At the end of last year, Huawei brought its first folding screen mobile phone Huawei P50 Pocket, which was folded up and down (flip cover), and further expanded its folding screen product line. Just when I thought that Huawei would use the in-fold Huawei Mate X series and the clamshell Pocket as the main force of shipment, on April 22, Huawei officially announced that it would release its fifth folding screen mobile phone Huawei Mate Xs 2 on April 28.
However, from the perspective of the product appearance revealed in the poster picture, the Huawei Mate Xs 2 is very likely to use the external folding form scheme, which is also one of the most iconic designs of Huawei's folding screen. However, considering that several folding screen products launched by Huawei in the past two years have adopted the mainstream folding design of the market, after two years, Huawei has re-picked up the external folding design, which can't help but make me a little curious, what tricks can Huawei play in the folding form this time?
Another value-preserving machine or?
When huawei's official front foot just officially announced Mate Xs 2, blogger @ panda is very bald and then the foot exposed a set of renderings that claim to be Huawei Mate Xs 2, from the picture can be seen that the Mate Xs 2 and the previous generation of the appearance of the design gap is not large, the only difference is that a hole (front camera) is opened in the upper right corner of the screen (front camera), and has three colors.
As for the processor that everyone is more concerned about, there is no mention on the Internet, considering that the Kirin 9000 processor has been released for nearly two years, Huawei probably does not have excess inventory. So I venture to guess that the Mate Xs 2 will be the same as the P50 Pocket, equipped with a Snapdragon 888 4G processor from Qualcomm, which is also no way.
However, in other aspects, Huawei Mate Xs 2 may bring a different experience of use, according to the blogger @ factory director is Guan Classmate's Weibo revelation shows that "combined with the previously issued outer folding related patents, the new Mate Xs 2 hinge part will definitely be adjusted, and the adjusted hinge will make the folding of this outer folding screen less obvious, at the same time, the new hinge will become more lightweight and will not reduce toughness." In simple terms, the Huawei Mate Xs 2 will be a folding screen phone that combines both durability and thinness, and may also be one of the thinnest folding screen phones on the market.
Not only in terms of design and hardware, Huawei should also bring some different things to everyone in terms of interactive experience, after all, from Huawei's first few folding screen products, it can be seen that Huawei has made a lot of efforts in software ecology and interaction, which is also the reason why Huawei's folding screen has a good reputation in the market.
However, for our ordinary consumers, our most concerned nature is whether its price is close to the people, after all, in the early stage of the development of folding screens, it is completely understandable that the price of folding screens is limited by the cost and the high price of the process folding screen. But now that it is 2022, there are also many folding screen products below five digits or even lower on the market, if Huawei's new folding screen can not open the gap with vivo X Fold, OPPO Find N and other products, then the pricing must not be too high.
However, considering that the official pricing of Huawei's Mate X series and Xs series is around 178,000 before, I personally do not think that the pricing of Huawei Mate Xs 2 may be reduced, but it should not give more than a people-friendly price.
And as one of the first players in the folding screen mobile phone market, Huawei's folding screen mobile phones have shown a very high retention rate, almost every generation of folding screen products can be regarded as "wealth management products", I still remember when Mate X was first launched, you almost have to use double the price to buy hands, even if unpacked after a period of use, it can still be sold at a price much higher than the original price, which shows the influence of Huawei's folding screen at that time.
Considering the shortage of chips, the inventory of Mate Xs 2 will obviously not be much, and it will be difficult to find at that time, but it is still difficult to reproduce the grand situation of Mate X or Mate Xs, after all, there are already many mature folding screen products on the market.
Rounding around and back to the folding design?
