Author|Zhang CongbaiEdit|Zhou Zai'an.
There is a question on Zhihu Why is only Apple never launched a curved screen phone? 」
Among them, Gao Zan replied that when the iPhone X came out, everyone was studying why Apple's chin could be so short, and finally after dismantling, it was learned that Apple's inner screen was a flexible screen.
To put it simply, Apple uses a curved screen and makes a 180-degree fold at the chin position, hiding the curved side inside the chin.
Obviously, a flexible screen was used, but no double-sided curved surfaces were used to increase the product power, and everyone was full of doubts about Apple's operation at that time. To understand why Apple did this, we have to start with the ten years of curved screens in the mobile phone industry.
Looking back at the history of curved screens, we can find that Samsung's Galaxy Note Edge released in 2014 was the world's first widely recognized curved screen phone, which adopted a design that curved backwards on the right side of the screen, giving the screen a new angle of display.
The concept of "multi-sided screen" immediately detonated the discussion and conjecture in the digital circle, and the curvature made a flat screen three-dimensional, which was not only visually amazing, but also aroused the infinite expectations of users in terms of function expansion.
In 2016, curved screen technology ushered in a milestone product - Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge series, S6 Edge left and right sides have been twisted and turned, in addition to bringing more curved display functions, but also let Samsung show off its skills to the whole industry, it seems that the future development direction of smart phones has been firmly grasped by Samsung.
Since then, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have also followed up, purchased relevant technologies and components from Samsung, and used curved screens for their flagship products. At that time, many industry insiders pointed out that if Apple did not use Samsung's curved screen, then the iPhone would lose a major competitiveness.
With the passage of time, curved screen technology has not brought subversive functional innovations, nor has it opened up new user needs, and even Apple's iPhone has not launched curved screen products so far.
When more users tried and experienced this design, they said that the curved screen was not only the most expensive, but also only caused a lot of inconvenience in actual use, which made it difficult for them to understand why mobile phone manufacturers are competing to adopt this design.
And this year, we also found that the curvature of the products of Android manufacturers is gradually decreasing, the screen is getting flatter, and the price of curved screen mobile phones is decreasing.
Even Samsung, the originator of curved screens, can't hold on, and the Galaxy S24 series flagship phones released in January 2024 have all adopted a straight screen design, which many people think is a strong signal that mobile phone manufacturers are giving up on relying on curved screens to achieve high-end.
The birth of curved screen is inseparable from the development of OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology, and all kinds of electronic devices in the early days are still dominated by liquid crystal displays, which rely on backlight panels to emit light, poor color performance, and thick shapes that cannot be deformed. The OLED screen not only has a more vivid and pure color performance, but also because of its self-luminous characteristics, the structure of the OLE screen is simpler and can even be bent.
In 2007, Sony relied on leading technology in related fields, and launched an olde screen TV priced at $2499, but the selling point of thinness is not eye-catching on fixed devices such as TVs. Compared with similar LCD products,OLEDTV** is more than ten times higher,It is difficult for consumers to buy it,This also makes the commercial value of OLED not favored by the industry at that time。
Another big event happened in 2007, and that was the release of the iPhone. This allows South Korea's Samsung and LG to find the opportunity to overtake in corners and invest heavily in OLED research and development. Because in their view, the release of the iPhone means that the transformation of the smartphone industry is about to begin, and the key to the future development of mobile phones is the screen.
Thin, light, low power, bright colors, OLED these characteristics perfectly correspond to the needs of smartphone screens, since then Samsung-led Korean companies have become the leader in the field of mobile phone screens. Samsung also took the lead in launching a flexible OLED, which is presented in front of us in the form of a curved screen.
The curved screen can be traced back to the Samsung Galaxy Round, a phone with a concave arc similar to that of a gaming monitor. The Galaxy Round was only sold in a small number of South Korea, and Samsung successively launched products such as the Galaxy Note Edge and the Galaxy S6 Edge, which opened a decade-long "curved screen era".
