[Mobile Phone China] 3 months, placed in the long history of human evolution is just a drop of water, even compared with the development history of smart phones in the past 30 years, it is not worth mentioning. However, the truth of dripping water through stones tells us that the people and things that promote the development of the industry never care whether 3 months are too short. At the beginning of 2022, the smartphone industry ushered in the spring as usual, when a new machine came to us, when the industry quietly changed because of them, did anyone smell the mystery behind it? In order to find the answer, Mobile China launched a special report on "The New 'Beginning' of Smartphone 2022", which focuses on "whether mid-range mobile phones will popularize 2K screens in the future".
Smartphone 2022 New "Beginning": Redmi Leads the Mid-range 2K Era Is Coming?
With the release of a new generation of Snapdragon 8 mobile platform at the end of last year, a number of domestic mobile phone manufacturers have successively brought high-end flagship machines equipped with new processors, but the price of four or five thousand has deterred many people, and on the contrary, the mid-range machine (the concept of mid-range mobile phones in this article is based on price as the standard, non-product positioning) The market is very calm after the arrival of the new year, until March 17, the arrival of the Redmi K50 series, known as the "mid-range flagship goalkeeper", With the super high cost performance, the mid-range machine market that has fallen into silence has once again been revitalized.
Redmi K50 series
The reason why the Redmi K50 series can achieve the first sale of 330,000 units in 5 minutes is because of the three "talismans" of the machine: Tianji flagship chip, large battery and 2K screen, which is more obvious on the K50. According to the usual practice, before the release of the new machine, people generally speculated that the ordinary version is equipped with a 1080P screen, 2K screen exclusive to the Pro version, what was not expected was that Redmi gave consumers a "lesson", so that the mid-range mobile phone used a 2K screen, and considering Redmi's influence in the mid-range mobile phone market and the increasing inward-volume tendency of the market, there is a question worth thinking: Under the influence of Redmi, will the mid-range mobile phone market usher in a new era of 2K?
Samsung: The leader in 2K flagships
The development of mobile phone screen has gone through a relatively long process, since the birth of the world's first real mobile phone Motorola DynaTAC8000X in 1983, mobile phones have accompanied people through nearly 40 years of time, and with the development of technology, mobile phones have also developed from a single receiving and receiving function in that year to today can provide people with a variety of functions such as eating, wearing, and injection. And this shift is inseparable from the addition of mobile phone screens. The emergence of straight mobile phones has changed the way mobile phones have interacted in the past, and the importance of screens as a carrier of daily interaction is self-evident. The quality of the screen has also become an important stage for various mobile phone manufacturers to compete.
Samsung S6
When it comes to the development history of mobile phone screens, then we have to mention a brand - Samsung. Compared with the previous mainstream LCD screens on the market, Samsung can be said to be one of the earliest mobile phone manufacturers to use AMOLED screens. Since its release of the Samsung Galaxy S, the first flagship phone in the S series, in 2010, the AMOLED screen can be said to have become the standard for Samsung's flagship phones. With the advancement of screen technology, the screen resolution of mobile phones is also constantly improving, until the emergence of Samsung S6 in 2015, so that the Samsung S series for the first time equipped with a 2K screen, which has become the standard of subsequent generations of Samsung flagship mobile phones (as of Samsung S21), coupled with Samsung's consistent high level on AMOLED screens, 2K screens have also become a major selling point for flagship mobile phones.
The battle between 2K and 1080P
Although the 2K screen can indeed bring a better look and feel, but in the eyes of some consumers, 2K is more like a gimmick, because the 1080P screen has exceeded the limit that people's eyes can distinguish, and the blind promotion of 2K screens by mobile phone manufacturers can only "increase power consumption in vain", and will not change much in the perception.
If this had been put two or three years ago, it might have made some sense, but in today's mobile phone market, 2K screens really have many reasons for their existence. From the perspective of screen size, the getting bigger and bigger mobile phone screen has become an established fact, which can be seen from the dismal sales of small screen mobile phones on the market. While the screen increases, the PPI (number of pixels per unit area) at the same resolution will also decrease, although there is still some gap from the 324 PPI retina resolution defined by Apple, but with the gradual emergence of larger mobile phones and even folding screen mobile phones in the future, 1080P resolution may not be enough.
The diamond arrangement used by Samsung AMOLED screen
In addition to the increase in area will affect the screen display fineness, the characteristics of the OLED screen itself will also affect the display fineness. Taking the current Samsung AMOLED screen with the highest market share as an example, unlike the RGB arrangement used in the previous LCD screen, Samsung's AMOLED screen uses a diamond arrangement. Due to the need to share pixels, the drill screen loses about one-third of the pixels on the actual display, so the mobile phone with a 1080P resolution AMOLED screen is theoretically equivalent to 720P, which further leads to a decrease in display fineness.
