Inventory of "black technology" in mobile phones: walking between creativity and gimmicks

Please forgive me for coming up with this topic suddenly. After watching Interstellar with only a limited understanding of the subject, I decided to think about the terms of physics and astronomy, such as wormholes, five dimensions, and time dilation. At the same time, another word came to my mind: black technology. Strictly speaking, the worldview and many scientific terms constructed in Interstellar belong to black technology. It is unknown whether they exist or not, or even if they do exist, there are few scientific theories to explain them.

So I introduced similar concepts into mobile phones, or rather Android phones. For such a mature group, it is difficult to innovate, but in order to differentiate, many manufacturers are desperately looking for even the slightest highlight, so the following products are available. Whether their functions are really practical or not, they do exist, and they are basically unprecedented.

Multi-sided curved screen- Samsung Note Edge

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In fact, the concept of curved screens has appeared quite a long time ago, but it was only in the past two years that they were really used on mobile phones. The world's first curved screen mobile phone was made by Samsung - Galaxy Round. At that time, the so-called curved screen was a product similar to OLED curved TVs. The screen itself had a curve, but strictly speaking, the screen was still a completed surface. Later, LG also launched a product with a similar design, G Flex. The appearance of these two products also made us realize for the first time that curved screens are actually very close to us. But when these two mobile phones came out, many people had similar questions: what can such a curved screen do? No one can explain this question clearly to this day.

This year, Samsung's real black technology appeared. Note Edge became the world's first mobile phone equipped with a multi-sided curved screen. Samsung has previously demonstrated a three-sided curved screen. It was previously reported that the yield of this screen was low and it could not be mass-produced in a short time, but no one expected that this thing could be used in mobile phones so quickly. It seems that Samsung, who is eager to innovate and revive the market, has also worked hard.

The multi-sided curved screen used on the Note Edge uses two display ICs, so even if it is integrated, it can display different content from the main screen. Samsung defines this small screen on the Edge as a functional screen, and some content such as rulers, news previews, reminders, etc. appear on this screen. However, since the bending direction of the screen is fixed, if you are left-handed, it will be a tragedy.

NFC photography- Sony Xperia Z3

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Although Sony has been thinking about turning its mobile phone products into users' personal entertainment centers by leveraging its entertainment experience after taking back all the shares of Sony Ericsson, it is clear that Sony is getting further and further away from success in the past two years. In the past two years, Sony has been obsessed with mobile phone photography and has introduced a variety of unique camera functions in addition to the 20.7-megapixel lens.

On Sony's latest flagship phone Xperia Z3, Sony has developed a very strange camera function called "Linked Photo". What does it mean? Actually, when taking a photo, you can only take half of the photo, and the other half requires you to connect to a Sony phone or Sony camera device through the NFC on the Z3 to complete the photo.

To be honest, I still don't understand what this feature is for. Sony originally wanted to use this technology to shoot objects from different angles and display them in one photo, but is it so troublesome to achieve this function? Just take two photos from different angles and use software to stitch them together. This is definitely a naked black technology.

Borderless- Sharp AQUOS CRYSTAL

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The concept of borderless has always been the pursuit of many manufacturers, but even though all manufacturers are promoting how narrow and thin the screen borders of their products are, no manufacturer dares to stand up and say that their mobile phones are borderless phones until the emergence of Sharp AQUOS CRYSTAL.

***When I first saw the AQUOS CRYSTAL, I really thought that this phone looked too awkward, with uncoordinated proportions, but after a while, you will find that the screen of this phone is quite shocking. Maybe this is the borderless phone we want. When the renderings of those borderless phones suddenly popped up and one really stood in front of us, it felt really cool.

However, the black technology still has some flaws. This phone must not be dropped. Some media have disassembled this phone. The screen of AQUOS CRYSTAL actually has a border, but Sharp has built it into the phone through special technology, so it is called borderless. However, if the outer screen is broken, the LCD panel inside will come out, and the screen must be replaced.

Optical Payment- ZTE Star One

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You must have heard of NFC payment, Bluetooth payment, WiFi payment, etc., but have you heard of optical payment? Yes, this black technology comes from ZTE. Let's talk about optical payment first. In fact, the so-called optical payment is to confirm the payment information through the flash light on the back of the mobile phone flashing at different frequencies, and complete the payment in combination with UnionPay's service.

