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StarTAC

When talking about the memories of the era of feature phones for those born in the 1980s and 1990s, the flip phone is undoubtedly the product that brings back the memories the most. The StarTAC phone launched by Motorola in 1996 was not only the world's first flip phone to be widely used in business, but also one of the smallest and lightest phones on the market at that time.

Who would have thought that in the era of smartphones dominated by straight structures and touch screen operations, flip phones could become popular again in the form of "vertical folding screens" or "small folding".

Huawei nova Flip

However, the attitudes of various manufacturers towards "new species" seem to be polarized. Huawei just released Pocket 2 in the first half of the year, and just launched nova Filp. Many mobile phone manufacturers are also following suit, Honor launched Magic V Flip, Xiaomi brought MIX Flip, and Nubia released Filp. Of course, Samsung, the pioneer of small folding phones, is also making routine updates.

On the other hand, after OPPO launched Find N3 Flip, it is rumored that it has cancelled this product line. After vivo released the vertical folding screen vivo X Flip, it has no plans to update related models. I guess Xiaozhe must be thinking: the leading smartphone manufacturers take turns to serve me alone, is this a blessing or a curse?

Fashion attribute, the first selling point of vertical folding screen

After entering the era of smart phones, in order to make way for larger screens and touch operations, and with the increasing amount of hardware integrated inside mobile phones, the candy-bar structure with simple processing and design and more ample internal space has naturally become a "hot commodity" in the eyes of manufacturers.

However, the simple structure also brought some problems, such as homogeneity in design and lack of playability in the structure of the mobile phone. Looking back at the so-called "weird designs" in the era of feature phones today, many people are really addicted. In addition to the common sliding and flip structures, in the era of feature phones, you can even see "gaming phones" with buttons and screens in horizontal positions like game handhelds, and "swivel phones" that allow the keyboard and screen to rotate 180 degrees.

With the advent of the smartphone era, the space for manufacturers to use their imagination has been compressed. The so-called personal expression and distinctive design can only be distinguished by changing details such as the back cover design and the shape of the camera module. It is no wonder that many people now say that they have developed a feeling of "face blindness" when it comes to smartphones.

The design and color matching are mainly "fashionable"

The emergence of the "small folding" breaks the inherent limitations of smartphones. Especially for female users, vertical folding allows the storage volume of the phone to be further reduced without losing its practical attributes, making it easier for them to put it into small pockets or bags.

Even with a product size similar to that of cosmetics such as foundation boxes, the "small foldable" can be carried on the body and become a "fashion item" with the help of structures such as hanging chains. When the screen is unfolded, relying on the folding structure and the inner screen, it can provide the same interaction, holding and viewing experience as a traditional straight-screen mobile phone.

Breaking the "playstyle constraints" of candy-bar phones

The same is true at the functional level. Structurally, the vertical folding screen is quite similar to the traditional clamshell phone structure, which also gives them similar functional properties.

I believe that anyone who has used a flip phone will be impressed by its unique "sense of ritual" and simple control properties. You know, the core appeal of mobile phones at that time was to "make and receive calls". Closing the cover can greatly avoid the chance of damage to keyboards, screens and other parts in bumps, while opening the cover can not only wake up the phone, but also serve as a quick operation to answer calls.

When you close the cover after a call, you will become the focus of attention of people around you. The phone does not need to have a fancy design. Just the crisp sound of closing the cover can make people around you notice that you have bought a new phone. "Small Fold" also has many similar experiences. The switch of the phone no longer needs to be unlocked by buttons or fingerprints. The opening and closing process itself has a sense of ritual.

On this basis, manufacturers have also made some advanced gameplay, such as the hovering photo function, which allows the phone to be used as a stand for taking photos. At the same time, the upper and lower halves of the screen can be divided into two functional areas: control and framing. This not only increases the stability of the picture during shooting, but also makes the touch interaction and function control of the phone more efficient. The already released Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6, Honor Magic V Flip and the latest Huawei nova Filp all support this gameplay.

Rear camera selfie function

For example, when taking selfies with the rear camera, from the perspective of image function design, the sensor size and optical components of the rear camera are better than those of the front lens. However, if traditional straight-screen models want to achieve rear-lens selfies by adding a screen, it will not only compress the layout space of the image module, but also face the problems of low back screen utilization and high occupancy cost.

In this regard, vertical folding screen products can be said to have "natural advantages". The original focus is on the distinction of application scenarios for deep interaction with the inner screen and lightweight experience with the outer screen. The addition of the outer screen is largely to meet the needs of light interaction and information reading that can be used without unfolding. The structure of the inner and outer dual screens makes it possible for the "rear lens selfie" function to simultaneously utilize the display function of the outer screen and the higher imaging capability of the rear lens module.

