What the hell is Bruce Lee’s triple-folding screen?

Editor | Yi Fengyanzheng

Produced by | 51CTO Technology Stack (WeChat ID: blog)

Yesterday, Huawei’s tri-fold screen mobile phone Mate XT finally revealed its true appearance!

The price that was speculated by the outside world was finally settled - the starting price is 20,000 yuan.

When the price was announced, the high price of Mate XT made many netizens in front of the screen gasp, and they joked in the comment section: If you don’t work harder, you will only be able to buy Apple in the future.

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In addition to the price that is prohibitive for ordinary people, more netizens do not understand the tri-fold screen design itself.

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In addition to asking questions, a large number of popular memes ask the question more intuitively: What the hell is a tri-fold screen?

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If it weren't for the optimism about the tri-fold screen, Huawei would not have invested five years in research and development. In the previous preheating of Mate XT, Yu Chengdong said, "This is Huawei's most leading, innovative, and subversive product. It is an epoch-making product that others have thought of but cannot do. It is Huawei's pinnacle product. "After five years of persistence and investment, we have turned science fiction into reality."

To find the answers to these questions, there is a key person who cannot be avoided - Bruce Lee, the CTO of Terminal BG who was the first to draw the sketch of the tri-fold screen within Huawei.

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After the Mate XT was publicly released, he breathed a sigh of relief and said on Weibo, "This is the product I have been thinking about for many, many years and finally made."

1. Belief: Folding screens will definitely be the trend of future mobile phones

Why does the tri-fold screen exist? This is not a question for Bruce Lee.

As a product manager, he is very familiar with users' preference for large screens. When the Mate 20 series was being developed, the Mate 20 X used a 7.2-inch giant screen, which became a special feature of the series. When asked by reporters about his design concept, Li Xiaolong replied, "Some users like large-screen phones very much, especially some old Huawei users who like the size of the first generation Huawei Mate phones very much, so we developed a large-screen phone to meet user needs."

As screens continue to grow, folding screens become a natural answer. In 2019, when Huawei launched its first folding screen Huawei Mate X phone, its main screen was 7.85 inches, far exceeding the screen space that a candy bar phone could provide.

So, when foldable screen mobile phones were still in the prototype form, Bruce Lee firmly believed that folding must be the trend of the future.

This is not a conclusion drawn out of thin air, but the result of his long-term observation of the industry and consumer needs. He said, "From the era of feature phones in the past to the current era of smartphones, consumers have always wanted larger screens, but they don't want the phone to be larger. Folding screens are the only solution to this contradiction."

However, double folding never seems to be the optimal solution. Some double folding solutions will separate the main and secondary screens. What’s more fatal is that when unfolded, the final effect of the two main screens together is more like a square, rather than the comfortable 16:9.

Only by adding one more fold can the ideal effect of "putting the tablet in your pocket" be achieved.

Judging from the "five years of research and development" revealed by Yu Chengdong, Huawei has planted the seeds of the tri-fold screen since the release of its first folding screen.

In the documentary "100 Faces of Huawei" directed by Japanese director Ryo Takeuchi, Bruce Lee, then vice president of Huawei's mobile phone product line, was interviewed and talked about his tri-fold screen concept.

In a corner of Bruce Lee's office, there is a cabinet full of mobile phones, all of which are projects that he has devoted a lot of effort to in the past.

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The classic models of mobile phones were lined up on the table, and on the far right was the new folding screen product that had just been launched at the time - Huawei Mate X2, with a starting price of 17,999 yuan.

Looking from left to right, Takeuchi Ryo asked, "So the trend of future mobile phones is that they will be bigger in two or three years?" Li Xiaolong said, "Consumers expect the screens to get bigger and bigger, but they don't want the body to get bigger and bigger. In fact, you can see that the screen borders are getting smaller with each generation."

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Takeuchi Ryo simply took a magazine from his desk and placed it on the table, half-jokingly saying, "Is (the future) so big?"

Bruce Lee said, "How can you put it in your pocket when it's so big?" He looked at Takeuchi Ryo who rolled up the magazine and stuffed it into his pocket with difficulty, and asked with a smile, "Can you tolerate this?"

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Then, there happened the scene where Wenchu ​​introduced his hand-painted tri-fold screen to Takeuchi Ryo.

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With the launch of Huawei MateXT, the screen size has reached an astonishing 10 inches, achieving a truly large-screen immersive reading effect. Although it seems to be a 1/3 increase in screen size, when actually watching videos, the viewing area of ​​the tri-fold screen phone is more than twice that of the large folding screen.

2. Perfecting folding technology during five years of exploration

For Bruce Lee, the implementation of the tri-fold screen has always been only about technical issues.

When being "persuaded" by Takeuchi Ryo to put the idea of ​​the three-fold screen into practice, Bruce Lee said with a little sadness, "I want to do it, but the technology is not mature enough to support it now."

