The three-fold price of 20,000 is really the ＂optimal solution＂ of the current mobile phone？

Even if you are not a digital enthusiast, you may have been screened by various contents of Huawei Mate XT on social media; Whether it is the price in 1999 or the effect of seamless switching between a 10-inch large screen and a small screen, it is an eye-catching selling point.

Three folds landed on mass-produced consumer-grade smartphones for the first time, and the brand effect of Huawei was superimposed, which made this mobile phone quickly explode on social networks, and there were also various stalks about the shape of mobile phones.

Netizens have begun to make fun of Huawei Mate XT | Image source: Network

In any case, the arrival of the three folds still brings a ray of fresh air to the form of smart phones that have been silent for several years, and is expected to become the most important change in the form of smart phones in 2024.

The most direct manifestation of this expectation is the sales volume: before the conference was officially held, more than 2 million people had booked Mate XT. Even according to the conversion rate of one tenth, the booking volume of 200,000 is quite scary for the first sale of the flagship mobile phone with folding screen.

Huawei Mate XT Reservation | Image Source: JD.COM

Is triple folding the next evolutionary direction of smart phones?

First, from folding to refolding

Tri-fold itself is actually not the cutting-edge folding screen technology: as early as around 2018, when the folding screen technology just came out, similar concepts appeared. At the same time that the traditional folding screen mobile phone experience began to mature, a large number of new patents/concept machines about tri-fold appeared every year.

Not only mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei and Voice, but also upstream suppliers of flexible display such as Samsung and TCL are stepping up their efforts to explore the feasibility of mass production and commercialization of triple-folding hardware. Almost every year, we can see the latest progress of triple-folding technology in large-scale consumer electronics exhibitions such as CES.

Every year, these screen manufacturers release several folding screen concept machines, which are named Flex S, Flex G and other codes according to different forms, not only to keep ahead in the research and development field of folding screen mobile phones, but also to sample for potential customers and show the maturity of current technology.

In fact, in addition to the Z-shaped triple-folding form we have seen now, Samsung Display has previously demonstrated the triple-folding concept machine with two screens folded inward, showing that even in the relatively small definition of triple-folding, there are still different forms.

Flex G concept machine demonstrated by Samsung in 2023.

If you pay attention to the folding screen field for a long time, you may notice that the application speed of three-fold technology is obviously several years faster than that of double-fold mobile phones from the appearance of concepts to the appearance of concept machines and the landing of final mass production machines.

This is because of several difficulties that have plagued the folding screen mobile phone-Problems such as screen, hinge, battery design, etc., with the weight, photography and other experiences gradually catching up with the traditional direct-screen mobile phone, have also been quickly overcome.

For example, the hinge of the folding screen mobile phone used to be the weakest link that easily led to the failure of the mobile phone in the early stage of the sale of the folding screen mobile phone. The early Samsung Galaxy Z series had to leave a gap between the hinges that looked very elegant to avoid dust from causing serious damage to the screen.

Samsung’s first generation Galaxy Fold and Galaxy Fold 2

However, in 2023, various mobile phone manufacturers introduced more mature water-drop hinge technology like "double-rotating water-drop hinge" and "keel hinge", and the cost of screen module was also rapidly reduced. At the same time, UTG glass with better wear resistance was introduced to replace the original CPI film screen, which became the standard solution for the flagship mobile phone with folding screen.

At the same time of rapid hardware iteration, the adaptation of software is also rapidly improving. Not only is the bottom of Android system improving the design specification of App for guiding developers to face folding screen devices, but also various mobile phone manufacturers are introducing more new functions and software adaptation every year, which strengthens the big screen as a selling point of folding screen.

Since the first mass-produced folding screen mobile phone came out in 2018, the rapid iteration of hardware and software not only made the folding screen mobile phone more mature, but also became ready-to-use assets in the era of triple folding.

For users and mobile phone brands, there is only one key problem left-Why choose triple folding?

Second, the impact of high-end new flagship

For mobile phone brands, folding screen mobile phones are not only an important product line that undertakes the task of impacting high-end, but also face the dilemma of too small market share for a long time.

Today’s folding screen mobile phone is no longer a niche early adopter product at the beginning, but an absolute flagship mobile phone product line of every first-line mobile phone manufacturer except Apple. However, many users are still discouraged by the high price of folding screen mobile phones: according to the survey data of Ai Media Consulting, 59.5% of the interviewed users do not buy folding screen mobile phones because of their high price.

