Since last year, with the emergence of domestic folding screen mobile phones such as Huawei Mate X2 and OPPO Find N, it has really made the new product of "folding screen" a fire, this product lies in the fact that by maintaining an easy-to-carry fuselage, it can bring a larger screen through folding, allowing users to enjoy the vision brought by the full screen, and this folding screen is considered to be one of the mainstream directions of flagship mobile phones in 2022 and even in the future, and currently includes Samsung, Huawei, OPPO and many other well-known mobile phone manufacturers have also entered the field of folding screens. While the sales of folding screen mobile phones continue to rise, they naturally attracted the attention of Apple.
A few days ago, Apple analyst Guo Mingxi said on the social platform Twitter that Apple is currently testing a 9-inch OLED folding screen device, and there is not much disclosure about the content of the folding screen. However, he believes that Apple's folding screen development was initially focused on medium-sized and larger screen devices, but may eventually be applied to related small-screen devices such as the iPhone, and he himself said that Apple's first foldable device is likely to be a hybrid of an iPhone and an iPad, or it may be a folding screen iPad. None will be available until 2025, though.
From the content, we can also see that the apple folding screen related products will not meet with the public in the short term, on the one hand, it is speculated that Apple's attitude towards each technology application, when it is really applied to the extreme or perfect technology, on the other hand, it may also be the problem of crease and thickness, which mainly involves the hinge technology of the folding screen, which also determines the quality of a folding screen. At present, domestic mobile phones can be said to be quite mature in hinge technology, the following take you to see, where is the hinge technology of domestic mobile phones, will it be the root of Apple's folding screen?
* Suspected Apple folding screen concept map
At present, the most core part of the folding screen mobile phone lies in the hinge technology and screen technology they use, immature hinge technology and screen technology will not only make the folding screen crease obvious, practicality, ornamentality will also be greatly reduced. The recent high popularITY of OPPO Find N, is a high maturity of the folding screen mobile phone, this is mainly because its inner screen in the unfolding almost no crease, whether it is the screen state or the bright screen state of the look and feel is the same, only at a specific angle can find the existence of creases, just such a flat degree is actually much higher than most folding screen products on the market.
OPPO Find N
In fact, this is mainly due to oppo Find N using the self-developed Seiko quasi-vertebral hinge technology, this structural technology is more difficult, it is reported that the OPPO development team after 4 years and 6 generations of research and development and polishing and 125 technical blessings, including 136 components, processing accuracy of 0.01mm, while paying three times the cost of other folding screen hinges. However, the advantage of Seiko pseudo-vertebral hinge technology is that it can naturally form a water droplet shape for the screen after bending, leaving enough space to reduce visual creases and achieve a seamless effect after folding. This almost crease-free look and feel will be very comfortable when you get started.
In addition, in terms of folding material, there have been many products using plastic materials, and durability and traditional mobile phones cannot be compared. Therefore, OPPO Find N uses ultra-thin glass (UTG) material, which has 300% more impact resistance than traditional products. In order to ensure that the folding screen mobile phone can be folded stably and reliably, OPPO Find N adopts a single-layer segmented steel plate bonding scheme in the folding area of the screen, and the bottom end adopts the self-developed patented reticulate matrix, which redesigns the dense and moderate mesh shape for the dynamic change of the curvature of the water droplet, making the screen molding more natural, the stress in the bending area is reduced by 30%, and the final screen crease is reduced a lot.
It is worth noting that due to the seiko quasi-vertebral hinge technology support multi-angle free hover, users can hover the mobile phone screen at different angles on the OPPO Find N to complete specific functions. In addition, OPPO has spent a lot of effort to adapt to optimization, and added a lot of rich gameplay in the hover. For example, when watching a movie series, OPPO Find N is bent at nearly 90 degrees, the upper part of the screen will present the lake content, and the lower part of the screen will become a trackpad, under the feedback of the 120Hz screen, users can easily fast forward, adjust the volume, pause playback and other operations.
So will hinge technology become the root of the folding screen? The answer is yes, with the continuous progress of hinge technology, domestic mobile phone manufacturers in this area of development more and more mature, with the help of excellent hinge technology, folding screen mobile phone can bring shallower screen creases and higher durability, and like OPPO Find N on this basis to expand the multi-angle free hover play, so it is foreseeable that hinge technology will be the focus of future folding screen mobile phone development. With Apple's excellent scientific and technological strength and research and development capabilities, it is difficult not to expect that Apple may deliver a more satisfactory answer sheet in the future, and may release folding screen products without creases.