease problem, it can also achieve the strength of the hinge for long-term, repeated and high-frequency use, which greatly improves the durability of the folding screen and reduces the weight of the mobile phone.
Thinner and lighter body weight, thinner seamless folding and traceless unfolding screens all make folding screen mobile phones more "friendly" than ever, which provides conditions for folding screen mobile phones to enter the main market.
The experience improvement of folding screen mobile phone hardware is obvious to all, but the market growth space that can be released is limited. Because, if the folding screen products want to truly reach the level of the "main machine", hardware innovation is only the foundation, how to tap a better product experience, play innovative features and more intelligent software collaboration is the folding screen mobile phone 2.0 era should think about the problem.
For the experience, the first thing to solve is the balance between the unity of the folding screen mobile phone experience and innovation. Because of manufacturing processes, product quality and other issues, in the initial folding screen mobile phone products, various manufacturers continue to introduce different specifications of external screen sizes, such as extremely slender rectangles, or horizontally widened squares. This sudden change is very unfriendly to users who are accustomed to traditional smartphones. And according to market research reports, 50% of the folding screen use scenarios are now concentrated on the outer screen, which leads to the user's poor adaptability to the special screen proportion of the external screen.
Left: Traditional straight smartphone, Right: Honor Magic V external screen
Among the many folding screen mobile phones, Honor Magic V is one of the few products that adheres to the normal external screen ratio of 6.45 inches, and the daily use experience and grip feeling are consistent, and it also continues to improve the quality of the screen on this basis, using the curved nano glass-ceramic process to increase the anti-fall resistance of the screen.
In addition, after the folding screen mobile phone inner screen is expanded, there is a large-screen experience and operation logic similar to the Pad and PC categories, so a new interaction design is needed to adapt to the large-screen experience, and more application adaptation is needed to meet user needs.
Nowadays, mobile phones carry more and more functions such as communication, social networking, and payment, and the demand for more and more APP openings is also increasing. For example, if you want to order a takeaway in the process of watching a drama, you must switch back and forth between the two APPS; or transfer some work files, you must cumbersomely find choices. In these scenarios, the advantages of the folding screen mobile phone inner screen can be better played.
Honor Magic V left and right screen interactive experience
In view of these multi-open scenarios, Huawei, Honor, Samsung and OPPO and other manufacturers have enhanced the ability of their folding screen mobile phone system "multi-line combat", taking the recently released Honor Magic UI 6.0 as an example, which uses the Magic Live wisdom engine to achieve cross-scenario, cross-device, cross-system, cross-ecological intelligent interaction with the help of AI capabilities, and solve the problem of complicated APP software services and serious fragmentation of smart devices.
Moreover, for a single APP content display scenario in the system, the amount of information presented directly increases significantly and the frequency of operation is reduced. Through the optimization and adaptation of the Honor Magic V through third-party software, the user's entertainment experience is enhanced or the user's creative productivity is released.
In addition, parallel vision, split screen display, small window mode and other functions have been improved, display effects, APP support and operation steps have been optimized, more in line with the characteristics of the portable device, the experience is more than the tablet system trend. When the system finds that the user switches between two applications in scenarios such as Taobao and WeChat selected while chatting, documents and translation software for translated content, videos and reading for parallel entertainment, the mobile phone will actively pop up a split-screen "recommendation capsule", and click to enter the multi-task split-screen mode, which is more active and fast.
Honor Magic V split-screen multitasking operation
The external screen can not only allow users to reduce the cost of adaptation, but also increase the user experience through the unfolded form, which is the optimal solution under the folding screen mobile phone at this stage. Based on this, combined with the expanded large-screen experience, this solution will realize the design concept of 1+1>2 of the inner and outer screens, rather than changing the user's usage habits at once.
On the other hand, with the development of artificial intelligence, smart phones have also ushered in the stage of evolution from "passive service" to "active service", of which Glory is one of the industry's leading representatives. The newly released Honor Magic V is equipped with the industry-leading Magic Live intelligent engine, which makes the Honor Magi UI a combination of software and hardware under the intelligent ability.
The pickup code automatically pops up in front of the Magic Live express locker
At present, Honor Magic V can intelligently perceive boarding, subway, express delivery and elevator scenes, and provide accurate services for various travel scenarios. For example, when the user receives the courier, Magic Live will automatically recognize the courier cabinet and pop up a prompt for the user to pick up the code. Moreover, the function can also be deep learning, continuous iterative upgrade. This also means that in more scenarios, as the user's time and frequency increase, Magic V will be like a personal butler who has followed for many years, and can understand without instructions.
The improvement of magic live wisdom engine allows Honor Magic V to have all-weather scenario-based perception of geographical location capabilities, while matching people's location and time relationships, as well as relevant data provided by partners, so that users can get accurate intelligent services, without facing complicated APP, they can improve their work and life efficiency.
From the user's point of view, the essence of the folding screen mobile phone is still a "mobile phone", but its unfolded inner screen can be compatible with some of the functions of the tablet, expanding the use of traditional smart phones. In this way, users no longer need to carry a variety of products, in the most ideal case, as long as a folding screen mobile phone is enough for people's daily use, entertainment, office needs.
For the current stage of the development of folding screen mobile phones, is there some shadow of the rise of smart phones? At that time, smart phones were a good collection of functions of digital products such as MP3, portable cameras and PDAs, and eventually became the most indispensable electronic products in people's lives now. In the future, through the deep excavation of folding screen mobile phone hardware, software and artificial intelligence and other technologies, can manufacturers replace other digital products such as tablets?
When the user's needs such as internal and external screen use experience and software collaborative interaction are solved, the folding screen naturally has the strength of the "main machine", and even in the field of active service intelligence, it has also achieved the transcendence of traditional smart phones.
Folding screen mobile phone in the next era, from technological breakthrough to experience breakthrough
With the technology and manufacturing process and other difficulties are gradually broken, the price of folding screen mobile phones has also decreased, and the user's acceptance of them has gradually increased. At this point, the folding screen mobile phone track has entered a new inflection point. Next, mobile phone manufacturers should focus more on the artificial intelligence application of folding screen mobile phones, user multi-scenario experience and portability.
In addition, folding screen mobile phones have become an important springboard for Android manufacturers to impact the high-end in a new form. As Honor CEO Zhao Ming said: "There is no doubt that folding screen mobile phones give us a chance to prove in a completely new field that we can do better than Apple's straight board, or better than Apple's mobile phone." ”
On the other hand, most of the controversial sounds for folding screen mobile phones come from users, and how folding screen mobile phones make a distinction between them and smart phones in terms of application experience, use feel and functionality, etc., will form a real growth momentum in the future. Therefore, while launching more new folding screen products, mobile phone manufacturers should begin to fill the gap between the experience upgrade of the folding screen and the market expectations.
With honor Magic V as the forerunner of the epoch-making folding screen mobile phone has appeared, whether it is hardware, design, software or intelligence, it has made a good start for the folding screen mobile phone 2.0 era, which will undoubtedly set a new benchmark for the next folding screen mobile phone market.
Not only that, in the mobile phone market, many manufacturers such as Honor, Huawei, Samsung and OPPO have also begun to explore folding screen mobile phones in greater depth, leading the development of folding screen mobile phones from technological breakthroughs to experience breakthroughs. (This article was first published on titanium media App)