There must be a battle for high-end folding phones in 2024, and vivo may become the biggest winner?

Source of this article: Times Weekly Author: Yao Tingting

"The vivo X Fold3 series marks the real maturity of folding screen technology and experience, and marks the real entry of the folding category to the mass market. ”

On March 26, at the launch of the vivo X Fold3 series, Huang Tao, vice president of vivo products, said.

Entering 2024, the battle in the folding screen mobile phone market is likely to be further escalated. Prior to the vivo X Fold3 series launch event, Huawei released the Pocket 2 small folding phone on February 22. And after that, Xiaomi's folding machine is also on the way.

In the overall downturn of the smartphone market, folding screens are one of the few market segments with an upward trend. IDC data shows that in 2023, China's folding screen mobile phone market will ship about 7.007 million units, a year-on-year increase of 114.5%. Since the launch of the first product in 2019, China's folding screen mobile phone market has grown by more than 100% year-on-year for four consecutive years. According to iResearch data, as many as 96.7% of wait-and-see users are willing to choose the folding screen as the next mobile phone, of which 53.8% said "very willing", which means that the market demand for folding screen has matured.

After several years of throwing stones and asking for directions, folding screen mobile phones have gone through the stages of being heavy, with obvious creases and poor performance, and are moving towards a thin and light all-rounder. For example, vivo released a new machine this time, focusing on 219 grams of thin and light and equivalent 5700mAh blue ocean battery for long battery life, and it has also broken the boundaries of folding screens and straight flagships in terms of performance and image. At the same time, vivo's self-developed AI blue heart large model has achieved the most powerful model deployment on the vivo X Fold3 series for the first time on the 1B/7B device side + 70B cloud side.

At a time when new quality productivity has become a "hot word", innovative technologies such as folding screens and AI large models that can bring about industrial transformation are considered to be one of the main positions for the development of new quality productivity in the mobile phone industry. In the future, the combination of folding screen mobile phones and AI large models may be expected to run out of killer applications and drive smartphones to complete cross-era innovation.

Folding screen, where is the "volume" going?

In 2019, Samsung released its first folding screen mobile phone, Galaxy Fold, which fired the "first shot" of commercial folding screen smartphones, and Huawei also released the first generation of folding screen products in this year.

Since then, more manufacturers such as vivo, Xiaomi, and OPPO have joined the competition, and the hardware technology of folding screen mobile phones has gradually improved and matured, the application of software systems has been optimized, and the consumer experience has been continuously improved, and the folding screen mobile phone market has begun to show a state of blooming.

Nowadays, folding screen mobile phones have begun to be commonly used from the initial "early adopter". In the early stage, folding screen mobile phones either made products too thick due to the pursuit of performance, or made trade-offs in function due to the pursuit of thinness and lightness, and consumers did not accept them well.

According to iResearch's "2024 China Folding Screen Mobile Phone Consumption Insight Report", domestic leading manufacturers have now crossed a single thin and light stage, and have added more flagship functions to thin and light folding screen mobile phones. Product design has begun to develop in the direction of "thin and lightweight", and will become the main trend of future development.

Thinness and lightness are also one of the main selling points of vivo's X Fold3 release.

In terms of weight, the X Fold3 body weighs 219 grams, the lightest in the industry, and the highest weight reduction is 60.5g on the basis of the previous generation, which is not only lighter than all folds, but also lighter than straight flagships. The X Fold3 Pro also weighs as little as 236 grams, maintaining the first echelon in the industry.

In terms of thickness, the X Fold3 series has significantly reduced the body to become the thinnest in the industry with a thickness of 4.65mm on one side in the unfolded state, and 10.2mm in the folded state. The X Fold3 Pro has a body thickness of 5.2mm and 11.2mm in the folded and folded states, respectively, which also maintains the first echelon in the industry.

But the vivo X Fold3 series is much more than thin and light, and "reliable" is also one of the notable features.

The X Fold3 series is designed with an ultra-reliable armor architecture, in which the outer screen is made of armor glass, which is 11 times more resistant to drops, the inner screen is made of UTG ultra-tough glass + impact resistant film to bring more effective protection and improve the durability of the inner screen, the back cover of the armor is made of ultra-high molecular weight UPE fiber, which is 15 times more impact-resistant, and the carbon fiber ultra-durable and lightweight hinge, which has also obtained the Rheinland 500,000 fold worry-free certification, striving to ensure that every side is resistant to falls. This also makes it the only inward-folding mobile phone in the world that has obtained SGS five-star machine drop resistance certification.

In terms of performance and configuration, the X Fold3 series is also top-notch. At LPDDR5X the same time, the whole series is equipped with the world's latest Samsung E7 large inner screen, with 8.03-inch super large size, and 91.8% ultra-high screen-to-body ratio, with a local peak brightness of 4500nit, bringing a larger field of view and immersive experience beyond imagination. Huanyu signal amplification system, the industry's first dual-diaphragm ultra-thin speaker equipped with vivo's self-developed anti-leakage algorithm, realizes 40cm side-by-side sound leakage prevention and safe calls, etc.

After having the "shape" of a folding screen, the vivo X Fold3 series has the "god" of even surpassing the capabilities of the straight board flagship, bringing consumers a new folding screen mobile phone experience, and has become a high-profile leader in the market.