Samsung is eager to apply flexible OLED technology to curved screens, not in pursuit of disruptive innovation, but because it knows that in the competition with Apple's iPhone, it must show eye-catching features. Samsung understands that only by making consumers realize the high-end value of curved screens can it attract global Android manufacturers and even Apple to become customers of its screens.
Samsung Edge and its follow-up products have achieved great success through curved screen design, clearly pointing out the direction for domestic manufacturers seeking to break through the high-end. In 2016, the Huawei Mate 9 Pro, Xiaomi Note 2, and Vivo Xplay 5 followed suit and quickly adopted curved screen technology.
However, for domestic manufacturers at that time, the only top vendors of curved screens were Samsung and LG. Samsung is in short supply of its own mobile phone screens, and the mass production of LG curved screens is only the initial stage, and the screen is very limited, which makes domestic manufacturers a bit miserable.
Although the Xiaomi Note 2 with LG screen was released in October 2016, it was only available in February of the following year. Xiaomi and Huawei's iterations Note3 and Mate10 Pro had to go back to a straight-screen design, while the Vivo XPlay series did not release a new device throughout 2017.
However, the binding effect of curved screen and high-end is significant, Huawei's curved screen mate20 series has sold more than 16 million units worldwide, and Huawei's global mobile phone market share in 2018 is close to Apple.
Although consumers continue to complain about the problem of Huawei's mixed screens, Huawei has always regarded BOE as one of the options for its screen suppliers, which has also greatly promoted the development of domestic OLED screens, and BOE (BOE) invested in Chengdu to build China's first 6th generation flexible OLED production line was put into mass production in 2017.
With the gradual growth of BOE, Huaxing Optoelectronics and other enterprises, the domestic mobile phone screen is no longer subject to the ** of Korean companies, and the design and selling point of domestic mobile phones also revolve around the "freedom of curved screen".
For Samsung, the popularity of curved screens can firmly establish its leading position in the field of screens; For manufacturers, curved screens are an effective means to achieve high-end products. However, for users, curved screens do not seem to bring obvious advantages, and their actual value has been questioned.
For users, if you want to reluctantly mention the advantages of curved screens, perhaps only when it is used as a display machine, it can provide consumers with a unique experience before purchasing, bringing a novel and attractive visual effect.
When users see a curved screen phone at first glance, they are often shocked by its extreme screen, because the display panel stretches to both sides, so that the black bars of the screen are almost invisible from the front view.
But from a technical point of view, the curved screen is not a real innovation, but more like a stopgap measure。Since the screen could not break through the higher screen-to-body ratio, the manufacturer had to twist the black edge of the display panel backwards to create a "complete to overflow" visual effect. Similarly, visually reducing the thickness of the phone by bending the body is a similar strategy.
These practices are more to seek differentiation in design and appearance, rather than substantial technological breakthroughs, and at the same time, they also bring a lot of drawbacks to the user experience.
The first problem is the filmCompared with the 20 yuan tempered glass film of a straight-screen mobile phone, the cost of the film on the curved screen may be increased by 5 to 10 times. At the same time, the installation process of the film is extremely challenging and requires a high level of skill, otherwise it can be easily scrapped.
The second issue is the cost of repairs, Vivo X70 Pro+, which was released in 2021 with Samsung's curved screen, still has a maintenance cost of up to 1880 yuan. Although the cost has decreased as various manufacturers have successively adopted domestic screens, the probability of broken curved screens will generally increase a lot due to the lack of bezel protection.
The third problem is the green color of the bezel and the problem of false touchesDue to the problem of angle and reflection, the curved bezel often has a conspicuous green edge in the frontal viewing angle, and for most users, the mistouch caused by the palm and the side when holding the curved screen is also inevitable, which greatly affects the user experience.
Although users use the "ultimate pursuit" of curved flagship mobile phones, in order to avoid mistouch, wear and tear and fragmentation, they have to choose to be equipped with a heavy phone case, and paste a plastic film that is easy to white, which is undoubtedly a contradiction in product design.
With the deepening of user use, the disadvantages of curved screens have gradually emerged and have been widely recognized. Although the curved screen has brought some innovation, it has not generated substantial user stickiness and use needs.
