Samsung Galaxy Fold's failure: where is the future of foldable screens?

Samsung finally got out of the shadow after the "battery door" incident in 2016, and it took three years to get out of the shadow. Unexpectedly, another epoch-making folding screen mobile phone Galaxy Fold had black screen, flickering screen, bulge and other problems during the media evaluation stage, which made Samsung hastily announce the postponement of the press conference before the press conference, and focus on researching product problems. Although this "screen door" incident did not cause any harm to people, for a manufacturer like Samsung, such a problem also occurred, which makes people think that a single leaf can tell the autumn, and wonder if the folding screen is really ready?

      In fact, Lenovo and Royole exhibited foldable screen mobile phones as early as two years ago, but they did not set off a wave of foldable screen mobile phones at that time. At the MWC 2019 in February this year, the foldable screen mobile phones exhibited by Samsung and Huawei attracted much attention. Manufacturers in the industry chain took the opportunity to promote that foldable screen mobile phones are ready to go, so is the foldable screen a mature technology? Samsung Galaxy Fold tells you a disappointing fact: No.

      This "screen door" incident mainly occurred on the screen, so the folding screen is to blame. Samsung Galaxy Fold is equipped with its own flexible AMOLED screen, which adopts an inward folding method. The foldable mobile phone screen made of this panel has many challenges.

      First of all, in terms of material properties, OLED has not yet found the most perfect balance between hardness, ductility and durability. Relevant technicians have said that the upper layer of the OLED display screen has a touch module, polarizer and glass cover. The development of foldable phones from rigid screens to foldable forms has increased many technical requirements. The polarizer must be thinner and thinner, the touch module must be foldable, and the cover glass must take into account both surface hardness and bendability. The folding screen includes more than a dozen layers of materials, including the glass cover, which are bonded together by various glues, and the glue will easily undergo permanent deformation after bending.

      There was also an interesting episode in the Galaxy Fold test machine failure incident, that is, some users tore off the surface film without hesitation after getting the phone, resulting in the phone having black screen, flickering screen and other phenomena in a short time. Relevant analysts explained that this film is mainly composed of CPI, which is the "glass cover" of the flexible screen. It is attached to the OLED screen to prevent scratches, isolate water vapor and dirt, etc. If it is forcibly torn off, it will destroy the OLED encapsulation layer and cause damage to the OLED device.

      Industry experts generally believe that the various problems with Samsung's foldable screen phones are not only due to the foldable screen itself, but are also related to the composite application of other hardware such as the main control panel and hinges. Since Samsung's foldable screen phones use a dual-battery and dual-motherboard design, there may be delays in communication between the two sides. At the same time, the system has not made better optimizations for dual-screen switching. In addition, flexible battery technology is not mature, and whether it can meet the power consumption requirements of large and multiple screens after folding and the growing computing power requirements is still a question with unknown answers.

      Samsung's previous investigation report stated that the top and bottom of the hinge of the folding screen were impacted by external forces, which may be the main reason for the current screen problems. Previously, some early users also reported that the phone screen had bulges, which seemed to further prove that the hinge part has become an important suspect component besides the folding screen.

      Although it is difficult to convince consumers with the existing folding screen technology, the change of mobile phone form in the future is inevitable. At present, the market for candy-bar mobile phones equipped with rigid screens has been close to saturation, and various technologies have reached their peak. Nowadays, people use mobile phones for much longer than they use PCs. The significance of mobile phones to human beings has become increasingly important, and some functions have even been extended to the PC field. In addition, the official commercial use of 5G will mean that every mobile terminal will enjoy unlimited computing power, and the mobile phone market will be sustained by large screens.

      As a pioneer of foldable screens, Samsung Galaxy Fold has made an indelible contribution to the development of the mobile phone market, whether it succeeds or fails. Although the price of foldable screen phones is still relatively high, it is no longer "admirable from a distance but not playable" as the public predicted at the beginning. This reminds me of the under-screen fingerprint technology, which has gone from being hard to find to being almost standard equipment in a short period of time. Therefore, once the foldable screen technology matures, it will not be far away from us, and there is no need to worry about the price.