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From the birth of Huawei Mate X in 2019 to the launch of the world's first mass-produced three-fold Mate XT in 2024, Huawei has never stopped breaking through and exploring folding technology in the five years between.

In 2019, Huawei Mate X adopted an eagle-wing folding design. The outward-folding screen and the cleverly designed hinge make it unnecessary to consider the creases caused by the excessive curvature of the screen, and there is no need to add an extra screen on the back of the folding screen, thus keeping the body thin and light.

In 2020, Huawei Mate Xs once again upgraded its hardware design. The hinge of Mate Xs contains more than one hundred parts, and in-depth exploration has been conducted on the material, using zirconium-based titanium metal, which is 1.3 times harder than titanium alloy, to ensure the hardness and strength of the hinge.

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At this time, Huawei has made a breakthrough in the heat dissipation problem of mobile phones. The folding screen team has found a way to transport the heat generated by the operation of the mobile phone to the other side, thereby achieving uniform heat dissipation.

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In 2021, Huawei launched the Mate X2, a product that redefined the standard of foldable flagships. It is equipped with an inner and outer dual screen, and the main screen folds inward. The Mate X2 adopts the industry's unique double-rotation water drop hinge design, which forms a water drop-shaped screen space at the bend, achieving seamless folding and ensuring the flatness of the screen after unfolding.

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In 2023, Huawei launched the Mate X5, which adopts the industry's original four-curved folding body design. Its inner screen uses a composite laminated structure design and impact-resistant non-Newtonian fluid material, which brings the folding screen mobile phone an impact-resistant effect of "strong when encountering strong and weak when encountering weak".

As the "father" of the Mate series, from the first batch of orders for the Mate series of only 20,000 units to the current sales of tens of millions, Bruce Lee has never given up his dream of triple-folding.

It was after such a long period of technological exploration that Huawei finally brought Mate XT from science fiction to reality.

3. How difficult is it to make a triple-folding screen mobile phone?

Compared to the common two-fold screen, how difficult is it to make a three-fold screen smartphone?

Yu Chengdong said: "It is easy to make a prototype of a three-fold screen mobile phone, but it is very difficult to mass produce it. We have spent five years of research and development to bring the product to everyone."

First of all, the screen and hinge are a very difficult problem to solve. The screen must be super thin, otherwise the normal thickness of the screen will not bring the ultimate folding experience, and the thickness of the folded and stacked screen will not be acceptable to users. This is not the end, such a thin screen must also withstand the impact of stretching and squeezing during folding.

Ultra-thin screen plus foldable inside and outside, this is something that no one in the industry has achieved! But Huawei did it.

At the press conference, we saw the ingenuity behind this new phone:

Huawei Mate XT is the first to launch Huawei's Tiangong hinge system, which adopts a "Z" shape solution and a dual-track linkage of "one part folds inwards and one part folds outwards", solving the super difficult problem of achieving simultaneous bending of the ultra-thin flexible inner screen inside and outside. In the words of Yu Chengdong: the inner fold is resistant to extrusion, the outer fold is resistant to stretching, and it can easily cope with three folds.

The screen of the new phone adopts a composite laminated structure, non-Newtonian fluid + 332cm² UTG glass, the industry's largest, and the impact resistance of the whole phone is improved by 30%.

After years of experimentation, the screen and bend issues were solved.

How to solve the charging problem of this new type of mobile phone that is equivalent to three mobile phones? You can't use the same battery capacity as before, because the battery life will be stretched. You can't use three batteries either, because the weight of the phone will be prohibitive for users, and it will be too heavy even if you put it in your pocket.

This requires finding a battery material that is large in capacity and thin enough. Huawei has done it.

Huawei Mate MX uses the world's thinnest silicon-carbon negative electrode battery. The three cells are connected in parallel to achieve a large capacity of 5600Amh. The phone supports 66W wired fast charging and 50W wireless super fast charging. The phone also supports Lingxi communication and Tiantong satellite calls. "Yu Chengdong's words solved the doubts of many people in the industry.

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If Mr. Yu's explanation is not detailed enough, then Huawei Terminal CTO Li Xiaolong's explanation is more vivid.

Bruce Lee once admitted that the hinge is the most difficult part of designing a folding phone. When the phone is folded, because the screen itself is made up of many layers and has a certain thickness, the length of each layer will change. Using a magazine as an example, when the magazine is folded, each page of the magazine will be misaligned.

Therefore, when designing the hinge, very precise calculations must be performed. No matter what angle the hinge is bent to, it is necessary to ensure that the length of the most important part of the screen does not change. This is the only way to ensure that the screen is not subjected to excessive force.

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...There are certainly more technical challenges that Huawei has not yet announced.

Screens, hinges, batteries, and communications, these are the industry's most difficult technical problems, and the Huawei team has overcome them one by one.

But for a commercial mobile phone, the most difficult part is not just the technology, there are many other things to face: such as mass production and the market.