Although we have discussed the topic of folding screen outer fold or fold inward fold many times, let's briefly explain the advantages and disadvantages of the two. First of all, the current mainstream folding design, from several folding screen mobile phones on the market, it can be seen that the inner folding screen mobile phone can indeed make the crease smaller or even completely invisible, but because the internal folding scheme can not allow users to directly operate when folding, often need to add an external screen on the mobile phone, but the disadvantage of this is that it will greatly enhance the thickness of the mobile phone. This is also one of the reasons why most consumers think that folding screen phones are too thick and heavy and do not want to buy.
As for the advantages, it is also obvious that due to the thicker body and the protection of the outer screen, the folding screen of the inner folding design is naturally better than the folding screen of the external folding design in terms of drop resistance and service life.
The inner fold design of Huawei Mate Xs 2, the outer fold, as the name suggests, is to expose the screen outside, the entire fuselage as the outside of the U-shaped structure, the advantage of this is that a screen can be used as an external screen and an inner screen at the same time, so the fuselage design can be relatively thin. Moreover, there is still a point not mentioned about the inner folding design, that is, although many manufacturers are now equipped with a variety of water drop hinges, which can make the screen with the inner folding design more compact when closed, but it cannot be completely fitted, once mixed with a small sand grain or something, the consequences can be imagined. As for the disadvantages, I will not elaborate more, and the creases are more obvious and less protective.
I personally think that there are advantages and disadvantages of the two design forms, there is no need to say which one is necessarily better than the other, after all, in addition to the design form, there are many factors that will affect the final experience of a device. No matter which form is essentially through the folding of this design, so that the mobile phone is not only a mobile phone, but also a tablet with a larger screen, the development of more use scenarios, in the form and function of different from the traditional mobile phone, to create a differentiated competition point. New technologies and new product forms are what every consumer wants to see, but technological breakthroughs and developments take time, and there will definitely be some problems in the early stage of products, which cannot be avoided.
Back to the product level, why did Huawei choose to apply such a seemingly "outdated" design at this point in time? Combined with Huawei's previous product line analysis, it can be roughly divided into three reasons.
First, the release of Huawei Mate Xs 2 will mean that Huawei will become the only manufacturer to master three folding technologies, and it is also the most complete manufacturer of the domestic folding screen product sequence, because in addition to the Huawei Mate X and Huawei Mate Xs with external folding screen design, Huawei also has Huawei Mate X2 with internal folding screen design, and Huawei P50 Pocket with up and down folding design, which also provides users with more choices and can meet the needs of different consumers.
Second, due to some well-known reasons, Huawei can not normally come up with a flagship product for the public in the short term, although Huawei's old flagships are still very capable of playing at the moment, but with the passage of time, consumers' enthusiasm for the Huawei brand will inevitably slowly decrease. Therefore, for Huawei, they need to constantly launch "new products" to ensure market heat and give users a dose of tonic, and positioning high-end and production does not need to be so high folding screen products is the best choice.
According to the latest mobile phone data tracking report released by the International Data Corporation (IDC), the scale of folding screen mobile phone products in the Chinese market in 2021 is about 1.5 million units, of which Huawei accounts for 49.3%, sitting firmly in the field of folding screen mobile phones. As one of the earliest manufacturers in China to enter the folding screen mobile phone market, Huawei has already left a good impression in the hearts of many users. Therefore, in terms of sales and word of mouth, Huawei Mate Xs 2 is still not a problem.
Huawei insists on developing and producing folding screen mobile phones, which proves that the folding screen mobile phone market still has a broad future, and the product form and characteristics of folding screens determine that it has a lot of application space, which is incomparable to conventional mobile phones. Of course, at present, the experience of the folding screen needs to be further improved, but the value brought by the folding screen to the user is obvious.
It is undeniable that the folding screen is still facing pain points such as high prices, technology to be further matured, and application scenarios that need to be further developed. However, manufacturers have motivation, the industry has development prospects, consumers have demand, folding screen has a new experience and value, these difficulties and pain points are only temporary, will certainly be broken one by one, folding screen will not completely replace the conventional mobile phone is not easy to say, but at least will become one of the mainstream forms of the mobile phone industry in the next few years.