Beijing time March 04 news, China's touch screen network news, since several launched folding screen mobile phone manufacturers have admitted that the product is not mature, why do we still scramble to launch this year?
Taking the form of folding up a mobile phone and unfolding a tablet is also a hope to open up new growth points by extending the scope of use of products.
In order to achieve the differentiation competition, the manufacturers of Android phones are forced to release the folded screen phones after gaining the support of the panel manufacturers.
Within four months, three manufacturers -- ruyu, samsung and huawei -- released foldable phones, and xiaomi showed prototypes of foldable phones, taking a step forward in the sci-fi imagination that has long existed in people's memory.
The FlexPai is priced from 8,999 yuan (nt $42,000), samsung from $1980 (nt $61,500) and huawei Mate X from 2,299 euros (nt $81,500).
In terms of configuration, samsung and huawei have maintained their high standards.
The huawei Mate X is equipped with a kirin 980 processor, an 8-inch wrap-around OLED display screen, and a 5G multi-mode terminal chip with matching.
The Galaxy Fold comes with two 4380-mah batteries, and it comes with a 87 MB processor and up to 12GB of RAM.
Soft soft also is in fast charge, chip, system hand over impressive answer paper.
However, in fact, this period of time, including a few years ago also showed folding mobile phone lenovo, millet and other manufacturers, also once said so far, folding mobile phone to enter the mass production stage in the technical conditions is not mature enough.
This is the reason why the prices of the discount phones that have been sold so far remain so high.
So is flexible screen technology mature enough to support folding screen innovation?
Why is it that a technology that seems to be considered premature by the industry has become the subject of MWC?
What does real experience upgrade depend on?
Why is everyone rushing to roll out their fold-screen phones this year, when several manufacturers admit that their products are still immature?
Yield: unavoidable climb
"If the yield [yield] is too low, it's going to be expensive."
Li si (pseudonym), a flexible screen industry practitioners explained: "the current market except for the soft yu, folding screen relative to the existing curved screen, the technology is the same, is the use of LTPS flexible AMOLED solution, but this technology used for folding screen some risk.
From the point of view of screen supply, the flexible screen developed by the company is the technical route based on oxide TFT.
Samsung USES Infinity Flex Display, which it has developed itself, while huawei USES the same flexible Display technology from third-party supplier boe.
Specifically, lees gives two factors that influence the yield of LTPS.
Firstly, silicon materials in TFT devices and transparent conductive materials such as ITO are at risk of embrittlement during repeated folding. Once embrittlement occurs, irreparable defects such as bad points or broken wires will occur.
Secondly, the folding screen for polarizer and protection cover plate requirements are higher than the curved screen, protection cover plate and folding screen after fitting in the folding process of stress will also have an impact.
But whatever the technology, yield is the biggest constraint on prices.
"At that time, the mobile phone of ruoyu may have such a price for the standard iPhone XS, but in terms of actual cost, it should still lose money."
Lees thinks this is why so few people actually get FlexPai.
Why is everyone rushing to roll out their fold-screen phones this year, when several manufacturers admit that their products are still immature?
He put the yield climb to a "critical" position: "folding screen phones to large-scale popularity, display panel yield increase, price drop is a key factor.
Preterm birth: there are plenty of problems, but cost isn't the only one.
"I don't care about taking photos, quick charging, chips, etc., scratch resistance and service life are the most important parameters to pay attention to in flexible screen phones. Due to the technical particularity of flexible screen itself, these are relatively difficult technical points, you should care about mohs hardness that can reach several H.
"Lees emphasized.
In terms of scratch resistance, the current protective cover for folding screen is made of plastic film similar to transparent polyimide (PI), which is then coated with a protective layer, which requires the polymer material of the protective layer to be both flexible and hard.
According to li, the current research direction is to replace the current PI film with a new material with stronger scratch resistance, or to coat the PI with a more wear-resistant nano coating to improve scratch resistance. However, whether such a solution can match the "corning gorilla glass" currently used in conventional mobile phones is still a question.