In terms of mass production, according to industry insiders, the screen and hinge of a three-folding screen mobile phone are difficult problems in mass production. The cost has always been high. It is revealed that the cost of the screen and hinge of an ordinary two-folding screen mobile phone accounts for nearly 70% of the mobile phone cost, while a three-folding screen mobile phone has an additional screen and a hinge, so the thickness and weight of the three-folding screen mobile phone, including the cost of the whole machine, will increase significantly.

At the same time, three-fold screen mobile phones are currently facing multiple challenges such as immature technology, difficulty in application adaptation, and unclear market prospects.

In addition, IDC analysts said that due to high technical requirements, low yield rate, high price, and few participants, it is difficult for tri-fold screen phones to become the main growth point of the smartphone market. The emergence of more expensive and heavier tri-fold screen phones will only target a niche group of people in the short term, and more reflect social and brand attributes.

At the press conference, Yu Chengdong did not avoid these voices. He emphasized: "The cost of tri-fold screen mobile phones is very high. In the process of mass shipments later, through the improvement of technology and the improvement of yield, we can reduce costs and bring you extraordinary exclusive services, including butler door-to-door service and store service, as well as annual screen maintenance and 4 free replacement of protective films within 2 years."

4. Can Huawei's triple-folding screen sell 10 million units?

Since the release of Mate X5 last year, Huawei's share in the foldable screen mobile phone market has grown rapidly. Coupled with the new product Pocket 2 launched in the first quarter of this year, its market share has quickly risen to first in the world.

According to the forecast data released by Display Supply Chain Consultant (DSCC) on March 12, in the first quarter of this year, Huawei's foldable screen mobile phone market grew by 105% year-on-year, and its market share reached 40%, surpassing Samsung Electronics for the first time (less than 20%).

According to data from market research firm IDC, in the first quarter of 2024, China's foldable screen mobile phone market shipments reached 1.86 million units, a year-on-year growth rate of an astonishing 83%. Huawei successfully took 44.1% of the Chinese foldable screen mobile phone market with its Mate X5 and new product Pocket 2, ranking first.

With the launch of the highly anticipated Huawei tri-fold screen mobile phone Mate XT, Huawei's position in the folding screen market is expected to be further consolidated.

According to a person in the supply chain, Huawei's stock of Mate XT exceeds 500,000 units, which is five times the stock of the first batch when Huawei first launched the foldable screen mobile phone. This also shows that Huawei is optimistic about its first three-fold screen mobile phone Mate XT. On the other hand, it also benefits from the increasingly mature supply chain of key components required for foldable screen mobile phones in China.

However, although the 4 million pre-orders for Huawei Mate XT directly show the popularity of the first three-fold phone, it is still not as good as the number of people who finally bought it. When the pre-orders exceeded 2 million, Bruce Lee himself was shocked and asked himself, "Are there really so many people who want to buy it?"

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As early as the beginning of this year, there were rumors in the industry that Huawei's shipment target for foldable phones this year is more than 7 million units, and may even reach 10 million units, which will be a maximum increase of about 3 times compared to 2.3 million units in 2023.

According to previous forecasts by market research firm TrendForce, global shipments of foldable phones will reach approximately 17.8 million units in 2024, of which Huawei will rank second in the world with a market share of 30.8%, second only to Samsung.

TrendForce said that this was mainly due to the Pocket 2 launched in early 2024 and the tri-fold screen mobile phone launched in the third quarter, which not only brought new appearance breakthroughs to the foldable screen mobile phone market, but also represented a technological upgrade.

Judging from the above data, Huawei's goal of shipping 7 million foldable phones this year is still possible, but 10 million is a bit unrealistic, after all, the forecast for foldable phone sales in 2024 is only 17.8 million. Moreover, the Mate X5 passed its sales peak last year, and the Pocket 2 at the beginning of the year also passed its sales peak, unless the newly released Mate XT can achieve sales far beyond imagination.

5. Last words: Tri-fold screen, a new market possibility

Earlier, Bruce Lee explained in the documentary "100 Faces of Huawei" that Huawei had never thought about making mobile phones from the beginning. When we sold our equipment (base stations) to our operator partners, the operators said that we could not buy mobile phones because the supply of 3G mobile phones was too small. Only if you help us solve the problem of our mobile phone (supply) will we be able to buy your base stations. Otherwise, it is useless to buy your base stations.

"Huawei set up a mobile phone team in order to sell base stations."

From mobile phone base stations to 5G technology, and then to the Hongmeng system and tri-fold smartphones, the courage to tackle tough problems independently and create new categories has become Huawei's gene and is admirable.

The release of Huawei's triple-folding screen mobile phone has brought a new possibility to everyone: a tablet can be put into a pocket! "Don't fight for the first place, just be the first", Huawei has confirmed this slogan to the world with its triple-folding screen mobile phone.

Reference Links:

1.https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20240910A0A0Q700

2.https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1mi4y1P7Cm/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click&vd_source=499af28a1e1c14964508920f7368c41f

3.https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1649901974359775421&wfr=spider&for=pc