How to make the folding screen mobile phone a real workhorse?
The crazy inner volume of the domestic mobile phone market has been an indisputable fact, and since last year, the development of folding screen mobile phones with extremely difficult research and development has helped major manufacturers find a new blue ocean market again - almost all of the recent folding screen mobile phone products have appeared in the offline machine is difficult to find, and the first online sales are sold out.
The data can glimpse the boom of the folding screen market. According to the research institute DSCC report, in the third quarter of 2021, the sales volume of folding screen mobile phones in the domestic market was about 338,000 units, a substantial increase of 98% over last year. The rush is far from stopping. Southwest Securities expects that the global folding screen mobile phone shipments will reach 18 million to 20 million in 2022, an increase of more than 100% year-on-year, and the penetration rate will rise from 0.18% in 2021 to 1.83%.
Huawei Mate X2
In order to compete for this growth dividend, since the second half of last year, the card table of the folding screen mobile phone fierce battle has gathered major mainstream mobile phone manufacturers. How to make the folding screen mobile phone can be better folded, and the price is lower, is the key breakthrough problem of mobile phone manufacturers. In February last year, Huawei Mate X2 opened the cannon, in the case of chip shortage launched a folding screen high-end mobile phone, using the self-developed hinge solution, as Huawei's first folding product, Mate X2 has a better product performance than X1's external folding, disguised to show that the inner fold is currently more available folding solution; a month later Xiaomi also tried to launch the first folding screen mobile phone Mix Fold.
GalaxyZ Flip 3 on the other side, in the field of folding screen mobile phones for a long time Samsung, in the second half of last year in order to open up the market, launched the vertical folding program of galaxyZ Flip 3, vertical folding program although not to continue the horizontal folding screen of the large screen experience, but the main fashion portable design language, but also made it the world's highest sales of a folding screen mobile phone, representing a new development direction of folding screen mobile phone; at the end of December, OPPO's first folding screen mobile phone FindN with a quasi-cone hinge design, piled up more than a hundred self-developed patents, but the product in the market performance of mixed reviews, supporters believe that the product will fold the price of the folding screen mobile phone further down is conducive to product popularization, but opponents believe that as an inner folding mobile phone, almost square product design, neither play the advantages of the inner folding large screen, nor take into account the use of the external screen experience. However, in addition to the mobile phone manufacturers spending money to study the folding method, whether it is inward folding, external folding, or multi-folding, it seems that it does not answer a question - "What is the meaning of folding itself for users"? In fact, from the user's point of view, the folding screen mobile phone still has many pain points, which is difficult to act as the main machine, nor can it be called a flagship product. At a time when the technical bottom line and cost continue to break through, manufacturers who want to get a share of the folding screen mobile phone market actually have to work hard in more places. The key to the victory of each family is that who can make the folding screen enter the mainstream, who can rely on this dividend to take advantage of the momentum. Honor as a new entrant, Honor Magic V as the 2022 folding screen mobile phone benchmark, this time to users, to the supply chain handed over a copy of their own answer sheet.
Honor CEO Zhao Ming
Folding screen mobile phone out of the circle, need to "one by one in place to say the famous scene of this year's mobile phone circle, Glory Magic V conference counts as one: Glory CEO Zhao Ming in the release site two drop folding screen mobile phone, and when he picked up the phone, there is no damage at all. "Many times people say that they bought a big toy (folding screen mobile phone), which can be cool and can be displayed, but we have to break this cognition", Zhao Ming mentioned in an interview after the conference, "We fell twice on the spot, we wanted to tell everyone that the Glory Magic V is used and can be used as the main flagship machine." Two drops on the phone, not a gimmick. Since the emergence of the world's first folding screen mobile phone in 2018, the pain points of product quality have not been completely solved. For most users, one of the reasons for refusing to experience folding screen mobile phones is that folding screen mobile phones are not durable, and once damaged, they will generate high maintenance costs, and they generally choose to buy broken screen insurance with a low price before purchasing, and the purchase cost is high.