Fold test of 200 thousand times, fold test of 100 thousand times, these Numbers appear impressively in manufacturer's news conference, mobile phone manufacturer people are emphasizing undoubtedly: service life, fold the problem that fold a number of times we also are very concerned about.
For ruyu taking the oxide scheme, PPI (Pixels Per Inch or pixel density) is also the concern.
The PPI of 308 released by rou yu has been the limit of this material in the current market, but now the PPI of common mobile phone screen is close to 500.
Not only are these technologies related to flexible screens themselves problematic.
Some performance associated with the phone itself is in doubt, a mobile phone industry practitioners said: "the mobile phone as a high frequency of using tool, experience so many factors to consider, prone to cancel weaknesses and strengths. As a tablet, final Pro weight about 400 g, the average weight was positively correlated with life, if the weight reduce mean that life will be a discount?"
Fear innovation: why do people flock to fold screens to open up new topics?
Li si regrets, take fold up is a mobile phone, expand is a tablet this form is also hope to expand the scope of the use of products to open up new growth points.
In order to achieve the differentiation competition, the manufacturers of Android phones are forced to release the folded screen phones after gaining the support of the panel manufacturers.
According to relevant data, in 2018, in addition to xiaomi and huawei, which are actively expanding their overseas markets, their mobile phone shipments have increased, while apple and samsung both showed negative growth.
For the full year of 2018, sales were down 4.1 percent from 2017.
Major manufacturers to achieve mass production support is also available.
In September 2018, vicino announced the successful offline of flexible AMOLED "full screen" products, officially starting the supply chain of downstream smart phones.
In November, boe's 6th generation flexible AMOLED production line in chengdu officially went into mass production.
The first sign of mass production in ruyu is on June 6, 2018.
According to relevant data, at that time, ruyu had invested about 11 billion yuan in shenzhen to build the world's first six-generation full flexible display screen mass production line, with the full production scale exceeding 50 million flexible display screens every year.
One web industry watcher calls it "the mobile industry's fear innovation" : increasingly difficult hardware innovations and volume pressures are forcing phone makers to create new buzz around folding screens.
When the industry enters the mature period and the profit margin continues to be low, the pursuit of high premium becomes necessary.
Experience enhancement: hardware or software issues?
Screen folding enthusiasts are not alone.
In the soft yu conference site, CEO liu zihong's every parameter release can cause field audience a cheer.
Here's the view of the tech faithful: "from these announcements, we can't be sure how significant bending is. But I think it's the right direction, and innovation has some meaning."
On the day the huawei Mate X was released, some said on social media that they would definitely buy it after it goes on sale, as the screen is large and portable enough to watch text and movies in the future.
In fact, it's all the more reason for phone makers to believe that folding screens have the potential to disrupt the market, both of which could quickly cannibalize the tablet market.
But squeezing the tablet market won't be easy.
Real experience enhancement not only relies on the upgrading and iteration of hardware technology, but also puts forward requirements for software.
"Replacing tablets requires the compatibility of mobile systems and applications. At this point, the Android mobile camp has a natural weakness in China. Google services and Chrome OS cannot be used in China normally.
However, lees speculates that Google may hasten the death of Android and Chrome OS with the official launch of the fold-screen phone, and that the new Fuchsia system will be able to run and switch between PCS, tablets and phones.
Android's weakness is apple's strength.
Both the iPhone and iPad use iOS, and if the iPhone launches a fold-screen phone that folds up to look like an iPhone, and opens up to look like an iPad, it will be natural for the fold-screen version of the iPhone to become a lightweight productivity tool.
Perhaps that's why apple has updated its patent on flexible screen technology.
As flexible screen technology matures, it may be hard to predict how long it will take for foldable phones to catch on.
But in the major mobile phone manufacturers under the heavy financial support, folding screen mobile phone will certainly blow on the wind for a while.
