A Brief History of the Evolution of Huawei Folding Screen Mobile Phones: How Mate Xs 2 Can Achieve "Epoch-Making"

In the Chinese market, smart phones have only been born for more than a decade, but the form of mobile phones has undergone breakthrough changes. At present, although the straight board machine is still the mainstream of the market, but the shipment of folding screen mobile phones is also rising year by year, Vivo vice president Hu Baishan said that the folding screen is a new segment of the smartphone market in the next 2-3 years of the incremental market, the growth rate will be very fast. Although the folding screen mobile phone has only a 4-year history, the current price of the folding screen mobile phone is vaguely close to the straight board machine, and the folding machine market is becoming more and more "rolled", which has also played a great role in promoting the development of the mobile phone industry.

Among the major mobile phone manufacturers, Huawei has made great contributions to promoting the mobile phone industry. As of April 27, Huawei has launched a total of 4 folding screen mobile phones: Mate X, Mate Xs, Mate X2, and P50 Pocket, and the time of each mobile phone launch represents the node of the development of the mobile phone industry. On April 28, Huawei held a new product launch conference and launched its fourth folding flagship, the Huawei Mate Xs 2. Yu Chengdong said that Huawei Mate Xs 2 is an epoch-making fold.

Next, Mobile China will review Huawei's folding screen mobile phones in previous generations and analyze how Huawei Mate Xs 2 can achieve "epoch-making".

Mate X ushers in a new era of folding

In 2019, Huawei released the first folding screen mobile phone - Huawei Mate X at the MWC2019 Pakistan Exhibition, officially entering the folding screen mobile phone market. In the same year's folding screen phones, only Samsung's Galaxy Fold can match it. The popularity of Huawei Mate X has promoted upstream brands such as BOE and enhanced the image of the terminal brand.

Which is stronger or weaker than Huawei Mate X and Samsung Fold? Huawei Mate X adopts an "eagle wing design" (outer fold), while Samsung Fold is an in-fold solution, the advantage of the outer fold scheme is that the screen is larger and the fuselage will not appear notched, and Samsung Fold has reserved a gap in order to prevent obscuring the camera, and the integrity is obviously not as good as huawei Mate X. At the same time, huawei Mate X is 8 inches after unfolding, and Samsung Fold is only 7.3 inches, what can be more attractive than a "flawless" large screen? Foreign media The Verge said that this is the closest folding screen mobile phone to the ideal, CNET is even more believed that Huawei called Samsung and did not fall behind. Arstechnica pointed out that the two designs have their own advantages and disadvantages, and the overall Huawei design is better.

In addition, in 2019, when Huawei Mate X was born, it was a year of downturn in the mobile phone market. IDC report shows that in 2018, the global smartphone market for the first time declined, consumers' desire to change the machine is not strong, even if the major manufacturers cut prices are difficult to recover the sluggish sales, in this environment, Huawei in early 2019 or without hesitation to launch the Mate X, attracted the attention of global consumers, laid the first year of folding mobile phones. Huawei revealed on January 9, 2020, that the Mate X ships 100,000 units per month.

Mate Xs promotes software adaptation to folding machines

In April 2020, after nearly a year, Huawei once again launched a new folding screen mobile phone - Huawei Mate Xs. Huawei's original folding screen mobile phone has a number of technical difficulties, including hinge, screen, weight, etc., Huawei Mate Xs has made all-round improvements to these technical defects, whether it is battery, performance or crease has been greatly improved. In addition, folding screen mobile phones in 2020 can be described as the first appearance, major mobile phone manufacturers have entered the folding screen mobile phone market, Huawei as the first batch of "crab eating" manufacturers, its products are extremely competitive in all aspects.

After Huawei entered the folding screen mobile phone market, it is constantly building a software ecology, with the advent of Mate Xs, Huawei said that in the domestic TOP 100 application has completed the folding screen adaptation, bringing consumers a better leisure and entertainment experience and a new way of mobile office. With the large-scale mass production of Huawei's folding screen products, more and more software adapts folding screen mobile phones, which will have a positive impact on the development of folding screen mobile phones in the future.

It is worth mentioning that the Huawei Mate Xs first sold only 30 seconds, the three major platforms of Huawei Mall, JD.com and Tmall flagship store were all sold out, and 16 Huawei concept stocks including Rongyu Group, Emikang, Huaxing Entrepreneurship, and Hesheng Shares also rose and fell on the same day. It can be seen that Huawei Mate Xs has once again focused the market on the development prospects of the relevant industrial chain, which has a profound impact on the mobile phone industry.