Honor Magic V bending experiment
In order to remove the fragile label, the Honor Magic V has put a lot of thought into the durability of the design. For example, the Honor Magic V screen uses an improved, harder CPI film, and a more drop-resistant nano glass-ceramic process, which is 5 times more resistant to falling than ordinary glass, and the hinge uses more durable aerospace-grade materials. Honor Magic V has an opening and closing life of up to 200,000 times, and can be used for more than 10 years even based on an average of 50 opening and closing times per day. When the folding screen mobile phone becomes a truly durable mobile phone, there are basic conditions for popularization.
Honor Magic V ultra-thin suspended water droplet hinge
In addition to the problem of the durability of the mobile phone, another obstacle to the folding screen mobile phone to thousands of households is that although the folding screen mobile phone enjoys the same price as the high-end mobile phone, it is actually not enough to support the parameter configuration of nearly 10,000 yuan. And this is indeed due to the folding screen mobile phone structure is limited - the thickness of the folded mobile phone will be thicker, so the fuselage needs to be extremely thin and light in the unfolded state. This has also led to the fact that folding screen mobile phones have rarely used high-frequency fast charging, nor have they used larger capacity batteries; in terms of imaging, mobile phone manufacturers generally do not choose to insert telephoto and other lens configurations on folding screen mobile phones, not to mention those camera modules with higher parameter performance. And these are the constraints for mass users to buy folding screen mobile phones. Perhaps in the eyes of most users, most of the current folding screen mobile phones are still "folding for the sake of folding". In fact, in addition to studying how to fold the mobile phone better, the glory is actually thinking one step closer - how to make the folding screen mobile phone a real main machine. For example, most mobile phone manufacturers will generally use the previous generation of core chips in order to balance the cost increase brought by hinges and screens. But this time, the Honor Magic V uses Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 8 Gen1 chip, and the CPU, GPU, and AI performance have improved compared with the previous generation.
Not only that, Honor has also made further adjustments to the chip this time, equipped with a new OS Turbo X technology, using ultra-low latency engine, anti-aging engine, intelligent memory engine, etc., to achieve system-level tuning, greatly improving system fluency and power consumption performance. "This new generation of Snapdragon 8, we may get it later than others, but our performance tuning on the new generation of Snapdragon 8 is the best, which will be the core ability point of glory," Zhao Ming said. Of course, configurations outside the core SoC have not been ignored by Honor. For example, in the image, the rear of the Honor Magic V is more than 50 million main camera fusion computing photography, the inner and outer screens are equipped with 42 million high-definition lenses; in terms of charging, the use of innovative dual battery management system to ensure that the fuselage weight balance under the premise of higher charging power dissipation balance, 4750mAh large battery and 66W fast charging, can also be fully charged in 15 minutes 50% of the power.
The goal of Honor is obvious, Zhao Ming has previously bluntly said that the ambition of the Honor folding screen mobile phone is, "Under the same chip, whether it is the balance of the entire endurance or performance release, we must achieve the best in the industry." Of course, a scene pain point of folding screen mobile phones is system adaptation, which is also the direction that needs to be focused on by major mainstream mobile phone manufacturers - because to some extent, Android is still based on the experience of single screen to design, how to optimize the experience of internal and external screen collaboration and switching process, is the key factor to determine whether the folding screen mobile phone can become the main machine.
The Magic Live engine is the most direct embodiment of Honor's self-developed capabilities. To understand simply, the Magic Live engine is actually an underlying technical capability of the future Honor software operating system, which allows the core components to intelligently adapt to more scenarios based on the AI capability center, and can predict the use needs by analyzing the user habits in the use process.