Considering that there are fewer and fewer mobile phones using LCD screens on the market, OLED screens have become the primary choice of many mobile phone manufacturers with more vivid color displays, thinner thickness and faster response speed, which means that more and more mobile phones will use OLED screens.
LTPO screen used on the OnePlus 9 series
The main reason for the previous opposition to 2K screens, "increasing power consumption", has also been better solved in recent years. First of all, a big reason why OLED screens replace previous LCD screens is that the self-luminous properties of OLED make the device more energy-efficient, so the power consumption performance in daily use, especially in dark backgrounds, is better than that of LCD screens. Secondly, in order to further control the power consumption of the screen, many mobile phone manufacturers have adopted LTPO technology, under the blessing of LTPO 2.0 technology, many mobile phones that currently use 2K screens can achieve screen adaptive refresh rate, which can also reduce the use time of high refresh rates to a certain extent, and further reduce the power consumption of 2K screens.
Can 2K screens be popularized in mid-range machines?
Although since the launch of the OnePlus 7 Pro in 2019, 2K+ high brush has become a common configuration of domestic flagship machines, but the appearance of 2K screens on mid-range machines is a very rare phenomenon. So with the emergence of Redmi K50, can it bring a "2K wind" to the domestic mid-range machine market? As far as the current situation is concerned, there are really quite a few possibilities.
The first is that the current market has a large demand for 2K screens. As mentioned above, with the increase of mobile phone screens and the popularity of OLED screens, the current mainstream 1080P resolution has become more and more difficult to meet the needs of the human eye in terms of display fineness. Take a 6.5-inch 1080P resolution screen as an example, its PPI is only about 338, coupled with the display impairment of the OLED screen, the actual PPI is less than 300, even ordinary people will feel more or less grainy when using it, which will affect people's experience in the process of daily use of mobile phones.
The 2K screen has a clearer display
Secondly, the rise of domestic screen manufacturers has also made it possible to reduce the cost of 2K screens. Although in the current OLED mobile phone screen market, Samsung still occupies nearly 70% of the share, but including BOE (BOE), Visionox, Huaxing Optoelectronics and other domestic manufacturers have also accelerated the pace of OLED screen updates, BOE some products are rumored to have been allowed into the Apple supply chain, which also reflects that in technology, domestic manufacturers have also made significant progress in recent years. Although the current process is not as mature as Samsung, the cost has not opened up the gap, but with the passage of time, it is believed that in the near future, domestic panel manufacturers can make the price of 2K screens further down, giving mid-range machines the opportunity to choose 2K screens.
Huaxing optoelectronic screen obtained professional certification
Finally, there is another point, that is, the current mid-range machine price is also rising, which also provides the possibility for mobile phone manufacturers to choose a better configuration. In recent years, the price of domestic flagship mobile phones has risen all the way, and the price of flagship mobile phones that were previously priced at three or four thousand has come to five or six thousand yuan in the past two years. The price increase of high-end flagship machines has also given up a large price space, and the price of mid-range machines previously priced at 1500-2000 yuan has also risen as well as high-end flagships, beginning to cover the price of 2000-3000 yuan.
The rise in prices has also given mobile phone manufacturers the motivation to improve better configurations, such as many configurations that are usually only seen on high-end flagships, including 2K screens, super flash charges and flagship main cameras, and have also begun to appear on mid-range machines. Therefore, the increase in the price of mid-range mobile phones also provides cost support for the future popularization of 2K screens.
Write at the end
After the above analysis, we can find that, on the one hand, from the perspective of demand, the increase in mobile phone screens and the popularity of OLED screens, the resolution of the current mobile phone 1080P may not be so sufficient. The rise in the price of mid-range mobile phones has also further increased consumers' requirements for mid-range machines, and 2K screens can bring greater attention to mobile phones both from marketing and actual perception. On the other hand, from the cost point of view, with the gradual rise of domestic panel manufacturers, the future domestic 2K screen will be more competitive in terms of price and screen quality. In addition, the profits brought about by the rising price of mid-range machines also give manufacturers the confidence to be equipped with higher configurations.
The Redmi K50 is driving the adoption of 2K screens across the board
Finally, there is one point that can not be ignored, that is, the influence of Redmi in the mid-range machine market, the K50 took the lead in the mid-range mobile phone standard 2K screen, but also let it get a lot of attention, considering that Redmi has previously popularized the X-axis vibration motor on the mid-range machine, 5G function and many other configurations, so Lu Weibing said at the press conference "Redmi K50 series was defined at the beginning to fully promote the popularity of 2K screens" This sentence may really be just talk.