The Mate X2 leads the folding form

In 2021, Huawei launched two folding screen products, namely Huawei Mate X2 and Huawei P50 Pocket, and in this year, major mobile phone manufacturers began to exert efforts in the folding machine market, the entire mobile phone market was full of flowers, and Huawei's folding screen mobile phones also ushered in unprecedented challenges. Huawei Mate X2 and Huawei's first two folding screen mobile phones can be described as a world of difference, the machine abandons the original folding scheme, the use of higher requirements for the screen, the technical requirements of the internal folding program, the world's first double spin water drop hinge, but also added carbon fiber composite materials, breaking through the technical limitations of the internal folding program, truly folding seamlessly, flattening, redefining the folding flagship industry standard. After the launch of Huawei Mate X2, the folding screen mobile phones launched by major mobile phone manufacturers basically adopted the in-folding solution, and Huawei played a role in promoting it.

Huawei Mate X2 is the world's first mobile phone with a twin-wedge integrated design, when the network circulated the news that "Samsung will completely stop the supply of Huawei OLED folding panels", which is extremely unfavorable for the development of Huawei folding screen mobile phones, but Huawei chose to cooperate with BOE to create a "magnetron nano optical film" and internal and external dual screens, and also has an ultra-low screen reflectivity of less than 1.5%. In addition, under the ravages of the epidemic, the chip shortage has also affected the smartphone market, but Huawei, with its strong self-research capabilities, has applied the Kirin 9000 chip to the Mate X2, which is the world's first 5nm 5G processor, solving the dilemma of the missing core "card neck".

If Huawei Mate X2 is based on the upgrade of the original folding screen mobile phone, then Huawei P50 Pocket is an exploration of the future. In December 2021, Huawei launched its first up-and-down folding model, the Huawei P50 Pocket, which is also the first up-and-down folding model after the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip. The folding screen models on the market have a little "business style", but the design of the Huawei P50 Pocket is extremely stylish and full of agility.

It is worth mentioning that Omdia data shows that in 2021, Huawei will occupy 10% of the global folding screen smartphone market, second only to Samsung. In the domestic market, Huawei ranked first with a market share of 49.3%, far exceeding Samsung with a market share of 28.8%.

The Mate Xs 2 ushers in a new era of incognito

On April 28, Huawei launched its fifth flagship folding screen phone, the Huawei Mate Xs 2, priced as low as 9999 yuan. In the past year, Huawei gave up the previous external folding scheme and launched the inner folding model, many people think that the internal folding is the future of folding screen mobile phones, but Huawei proved with Mate Xs 2 today that as long as the technology is excellent, how to fold can be folded! Huawei Mate Xs 2 adopts an external folding scheme, and the screen size is 7.8 inches, which exceeds some mainstream folding screen models.

As we all know, weight is one of the pain points of folding screen mobile phones, Huawei Mate Xs 2 weighs only 255g, "crushing" a number of mainstream folding screen products, breaking the inherent impression of folding screen mobile phones "heavy as bricks", and may also make folding screen mobile phones begin to "roll" in terms of weight. Don't look at it lightly, Huawei Mate Xs 2 battery is not small, endurance is the basic need of many people, and this model has a built-in 4880mAh battery, more than many mainstream folding products.

Creases have always been a difficult problem to solve, and this physical problem is not solved by technology, but the Huawei Mate Xs 2 has broken the industry norm. Huawei Mate Xs 2 adopts a new generation of double-rotor wing hinge design, using a variety of high-precision special materials and special processes, while seamlessly folding, so that the reel and screen fit more tightly, the flatness is 70% higher than the previous generation, and it looks like there is no crease at a glance. With Huawei, the "traceless forerunner", the folding screen model in 2022 may also develop towards "traceless" and open a new era of tracelessness.

For a long time, creases have been the pain point of folding screen mobile phones, and many manufacturers have difficulty finding a way to deal with it until the Huawei Mate X2 is launched. Huawei Mate X2 uses a double-spin water drop hinge to let many manufacturers see the "dawn" to solve the crease, the solutions of the honor Magic V, vivo Fold X and other folding screen models are similar, leaving a certain space in the bend to avoid squeezing, from the hardware to promote the development of the folding screen market; at the same time, Huawei as early as the Mate X period (2019) set up a folding screen application ecological alliance, including Taobao, today's headlines, WeChat, Baidu, Ctrip and other major commonly used Apps, From the software to promote the development of the folding screen market. Huawei has promoted the adaptation of application providers to folding screen mobile phones from the software, and indirectly defined the style and style of the folding screen software experience.

Back to the point, why does Yu Chengdong call huawei Mate Xs 2 "epoch-making folding", and where is its "epoch-making" embodiment? Weight, crease, endurance are the pain points of folding screen mobile phones, many mobile phone manufacturers focus on one side, often produce the phenomenon of "partial science", but Huawei Mate Xs 2 will solve all three major problems at once, and the use of people are not optimistic about the folding scheme, in addition to "nb" I have not been able to think of other adjectives, which is also an important embodiment of its "epoch-making".