The phenomenon of curved screens becoming the mainstream of the market is more like a differentiation strategy adopted by Samsung and other Android manufacturers to compete with Apple, and it does not really meet the actual needs of users.
In the face of widespread criticism and dissatisfaction, major mobile phone manufacturers have begun to quietly adjust their strategies, gradually reducing the curvature, from "large curved surface" to "micro curved screen", or even straight screen. At the same time, they are also actively looking for new points of differentiation to counter Apple's high-end market position.
The core of the controversy about curved screens is not how manufacturers further improve this technology, but what new innovations they need to explore to replace the selling points of curved screens. Behind this controversy, it highlights the innovation dilemma and development bottlenecks faced by the mobile phone industry in recent years.
Therefore, we can see that mobile phone manufacturers have co-branded Leica lenses, Zeiss filters, Hasselblad images, and now mobile phone press conferences, the introduction of its images often occupies more than half of the space, but can this really stuff all the imaging technology of old optical manufacturers into mobile phones?
In the development of smart phones, there have also been short-lived designs such as lifting cameras, front and rear dual screens, etc., which can't help but recall the various products in the era of feature phones, such as lipstick phones, DV phones, game phones, etc.
These designs have not helped feature phones break through their development bottlenecks, which correspond to the curved screen we are talking about today, which is about to be hurried out of the market despite being in trend for ten years.
According to the "2024 China Folding Screen Mobile Phone Consumption Insight Report" released by iResearch, the shipment volume of China's smartphone market will be about 29.3 billion units, of which 6.1 million units were shipped for folding screens, accounting for 208%。
It has been nearly five years since the first batch of folding screen mobile phones were officially launched, but their popularity is still very limited, which is mainly due to their technical difficulties, high costs, and expensive problems, which have not been solved. At present, folding screen products are still mainly the exclusive choice of high-end consumers. As for whether it can truly achieve popularization, create new use scenarios, and meet the needs of a wider range of users, it still needs the test of time and the verification of the market.
Recently, it was reported that Huawei will launch a three-fold mobile phone as soon as the second quarter of this year, and BOE also revealed in December 2023 in the official micro that it has independently developed a three-fold OLED terminal with a complete machine structure, which can realize the Z-shaped folding form, and realize the switch from mobile phone to tablet by adding a folding operation.
Zhao Jun, CEO of Huaxin Optoelectronics, also said, "In the past, there were several problems with folding mobile phones that had not been solved, one was that it was very thick and heavy, the second was the left and right screens plus the outer screen, the energy consumption of the three screens affected the battery life, and the third was that the cost was very high, more than 10,000 yuan." But at this stage, these issues have been resolved. ”
Obviously, terminal manufacturers and screen manufacturers are working together to explore the future development form of folding screens, and with the continuous breakthrough of technology, the purchase cost of folding screens is also expected to gradually decrease.
In addition to the in-depth research and application of folding screen technology, Huawei took the lead in releasing a new model called "Pangu Model 3" at the "Developer Conference 2023".0", followed by vivo's "blue heart model" and Xiaomi's large model also unveiled one after another.
According to market research firm IDC, global smartphone shipments fell by 3 percent year-on-year in 20232%, down to 11700 million units, the lowest annual shipment since 2013. Although the smartphone market is in a cold winter, and this trend seems to have just begun, at this time, domestic mobile phone manufacturers should be more likely to prevent being constrained by the first component manufacturers again.
In the past, Samsung, as a major overseas manufacturer, took the lead in mastering flexible panel technology and successfully implemented a high-end business strategy with "curved screen" as a gimmick. However, in this process, it ignores whether users really benefit, and the high cost paid by mobile phone manufacturers for the use of curved screens has to be passed on to consumers.
Nowadays, mobile phone products rely solely on hardware upgrades and parameter competition, can no longer meet the needs of consumers, and the industry needs to find a new direction of sustainable development.
But what is certain is that with the increase in investment by major manufacturers, the independent ** chain of the domestic mobile phone industry has been greatly improved, no matter what the future innovation layout is, at least it will no longer be blown by the curved screen'gust of wind' to find the north.
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