Honor Magic V smart split screen based on this self-developed intelligent engine, at this conference, Honor also released a new Magic UI 6.0, in the basic application, scene experience, multi-device collaboration and other aspects have a lot of upgrades, so that the folding screen mobile phone has a smoother internal and external screen switching experience. Whether it is the breakthrough of high-end flagships or the opening up of a new form of products such as folding screen mobile phones, mobile phone manufacturers want to build their own technical barriers, and it is difficult to bypass the operating system to talk about innovation. Starting from the operating system, mobile phone manufacturers can fundamentally improve the user experience, do a good job in the adaptation of applications and the construction of a large ecosystem. As Zhao Ming said in an interview with the media, the software system is also a very important part of building a different experience for consumers, and Glory must go out of its own way.
In the future, Honor's software and operating system will be based on the Magic Live intelligent engine, which is the unswerving development direction of Honor in the future. In general, a variety of fancy folding methods, in fact, for users is not significant, and consumers are actually more concerned about the experience of the folding screen mobile phone itself. The first folding screen product of Honor, based on the whole life cycle of the mobile phone, has made more practical adjustments from the three aspects of product design, internal and external screen interaction and software ecology, and solved the problem of thickness and weight through self-developed technology, and successfully "returned the folding screen mobile phone to the mobile phone".
Folding screen, the era of manufacturers cornering overtaking opportunities
For mobile phone manufacturers including Honor, the folding screen mobile phone market is an era of overtaking on the one hand, because of some well-known reasons, after Huawei's chips are limited, the domestic high-end mobile phone market has a vacuum. Folding screen mobile phones, as the category that can best show the innovation of various companies, have become the bayonets of each high-end competition. On the other hand, Apple's advantage in the domestic market is still the same, how to tear a hole from the Apple Iron Curtain, folding screen mobile phone may be an important weapon in the Android mobile phone camp - according to Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingxi predicted, Apple will not launch the first folding screen iPhone until 2023.
Before Apple, mobile phone manufacturers including Honor are quickly seizing the market opportunity. "Positioning the high-end flagship of the Honor Magic series is to take Apple as a competitor, Honor will insist on using system-level tuning, platform-level reconstruction to create a product experience comparable to Apple, and under China's Internet ecology, Honor has the opportunity to create a product experience beyond Apple." The folding screen mobile phone gives us a new field of overtaking in curves," Zhao Ming said. Android camp mobile phone manufacturers have made sufficient technical reserves. Glory, in the moment of life and death in 2021, has already begun to study folding screen related products and technologies.
Taking the Glory Magic Live intelligent engine as an example, Zhao Ming mentioned at the press conference that this is in the case of extremely tight research and development resources, the team of hundreds of engineers, spent a year to polish - this team was born from Huawei, retaining the original wolf combat power of the Huawei team, but also looking for its own way. Honor's Magic Live and Magic UI operating system are a manifestation of Honor's own technical characteristics after leaving the Huawei system. This is also one of the bases of glory leading the folding screen mobile phone into the era of the main machine. And there is no doubt that after the glory Magic V, there will be more manufacturers to join the folding screen mobile phone fierce battle field, 2022 will also be a year of massive rapid enlargement of the folding screen market. CITIC Securities said that after the technical maturity of the folding screen mobile phone market is improved, the cost of various parts will continue to decrease, and as the price center moves down, the global shipment volume of the folding screen mobile phone market will exceed 65 million units in 2025.
Honor Magic V folding screen flagship mobile phone In the folding screen mobile phone market rapidly climbing, Honor Magic V for the industry a positive revelation is that Honor handed over a product that can really meet the needs of the user's main machine, to help the folding screen mobile phone get rid of the concept of the label. And this is also what the folding screen mobile phone really needs when it is moving towards popularization. "By 2022, I believe that there should be no need to fold the screen for the sake of folding screens, and really can meet the folding screen products that consumers need for closure and expansion in an all-round way, (such products) will definitely lead the market," Zhao Ming said. After a year of dormancy, 2022 is also the beginning of the glorious scientific and technological innovation and the road of struggle. In this war of folding screen mobile phones, this battle of honor to regain the market from Apple's hands, the glory of returning is undoubtedly a key variable.