Since last year, mobile phone manufacturers have always added a special appearance version to the flagship model: supi, including Huawei, Xiaomi, honor, OPPO and the just released vivoNote, all choose to use supi material as an important appearance element of the mobile phone. Before that, we saw manufacturers spare no effort to innovate and think about the appearance of mobile phones, from plastic to metal, to carbon plates, ceramics, and even wood have become a choice for mobile phone body materials. Leather, the material that has accompanied human civilization for tens of millions of years, will naturally not be spared.
Leather tanning cumbersome and pious (source from the Internet)
Leather is an indispensable part of the development of human civilization, before we use silk, hemp, cotton, "ancient cave dwelling and wild, clothes and fur", in the ancient era of "Ru Mao drinking blood", the ancestors knew that animal fur has warm, breathable characteristics, is to maintain the continuation of the race of the necessary living conditions. But the use of leather to make clothes, is not as simple as imagined, in nature fur is more likely to deteriorate and rot, after drying and drying stiff, want to make clothes need to be through drying, tanning and other more than 40 steps. In particular, the process of tanning allows the collagen fibers to be redistributed and fixed, making them a leather material that is more comfortable to use. The clothes, leather bags and shoes made of leather are naturally immortal classics of fashion, and the same is true of mobile phones that are deeply influenced by fashion.
MotoX replaceable backplane with leather to choose from (source from the network)
In fact, if we really trace back to the leather mobile phone we are difficult to find its source, as early as the Java era there are a variety of leather as the material of the mobile phone came out, we are now difficult to verify whether the leather used in the model at that time is animal fur, but I believe everyone has the impression that since then the leather material mobile phone is as the leather itself represents the same fashion meaning, is a high-end symbol. If we divide it by smart phones, perhaps the first leather handbook is this MotoX leather version from Motorola, when the main slogan of this model was "the right to choose", and users can choose different materials of back shells to install on their mobile phones.
8848 titanium mobile phone (image source from the network)
For another brand 8848 titanium mobile phone, the controversy about the brand we do not mention for the time being, but it has to be said that leather has almost become its symbol, business plus luxury brand positioning, so that natural leather and the brand mobile phone business style complement each other. On the 8848 titanium mobile phone, materials such as cowhide, lizard leather, and crocodile leather have been used, and the interior is also filled with SBP high-resilience cotton to make the grip feel to a higher level. Of course, most of the mobile phones of this brand will be sold in the form of private customization, in addition to the value of the leather itself, handmade is also one of its biggest selling points.
Huawei P20 Pro Leather Limited Edition (source from the network)
In the Huawei P20 Pro leather limited edition released in 2018, it is also a mobile phone with leather as the main material, at this time the smart phone has basically fixed the form, so at that time, the mobile phone market that generally used metal or glass back panels, the emergence of leather mobile phones is particularly dazzling. However, with people paying more and more attention to the concept of green environmental protection, leather materials in the fashion industry has slowly become a minefield, more and more artificial leather instead, such a phenomenon has also affected the mobile phone industry, so the emergence of supi has become both to meet the user's pursuit of leather, but also to reduce the damage to the global environment ecology, supi has become a new darling.
vivo X Note
Huawei P50
At present, the plain leather material used by mobile phone manufacturers is named PU environmental protection leather in the supply chain, which has a touch that is infinitely close to the leather, and also has the waterproof and oilproof characteristics required by the mobile phone, in addition, this material is also resistant to high temperature and moisture, and will not leave fingerprints as easily as the glass material. There is also the material of PU leather, so it can increase the friction between the fuselage and the palm, can effectively increase the damping, reduce the possibility of hand slippage, plus the overall touch of the leather itself is softer and more comfortable, which highlights the user's pursuit of quality of life.
At present, the mobile phone process using plain leather materials, mainly through the PC + glass fiber material injection molding backplate, and then on it to fit the PU leather, the process of the lamination of the processing requirements are relatively high, but such a practice can also effectively improve the yield rate, so most of the mobile phones we see so far have chosen this way of production, the texture of the leather and the daily needs of wear and fall resistance combined, so as to achieve practical results.
adidas launched a vegan Stan Smith co-branded small white shoe (image source from the Network)
But the fact that must be faced is that whether it is PU leather or PVC leather, artificial leather is still essentially a plastic product, which will inevitably cause harm to producers in the production process, and it is not conducive to degradation, and it is not in line with the demands of environmental protection. So in the fashion industry a new plant artificial leather is becoming the new darling of designers. This material has most of the characteristics of leather, and its main raw materials are completely from various natural plants, such as pineapple leaves, apples, mushrooms, grapes and even cacti, etc., and do not need fresh fruits of plants, just need to use special methods of extraction from production wastes such as winemaking and juice manufacturing plants, and the production process greatly reduces the emission of waste water and waste gas compared to traditional artificial leather.
Stella McCartney's Spring /Summer 2022 collection uses Mylo's mushroom leather (source from the web)
Not only in the fashion circle, the use of plant artificial leather in the automotive industry has also become possible, following Tesla's announcement in 2019 that it will no longer provide leather interiors, brands such as Porsche, BMW and Ford have taken similar steps, and suitable plant artificial products have become their new choice. So for mobile phone products, perhaps in the near future we will be able to see the use of artificial plant skin mobile phones appear on the market, when sustainable become fashion itself, the industry's wind direction has long changed.