I don't know how everyone spent the New Year's Day holiday in 2022 and whether they had a good rest? For us Sanyi Life, basically from the end of November and December last year to the present, in fact, we have maintained a rather tense work rhythm.
The reason is that there is no reason for it, and everyone who has seen our relevant content will know that the new machines released in the recent period are undoubtedly quite amazing in terms of quantity and quality. After our simple statistics, we found that in just one month and a few days from December 1, 2021 to the present, only the high-end and even flagship mobile phones that have held the conference have reached 15.
However, looking at these new machines, we also found a very interesting phenomenon, that is, the number and proportion of curved screen models have been greatly reduced. In fact, of the 15 models we just mentioned, only 3 use curved screen design. However, in the same period of time a year ago, we ushered in the release of 10 new models, 8 of which are equipped with curved screens.
The curved screen is not "fragrant"? But do you know how it fires?
Obviously, from the perspective of the proportion of related products, we can at least say that the enthusiasm of mobile phone manufacturers for "curved screens" today has indeed decreased significantly compared with a year ago. So why is this happening? To understand this, you need to go back in history to see how curved screens became popular in the smartphone industry.
In fact, curved screens have been in the mobile phone industry for many years. As early as 2013, Samsung and LG launched their first curved screen models. After this, with the debut of Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, vivo XPlay6, Huawei Mate 9 Pro and other models, the curved screen has gradually become the "label" of some top flagships from the initial experimental nature.
But the time when curved screens really begin to appear in the mobile phone industry should be from the end of 2019 to the beginning of 2020. Looking back at the models released during this period, it is not difficult to find that some manufacturers have used the curved screen for the first time on non-flagship positioning models (such as OPPO Reno3 Pro), while other manufacturers have launched a full range of curved screen product lines (such as Xiaomi 10 series, OPPO Find X2 series) for the first time, breaking the previous convention that only "super large cup" is a curved screen.
Why at this time node, curved screens have become hot spots in the industry? From the press conference materials of several representative models at that time, it is not difficult to find the answer to the question.
First of all, the first major benefit of the curved screen to the smartphone is that it can increase the thickness and volume of the central part of the fuselage in disguise while maintaining the extremely narrow side bezel design and ensuring a good grip. In this way, manufacturers can stuff the phone with a larger battery and a thicker outsole camera without making the fuselage look like a "brick" from the side. As Lei Jun said at the launch of the Xiaomi CC9 Pro, "If there is no curved screen, we simply do not dare to build this machine."
Secondly, combined with the industry background at that time, the end of 2019 to the beginning of 2020 is the key period for the second batch of 5G mobile phones to start selling. After experiencing the first round of "trials" in the autumn of 2019, mobile phone manufacturers generally found that high-quality video was the most practical representative application scenario for 5G devices at that time.
Looking at the new product launches of major brands at that time, "high color gamut", "2K screen", "high refresh rate", "high color accuracy" these concepts that rarely appeared in the past were also paid more and more attention. At the same time, more and more models have also begun to actively announce screen panel models and screen suppliers at the press conference, which may have been rarely concerned by consumers in the past.
"Coincidentally", at that point in time, the highest quality screen that most mobile phone manufacturers can buy is the E3 AMOLED from Samsung. The E3 AMOLED itself is a very "suitable" flexible panel for curved shapes. Therefore, on the one hand, out of the needs of mobile phone structure design, on the other hand, in order to allow consumers to see at a glance the outstanding selling point of "the screen of the new machine is better", the curved screen is like a mushroom, and it has almost become the standard in the high-end market at that time.
Curved screens are not perfect, and inherent defects are difficult for some consumers to accept
So what is the reason that the curved screen has changed from a popular to a delicate situation today in just two years or so?
On this issue, we three easy life also asked some consumers' views. According to their feedback, the main "slot points" of curved screens can be basically summarized into the following items, including but not limited to:
1. The edge of the screen in the game is prone to misoperation;
2. There is a color cast phenomenon on the edge of the curved screen, and the screen appearance is not perfect;
3. The curved screen is not easy to apply film;
4. Worry about the high cost of curved screens, and high maintenance costs once the screen is damaged.
Among them, the feedback surface screen has the highest proportion of users who are prone to misoperation in the game, reaching 62.5%. The second is the proportion of users who hate the color cast phenomenon at the edge of the curved screen, which is 12%.
The operation area is completely concentrated at the bottom of the screen, which is indeed a "nightmare" for curved screen phones.
In order to verify how serious the mistouch phenomenon of curved screens in the game is, we sanyi life also tried some games that "optimized" the curved screen quite badly based on these suggestions. It was found that for some games that often need to swipe up and drag from the bottom of the screen, the false touch rate of the curved screen is definitely not low.
Some friends may say that now mobile phones do not have anti-false touch mode? Although this sentence is not wrong, but according to our survey results, on the one hand, the "anti-false touch" function of the existing curved screen mobile phone basically needs to be manually dragged out of the relevant setting menu from the side of the screen in the game scene, and then it can be opened, which requires two or even three steps of operation, which obviously cannot be said to be very convenient in the use experience; on the other hand, after opening the "anti-false touch", when the player needs to quit the game immediately for some reasons, "anti-false touch" will often become a head-scratch obstacle. It can even feel like a mess at times.