Therefore, in the past few years, the starting price of folding screen mobile phones has been lowered by mobile phone manufacturers: now there is even a small discount with an official price of 2999 yuan.(Nubian Flip)Although it is only a case at present, it is enough to show the speed of the rapid popularization of folding screen technology in the past two years.

The rapidly decreasing selling price has also given more and more users the reason to try folding screen mobile phones: the total shipments of the global folding screen mobile phone market have expanded rapidly in the past four years: IDC, a research organization, predicts that by 2025, the global shipments of foldable mobile phones will reach 27.6 million units.

Although it is good for users that the overall selling price of folding screen mobile phones drops rapidly-they can taste the big screen experience at a lower price, for mobile phone manufacturers, the added value of folding screen mobile phones, which were originally positioned as "ultra-high-end flagship", has also depreciated to some extent with the lower and lower prices.

The reason why the new form of products such as triple folding is important for smartphone manufacturers also implies the mission of re-establishing the ultra-high-end flagship product line through the change of form at the stage of rapid price reduction and practical use of folding screen mobile phones. From the current pre-sale of Mate XT, it can be seen that the importance of added value in the sales of high-end flagship mobile phones is self-evident.

Third, practicality is the most important.

In the final analysis, even if brand marketing is an important factor behind the efforts of mobile phone manufacturers, because the three-fold mobile phone will eventually go through a process of demagnetization similar to that of today’s folding screen, solid software functions are very important for whether the three-fold mobile phone can finally gain user recognition in sales volume and finally gain a foothold.

In addition to the need to solve the hard problems such as thickness and weight in hardware, the most important hidden task of the three-fold mobile phone in the past was to explore the core value of its existence: in other words, it is a problem-How to persuade users to pay for three-fold mobile phones with real money??

Whether it’s a sound transmission or a manufacturer that has shown the triple-folding concept machine before, the existing concepts conveyed by the triple-folding currently involve a lot of demonstration contents that simulate PC usage scenarios, and use the triple-folding mobile phone by using a computer.

The three-fold mobile phone is obviously more like a laptop.

In addition to exploring the future for the flagship mobile phone, this may also hint at the evolution direction of PC to some extent. The working conditions faced by PC are more complicated than those of smart phones, but this is what PC manufacturers need to consider.

Judging from the three-fold concept machine that the author experienced during CES in the past, unlike the folding screen mobile phone that only needs a single folding, in the process of unfolding and folding,It is almost inevitable that users will exert their strength directly on the flexible screen of the folding screen mobile phone.. The durability of the screen is still one of the biggest problems that plague the folding screen mobile phone, so it will be a test that the three-fold mobile phone will face.

The elasticity during deployment, the support during hovering and the fixation after deployment are all technical difficulties that have long plagued the practicality of the triple-folding. Only by gradually solving these problems can we avoid the pit that the triple-folding mobile phone stepped on in the early stage of mass production due to low reliability and lack of practical functions.

Fourth, the next change in the form of mobile phones

Another detail that is easily overlooked is that folding screens often bear the exploration attributes of many smart phone cutting-edge technologies at the same time of high price: from flexible batteries to liquid lenses, the earliest carriers are folding screen concept machines.

Thanks to the richer early adopter properties of the three-fold screen mobile phone, it is destined to become the first application carrier of various new smart phone technologies for a long time after its advent. These technologies can not only supply the development of folding screens, but also promote the progress of smart phone technology as a whole.

In addition to the three folds of the current fire, since the maturity of flexible screen technology, different mobile phone manufacturers also have multiple forms of smart phone concept machines, not only in the form of Xiaomi MIX Alpha, but also OPPO has launched many generations of scroll screen concept machines, and now the scroll screen technology has reached a quite mature stage.

These explorations on the form of the next generation of smart phones will not come to an end with the first arrival of the three folds, but will become a debate on the technical route, showing a kind of "Renaissance" in which smart phones have not yet appeared in the functional machine era and various forms have come out.

One thing is certain:Straight smart phones, which are still popular at present, and even today’s double folding screen mobile phones will not always be the mainstream form of smart phones.

There is more than one "optimal solution" to the form of smart phone.