As the end of the year approaches, the domestic mobile phone market has ushered in a wave of new phone releases. At the same time, the intensity of competition between brands has further escalated, and the smell of gunpowder can be clearly felt everywhere. Executives, product managers, and marketers of various manufacturers have attacked each other on social media. The focus of debate often focuses on A certain configuration or function of the new product.

On December 12, Xiaomi’s official account @小米公司 spokesperson posted a post on Weibo criticizing Yu Chengdong, instantly igniting discussion and becoming a favorite in the mobile phone industry and digital circles. A topic that people are talking about. Xiaomi officials accused Yu Chengdong of making untrue remarks about the "keel pivot" technology and asked him to "stop discrediting his peers and misleading the public." It seems that the war of words between mobile phone brands has spread to the field of folding screens.

(Source: Weibo)

Xiaomi’s keel shaft ,what exactly is it?

First of all, let’s sort out the ins and outs of this dispute. Recently, the three-day 2023 Huawei Pollen Annual Conference was held in Songshan Lake. As Huawei’s terminal BG and responsible for the mobile phone business, Yu Chengdong said when talking about folding screen technology:

Everyone copied it directly and made it up into their own names. You also know that ours is a double-rotating water drop hinge, which directly turns into a keel. That keel does not exist in the world.

Yu Chengdong did not name anyone, but there are brands with related folding screen technologies that include the name "keel", and only Xiaomi. No wonder Xiaomi officials are so angry. The ground issued a bombardment. In its rebuttal blog post, Xiaomi focused on the filing date of its own keel-related patents to avoid accusations of plagiarism. However, we will not comment on the right and wrong of the brands in the past two years, and we will focus on the keel shaft technology.

In August 2023, Xiaomi MIX Fold 3 was officially released. As Xiaomi’s latest generation folding screen flagship, a major selling point of this phone is its self-developed keel hinge. This product has been reviewed by this site before. Our feeling at the time was that Xiaomi’s keel hinges indeed have more advantages than ordinary folding screen hinges, with better weight and smoothness.

(Photo source: Photographed by this site)

Folding screen equipment , there are two basic states of opening and closing. The screen needs a rotating shaft as a support during the process of folding out. The design of the hinge of the folding screen must be considered from many aspects, including the weight and sturdiness of the material, the service life of the hinge, the angle at which the folding screen can hover, etc.

According to Xiaomi’s official statement, the keel shaft is the first to use a three-level connecting rod shaft with 14 movable joints, which can greatly improve the anti-fall performance. It can be seen from the demo pictures provided by Xiaomi's official website that the 3-level connecting rod component can indeed be seen in the shaft part of Xiaomi MIX Fold 3. Among the folding screen products currently on the market, except for MIX Fold 3, they are basically two-stage connecting rod shafts.

(Photo source: Xiaomi official)

Xiaomi said, 3 The first-stage connecting rod shaft has three major advantages: high space utilization, good hovering stability and good surface flatness. The advantages of the second-stage connecting rod shaft are simpler structure and lower production cost.

(Source: Weibo)

Xiaomi’s statement It seems that the core advantage of the keel shaft on MIX Fold 3 is the use of 3-level connecting rod components, which brings higher reliability and better user experience. Moreover, Xiaomi has achieved the first self-developed technology in the folding screen hinge, which is enough to become the core selling point of Xiaomi MIX Fold. Therefore, after being accused of plagiarism, Xiaomi needs to issue a rebuttal as soon as possible.

Behind the war of words is the struggle for folding screen technology

Compared with traditional straight-screen mobile phones, folding screen The core product advantage is the ultra-large screen that can break through conventional limitations. A larger display area means that the mobile phone can carry more content and more complex tasks. Whether it is improving the audio-visual entertainment experience or expanding office and productivity scenarios, folding screens can play their due role.

The key to folding screen products lies in folding technology. For users, while enjoying the advantages of a large screen, they will naturally also care about the reliability and experience of the folding screen, that is, how many times can the folding screen be folded, and can it last until the next replacement? Is the foldable screen resistant to falls and bumps? Will it be broken by a single touch? Can the weight of the folding screen be lighter, preferably the same as that of an ordinary mobile phone?