Reflecting on the actual product level, the rear lens of Huawei nova Flip uses a 50-megapixel sensor, and the Xiaomi MIX Flip also uses a 50-megapixel sensor. The aperture size and sensor size of these lenses are much better than those of the front lenses, so they can better improve the experience of selfie scenes.

Sacrifice part of the experience in exchange for the "folding screen"

It can be said that the addition of decorative attributes and the superposition of new gameplay are important reasons why vertical folding screens are favored by mobile phone manufacturers. Moreover, these two factors also have a high degree of scene differentiation from the business office and portable large-screen attributes of horizontal folding screens.

Therefore, for mobile phone manufacturers, in order to more accurately cover the needs of segmented users such as women and fashion circles, launching vertical folding screen mobile phones and continuously iterating them is indeed a shortcut.

However, all these cannot hide the fact that the folding screen, which has been developed for 6 years, is still a "niche category". According to the sales data for the first quarter of 2024 released by Counterpoint Research at the end of May, the "small folding" market does not seem to have become a category with enhanced potential as manufacturers expected. Instead, it has shown a weak performance compared with the "large folding screen" with the same folding structure.

According to data from Counterpoint Research, while sales of foldable phones grew 48% year-on-year and the overall smartphone market grew 2%, shipments of small vertical foldable models fell 1%, while the sales growth of foldable phones came entirely from large horizontal foldable phones, whose shipments grew 91% year-on-year during the same period.

Here we have to point out the embarrassing situation that the small folding phone faced during the development process. As mentioned earlier, the small folding phone has brought new breakthroughs in design and functional gameplay, but what is the price? The price is the sacrifice made in terms of battery life, performance, imaging capabilities, etc. in order to compress the structure.

Teardown of vertical folding screen

In terms of battery life, the folding screen structure has stricter requirements on the thickness of the body, and the physical separation in the middle means that only two small-sized batteries can be used for soft connection. Therefore, the battery capacity of small folding screen phones is about 1000mAh lower than that of many straight-screen flagship phones. The split battery and compact structure are also not conducive to the deployment of high-power fast charging. The combination of these factors leads to a certain gap between the battery life of small folding screen phones and mainstream flagship phones.

The same is true for imaging capabilities. For example, the periscope structure required for the telephoto lens, the large-size sensor of about 1 inch, and the complex optical lens structure are all complex hardware that is incompatible with the vertical folding screen. Its imaging capability advantage is only reflected in the use of an 80-point rear camera instead of a 60-point front camera, but it cannot be compared with the full-focus 3-camera and 100-point rear camera experience that can be achieved by the large bottom of the straight-screen flagship phone.

The same is true for some other details in the design, such as limited heat dissipation space and limited screen material options, which create an actual gap between small folding screen phones and mainstream straight-screen flagships. Therefore, at the same price, the advantages of small folding screen phones are only concentrated in design and gameplay, and many aspects of the experience may even be sacrificed.

OPPO Find N3 Flip

It is precisely because of the obvious awkward situation of strengths and weaknesses that the small folding screen has not been able to achieve sales performance that crushes the traditional form. It is rumored that OPPO canceled the subsequent development plan of the "small folding", which may also be related to the cold market.

You know, at this time last year, OPPO also used small folding screen phones as the "firefighters" of the market. According to data previously released by Counterpoint Research, in the first half of 2023, OPPO's folding screen mobile phone market share reached 20%, and OPPO Find N2 Flip accounted for 31% of the small folding screen mobile phone market share.

In mid-February this year, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said in a report that both vivo and OPPO have stopped plans to release new up-and-down folding models that were originally expected to be released in 2024. Judging from the market trends of the two brands, this is indeed the case. It should have been the time node for product iteration, but no product information has been exposed.

Titanium Media APP analysis believes that small folding-screen mobile phones will indeed bring a certain sense of novelty to consumers in terms of their own appearance, but today people’s core demands for smartphones are still for various functional attributes, such as battery life, photography, audio-visual experience, gaming performance, etc.

However, small foldable screen phones are limited by the complexity of the process, which makes their prices remain high. With some sacrifices in the core experience, they can only impress a part of users whose demand for mobile phones is mainly concentrated in light load scenarios or used as backup phones. "Never being able to become a mainstream form" will be the fate of future development.(This article was first published on Titanium Media APP. Author: Deng Jianyun. Editor: Zhong Yi)