Looking back on the big events that happened in the scientific and technological field in the past week, Rouyu Technology released FlexPai, the world’s first folding tablet, and then Samsung publicly demonstrated its Infinity Flex Display technology folding mobile phone. For a time, "folding screen" has become a hot word in the science and technology circle. This article will give you a quick explanation: What kind of black technology is folding screen?
It is actually very difficult to explain the technical details of the folding screen very simply, because at present, the technologies and products of various companies have not officially landed, and more technical details about the folding screen still belong to the trade secrets of various companies. For ease of understanding, you can think of the folding screen as a flexible screen Plus. Because literally, Samsung’s "Infinity Flex Display" is "Infinite Flexible Display", which can be bent 360 degrees infinitely, thus realizing folding.
Technical principle of Samsung flexible screen
However, we can roughly understand the principle of folding screen. According to the principle of flexible screen technology announced by Samsung, all the screens we use have a substrate, and pixels are distributed on this substrate to form a display screen. Traditional screens are hard, while flexible screens and folding screens "soften" the substrate through new materials, and can even be folded. Of course, the research and development direction of each family is not the same. It is reported that Apple’s folding screen patent is realized through micro hinges.
The appearance of folding screen makes people shine and stimulates people’s imagination. However, for products with extremely narrow internal space, such as mobile phones and tablets, screen folding can be described as "pulling one hair and moving the whole body", and not only the screen can be folded, everything will be fine. Space, battery, sealing, durability, even UI interface and software adaptation, almost everything you can think of will face great challenges, so the folding screen mobile phone is still in the conceptual stage.
First of all, the most direct problem is the volume. The picture above shows the FlexPai folding tablet released by China enterprise Rouyu Technology. It is reported that the thickness after folding has reached 15mm, which means that portability is worrying. According to the official information released by Rouyu, the second generation product of Zen Wing flexible screen independently developed by FlexPai has been folded for 200,000 times. This number seems large, but if you fold it 300 times a day, you will stop eating in less than two years … …
Since the official dare to officially release it, I believe it has certain commercial value, but whether the actual experience effect is good or not is another topic. As shown in the above figure, we can see that there is a whitening "crease" at the folding place, and the flatness will greatly affect the impression. It seems that the folding screen still has a long way to go. However, Rouyu Technology beat Samsung to release a folding screen product, which is indeed a milestone. This is the first product released in the world with a folding screen.
Even if we cross the physical barriers at the hardware level, the software level has to go through a lot of challenges. As we all know, Android is an extremely open platform, so adaptation and compatibility have become a headache for developers. In the era of phablet, adaptation and compatibility were not perfect, not to mention the future "deformed" mobile phone. Even if these problems are solved, there are still things that users’ habits need to change and can be seen directly. Why fold them?
Huawei folding screen concept mobile phone needs revolutionary notebook?
The folding screen is actually far from simple as we think, but it is not complicated. Straight mobile phones have been used for so many years, not to mention users. Even mobile phone manufacturers have begun to feel "aesthetic fatigue", so they try their best to make the screen "baiwan". The appearance of folding screen has indeed opened up our phenomenon space, and Huawei’s folding screen concept machine has painted a beautiful vision for us. Perhaps with the support of folding screen technology, mobile phones, tablets and computers will be unified in the world.
In the past, the popularity of flip phones was rooted in the era when voice communication was the mainstay. It was reasonable to answer the phone by flip, and it felt quite cool. The emergence of folding screen smart terminals not only challenged the limits of physics and technology, but also challenged the user’s usage habits. Simply folding for the sake of folding, it is obviously difficult for users to pay the bill by creating "freshness", and manufacturers need to explore reasonable application logic.
Before solving how to realize folding screen, we should first understand why we need folding screen!