ZTE introduced this function in Xingxing No.1, and a series of links are needed to complete the process. First, a light payment software needs to be installed in the mobile phone, of course, this is provided by a third party, and the payee also needs to have a POS machine that supports receiving optical signals. Apart from other things, this POS machine is not hard currency, so popularizing this technology is not as simple as technical maturity, which is why Xingxing No.1 has been sold for half a year, but this technology has not yet been officially commercialized.

It seems that not all black technologies are suitable for us.

Single-sided interface board- vivo X5Max

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This is the only phone among the black technology products I found that has not been officially released or exposed, but vivo has been very popular in the early stage of its release. The reason is very simple. It is rumored that X5Max may become the world's thinnest phone.

Let's talk about the black technology without bragging. What is a single-sided interface board? To put it simply, the motherboard in most mobile phones uses double-sided patches. The advantage of this is that it saves space. If a mobile phone needs to have ten chips, then double-sided patches will definitely save PCB space compared to single-sided patches. However, if double-sided patches are used, the mobile phone must leave space for heat dissipation for the chips on both sides, which will increase the thickness of the mobile phone accordingly.

According to vivo, the single-sided interface board places 90% of the chips on one side of the PCB, so that there is no need to leave space for heat dissipation on the side without chips, thereby reducing the thickness of the body. At the same time, due to the single-sided board, there is no new product in the part of the PCB that is close to the middle frame, so there is no need to open holes in the metal middle frame, making the hardness of the middle frame better than that of mobile phones with double-sided chips. However, it is still unknown whether this technology will increase the area of ​​the PCB. We can only wait for vivo to release the X5Max to reveal this black technology for us.

Ice Nest Cooling- OPPO R5

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Coincidentally, OPPO, which has been competing with vivo for a long time, also launched the world's thinnest mobile phone R5 at a press conference in early November. The body thickness of 4.85 mm makes it difficult for the PCB to dissipate heat. So OPPO gave it a high-sounding technical term - Ice Nest Cooling.

What is this? Actually, I can explain this term very simply. In previous mobile phones, most of the heat dissipation methods used were to stick graphite on the chip, but because there was air between the chip and the graphite, and the thermal conductivity of air was poor, most of the thermal conductivity of the graphite was wasted.

The so-called ice nest is to fill the space between the chip and graphite with a heat dissipation material similar to liquid metal, replacing the air with poor thermal conductivity, increasing the efficiency of heat conduction, and thus achieving heat dissipation.

In fact, black technology sounds very mysterious, but with this explanation, whether it is an ice nest or something, it feels a bit like "so that's it"?

Double-sided screen-YotaPhone2

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This phone is very popular recently, I won't tell you why, you know. The most advanced technology of YotaPhone comes from the dual screen, one side is a normal LCD screen, the other side is an ink screen for e-books. Although dual screens are not the first time for mobile phones, it is still a fresh concept to introduce ink screen into mobile phones.

Currently, YotaPhone has launched the second generation product, with improved configuration and screen size, the main screen size is 5 inches, and the ink screen is 4.7 inches. The biggest feature of the dual screen is that the content of the LCD screen can be mapped to the ink screen. Since the ink screen itself consumes very little power, you can map an e-book or shopping list to one side of the ink screen, and turn off the LCD screen to save power.

However, this black technology is not without flaws. The ink screen cannot achieve multi-touch, and due to the problem of screen refresh rate, the ink screen on one side cannot realize all the functions of Android. Therefore, this double-sided screen is more useful for mapping the content of the LCD screen rather than independent operation.

Anti-theft-NoPhone

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The most unconventional technology in this article is NoPhone. This thing is not a mobile phone at all, but a 5.5-inch plastic block... Yes, you read that right, it is a plastic block! The only thing that can be associated with a mobile phone is that NoPhone has a similar feel and weight to ordinary mobile phones. The designer of this NoPhone explained the purpose of this product as that NoPhone can solve the problem that many mobile phone users feel uncomfortable without holding their mobile phones, and at the same time, they are not afraid of losing it because it is as cheap as $12.

I didn't expect that after NoPhone was put on the crowdfunding website KickStarter, more than 1,600 people actually pre-ordered it. I have to admire the good crowdfunding environment in the United States. If you were asked to buy this thing, would you buy it?