"Blue technology" leads the new quality of productivity

In recent days, the term "new quality productivity" has become a hot topic of attention and discussion from all walks of life.

The so-called new quality productivity is a productive force that is different from the traditional productive forces, involves new fields, has high technological content, and plays a leading role in scientific and technological innovation. It is expected that in the next decade or beyond, smartphones will become one of the key industries driving the large-scale implementation of cutting-edge technologies.

Scientific and technological innovation is one of the core elements for the development of new quality productive forces. For vivo, the "Blue Technology" technology brand is the culmination of its four innovative directions of design, imaging, system and performance, and it is also vivo's practice of new quality productivity.

It is reported that "blue technology" includes blue crystal chip technology stack, blue ocean battery life system, AI blue heart large model and blue river operating system. At the launch of the X Fold3 series, "Blue Technology" has made a new breakthrough.

Among them, the X Fold3 series is equipped with a new generation of blue ocean battery life system, and the battery capacity is almost larger than that of all folding screens and straight flagships.

Under the technical background of adopting new materials and technologies, the blue ocean battery capacity of vivo X Fold3 and X Fold3 Pro has reached 5500mAh and 5700mAh equivalent, respectively, while the weight has been greatly reduced and thinned compared with the previous generation, achieving thinner and greater energy density.

In order to solve the "stubborn disease" of the industry with poor battery life of mobile phones in cold weather, the new generation of Blue Ocean battery adopts the industry's first semi-solid-state battery technology, which effectively improves the low-temperature discharge performance and prolongs the low-temperature battery life. At the beginning of this year, vivo X Fold3 Pro went to Antarctica with the Chinese scientific expedition team to witness the completion of China's Qinling Station in Antarctica under the low temperature and windy climate of Antarctica.

In addition, by optimizing the underlying system, the vivo X Fold3 series also brings lower power consumption. On the one hand, the new generation of blue ocean battery life system uses the heterogeneous computing capabilities of the system to share the computing pressure of the main CPU and reduce power consumption, and on the other hand, by rewriting the Android kernel, the system and third-party applications are light-loaded in the background, shielding the background irrelevant stealing computing, so as to achieve no power failure.

In addition to the blue ocean battery life system, another member of "Blue Technology", the "General" AI blue heart model, also shines on the vivo X Fold3 series.

For the first time, the AI Blue Heart model has achieved the most powerful model deployment on the vivo X Fold3 series on the 1B/7B device side + 70B cloud side.

On vivo X Fold3 series mobile phones, you can call out the large model through the four entrances of "desktop icons, atomic components, side slide pull-out, and floating icons", and interact with the large model through "text input, voice input, image drag-and-drop, document drag-and-drop" and other methods. The large model also supports multiple forms of "full screen, small window, split screen, and suspension", realizing the deep integration with folding screen mobile phones.

One-sentence search for image materials, one-sentence video clips, small V help notes and AI note creation...... The AI Blue Heart model has become a full-scene personal assistant for users to edit videos, record meetings, translate in real time, organize summaries, and create notes.

People are still the measure of value

The key to the popularity of electronic products by consumers is often hidden in the small details.

The vivo X Fold3 series launched the industry's exclusive "Split Screen" function, which allows you to gently bend the inner screen inward in the expanded state to complete the split-screen action, and quickly complete the full-screen screenshot or select the small window to take a screenshot by swiping down with three fingers. Through the combination of software and hardware, the operation of the folding screen can be triggered in a more intuitive way.

It can be seen that vivo's folding screen is by no means a simple "show-off" work, vivo has always put user needs at the core of product research and development. While continuously increasing scientific and technological innovation and developing new quality productivity, it is people-oriented and takes consumer experience as the ultimate goal.

At the press conference, Huang Tao, vice president of vivo products, mentioned, "The idea of the blue factory is very simple, that is, 'do technology in a down-to-earth manner, and make products seriously', the blue factory is very pragmatic and persuasive, and the opinions of consumers, we really change, not only opinions, but also the ridicule of users will be recorded one by one." ”

The vivo X Fold3 released this time shows its ingenious combination of technology and humanization, setting a new benchmark for the development of foldable screen smartphones.

For example, the vivo X Fold3 series is equipped with OriginOS 4, which optimizes the underlying system through three major technologies: virtual graphics, unfair scheduling 2.0, and memory fusion 4.0, making the system run more silky and light. At the same time, it is connected to iOS, so that Apple can be connected to multiple terminals, Apple computers can be used, Apple files can be viewed and Apple mobile phones can be exchanged, bringing ultimate convenience to users.

The concept of "people-oriented" has made vivo popular with consumers and ranks first in domestic mobile phones. According to data released by market research agency Counterpoint, at the beginning of this year, vivo maintained the first domestic market share for six consecutive weeks. In the past 2023, vivo won the sales championship of Chinese mobile phone brands with a market share of 16.9%, which is also the third consecutive year that vivo has firmly ranked first in the list of domestic brands.

"Forward is the answer", this is the New Year's speech of Shen Wei, President of vivo in 2024, and it is also a portrayal of the goals pursued by all mobile phone manufacturers in the new year. In 2024, the folding screen war in the mobile phone industry is about to break out. In the future, the participation of more manufacturers and the launch of more products will promote the rapid development of the folding screen mobile phone market and the rapid evolution of the ecological chain.