Folding technology probably needs to solve two basic problems. On the one hand, mobile phone manufacturers need to obtain screens that meet multiple indicators such as display effect, flexibility, and lifespan. With the rapid development of OLED panel technology, the supply chain will assist mobile phone manufacturers in solving this problem. On the other hand, mobile phone manufacturers have to work hard on shaft technology, including reducing the weight of the shaft, improving the accuracy of the shaft, and increasing the reliability of the shaft.

To this end, mobile phone manufacturers need to continuously invest in research and development in the laboratory to continuously optimize the performance of the rotating shaft from multiple levels such as materials and mechanical structures. As every idea and every improvement comes out of the laboratory and into products, mobile phone manufacturers are racing against time to apply for patents and use various means to promote competition.

As for the hinge, for its latest folding screen product, Xiaomi has provided a keel hinge solution, Huawei has launched a double-rotating water drop hinge, and Samsung calls its own technology As an "ultra-closed precision hinge", OPPO claims to use zirconium alloy liquid metal. All major brands are racking their brains to make the shafts more technical so that users can see some differentiated value.

(Photo source: Samsung)

Major mobile phone manufacturers are The war of words over folding screen technology can be seen as a concentrated expression of the anxiety of various players as they compete for the still shrinking stock market after competition in the mobile phone industry intensifies.

Recently, CINNO Research announced Q3 domestic folding screen sales data. The overall market shipments were 1.98 million units, a year-on-year increase of 175% and a month-on-month increase of 70%. In this report, the top seven sales brands are Huawei, Honor, vivo, Samsung, OPPO, Xiaomi and Motorola. Data released by IDC shows that domestic mobile phone shipments in Q3 were 67.05 million units.

(Photo source: CINNO)

Comparing the two , it can be found that folding screen shipments account for approximately 3.0%, and folding screen mobile phones are still relatively niche products. But from a longer-term perspective, the product form of folding screens breaks through the screen size limitations of traditional mobile phones. It is only a matter of time before large-scale popularization in the future. The key lies in gradually optimizing and improving folding technology.

# Moreover, folding screen shipments are growing very rapidly, and it is a new category that no leading manufacturer will give up easily. In addition, for leading brands such as Xiaomi and Huawei, folding screens are also the main carrier of their cutting-edge technological achievements, helping them to gain a foothold in the ultra-high-end market.

Of course, the competition between mobile phone brands in folding screen technology will ultimately lead to the popularization and popularization of folding screen products.

Written at the end

After Yu Chengdong suggested that the keel shaft was plagiarized and Xiaomi issued a rebuttal, public opinion on the Internet quickly took sides. Divided into two camps, fans on both sides are inevitably caught up in this controversy. Frankly speaking, when it comes to patent disputes between major manufacturers, Xiaolei, as an outsider, does not dare to make a final judgment on what is right and what is wrong. The only person who can truly make a fair decision is the law.

However, this dispute surrounding folding screen technology can arouse such a high degree of enthusiasm and trigger so much discussion. It may not be a good thing for the folding screen industry and ordinary users. bad thing. Through this turmoil, we can see the competition between major mobile phone manufacturers in folding screen products and their continuous attempts to seek breakthroughs in folding technology. Full and fierce competition will definitely be the driving force for the continuous development of folding screens.

As a member of the ordinary people, Xiao Lei will not be obsessed with assigning blame to both parties in this dispute or siding with a certain brand. I What I am more concerned about personally is whether these folding screen products carrying new technologies can bring an experience that meets or exceeds expectations during actual use, and whether the performance of all aspects of the product can be worthy of the still high price of folding screens.

#The controversy that happened today may continue in the near future and will continue to ferment in the future, and will continue to become a hot topic among people. But no matter which company's folding screen products, the only thing that can really test them is the market itself, and users will give the answer through their own real money.

In addition, the annual summary topic of this site is in progress. We will make a comprehensive and detailed inventory of the folding screen industry in 2023 and produce more information. A lot of content, so stay tuned.

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