In addition to accidental touch, we have noticed that some users also use "screen edge color cast" as the primary reason for not choosing curved screen devices. In response to this problem, we have also communicated with a number of industry insiders.
According to the relevant people in the black shark, the color cast problem at the edge of the curved screen is indeed difficult to avoid, and one of the reasons for the color cast is that the curvature consistency of the curvature of the curved part of the screen is difficult to control. This means that the edge of the curved screen may not only be color cast, but also the color itself in different parts of the upper and lower parts may even be "biased" inconsistently, which makes it very difficult for mobile phone manufacturers to compensate through the late software.
At the same time, a number of upstream manufacturers, including TCL Huaxing and BOE, also said in their communication with our Sanyi Life that the color cast and brightness attenuation problems on the edges of the curved screen are destined to be difficult to completely eliminate. This is because when the human eye observes the screen, the edge of the curved screen is essentially equivalent to "squinting" due to the physical shape factor, and this large viewing angle is destined to cause a color cast.
In this regard, a technical document provided by Dr. Zhu Xiujian, General Manager of Visionox Product Engineering Center, has a more detailed interpretation. According to this data, Vianox can achieve a 60° viewing angle of 5.5 on the curved screen of their 2021 model by adjusting the weak microcavitral resonance structure≤ and assisting in the simulation of the combination conditions after calibrating the model.
But as we all know, when many of the top screens in the mobile phone industry are viewed from a frontal 90° perspective, the color cast JNCD can actually generally reach the level of <0.4. In contrast, even for the new curved screen that has undergone a lot of technical improvements, the color cast in the edge part is still objective from the indicator point of view.
The further development of "soft screen direct use" may reduce the advantages of curved screens
Interestingly, a large percentage (about 33%) of our user surveys chose to support curved screens. Their reason is that although the curved screen has various inconveniences in use, but looking at the current straight-screen models in the industry, very few have both high resolution, high frame rate, top color and other technical characteristics, so in order to pursue the screen look and feel, they finally chose the curved screen equipment.
In the "soft screen direct use" equipment, the Black Shark 3 Pro is already top-notch, but there is still a gap in the display parameters between it and the curved devices of the same period
I have to say that this view gives us a lot of inspiration. Because looking back at the previous models, it will be found that although as early as the second half of 2020, there have been models like iQOO 5 that "straighten" the flexible display panel and use it with a straight-screen appearance. However, looking at these "flexible screen direct use" models, the vast majority of them are still inferior to the curved screen models of the same period in terms of screen resolution, peak brightness, support for top HDR standards and other indicators.
The iQOO Neo5 series, which uses a 120Hz direct screen, has achieved quite excellent market results and word of mouth last year
Why is that? It is not difficult to find that most of the "soft screen direct use" models are obviously biased towards game positioning and mainly target young consumer groups. For example, the iQOO 5 mentioned above, and later iQOO7, iQOO9, and the more typical Redmi K40 game enhancement and so on. As mentioned by people related to the Black Shark, the "straight screen" can not only effectively avoid the occurrence of false touch, but also perform better in the stroke of the game when controlling, so it has naturally become the first choice for the game to the model.
However, this does not mean that "soft screen direct use" is destined to be limited to game models. In fact, according to the information obtained in our communication with Zhang Zhuo, director of the Wuhan Technology Development Department of TCL Huaxing, the cost of making a 3D curved screen of the same flexible panel is destined to be much higher than that of a "straight screen", which is because when the flexible screen is bonded with the 3D curved glass, it is easy to break the metal line inside the screen due to bending stress, which makes the yield and cost of "flexible screen curved use" and "soft screen direct use" have a significant difference.
The 88 ° quad screen adopted by xiaomi 11 series is an advanced technology jointly developed by xiaomi and Huaxing optoelectronics, but the cost is naturally not low
Not only that, but relevant people from BOE also expressed similar views. According to him, the cost difference between the curved screen and the straight screen is reflected in the difficulty of the fitting process on the one hand, on the other hand, the 3D cover glass itself used in the curved screen mobile phone is also higher than the cost of the straight screen glass, even if the screen panel below is actually the same, this cost difference is objective.
The newly released Realme GT2 Pro takes the lead in using the top flexible direct screen of 2K+120Hz
Perhaps because of this, at the end of 2021, there will be breaking news that not only will the proportion of "straight screen" designs in the new machines in 2022 increase significantly, but also the "straight screen + high resolution" design will return to the mainstream market after many years.
I have to say that this is a rather unexpected, but reasonable thing. After all, consumers who need to design a straight screen are not only "gamers", and compared with 2020 and 2021, many of the technical problems faced by mobile phone manufacturers have now been solved, such as the new flagship image CMOS can be made thinner and less space-taking, and the energy density of high-power fast-charging batteries has also been improved.
In other words, from the perspective of manufacturers, the "curved screen" is not as urgent as it used to be in terms of product structure design and marketing publicity. Coupled with the advantages of "soft screen direct use" can also bring cost and experience, in the increasingly competitive environment of market competition, mobile phone manufacturers use high-quality direct screens "from good to flow", which has become a very natural choice.