Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In recent years, the competition in the smartphone market has become more and more fierce. But at the same time of "volume", objectively, the consumer's experience is getting better and better.

In this process, there is one evolution that may not be very eye-catching, but it is very important, that is, the reliability of mobile phones.

When it comes to reliability, most students should have experienced the pain of broken mobile phone screens. In the CCTV documentary "the Road to Brand Power", there is a set of data quoted: in the after-sales maintenance of mobile phones, nearly half of the orders for screen damage, it can be seen that broken screens have become the biggest risk of using the machine.

But in fact, the reliability and quality of mobile phones need to be considered much more than broken screens. Especially nowadays, smart phones are getting lighter and thinner, and there are higher requirements for the reliability and quality of mobile phones.

Today, we might as well take a look back at how manufacturers improved their reliability in those years so that we could use our products with confidence.

IDC has conducted a survey on the evolution of smartphone reliability. Among the causes of smartphone damage, broken screen, liquid damage and body rupture are among the top three.

Of course, the reliability of smart phones also involves many other aspects, such as high temperature and cold resistance, corrosion resistance, life of components, etc., space is limited, so we will not expand here.

Therefore, today we review mainly from three aspects: screen, fuselage and waterproof and dustproof.

1. Screen in the functional phone era, drop resistance is one of the important tags of many mobile phones.

For example, Nokia, the overlord of the time, has been using Alec or transparent polycarbonate (plastic) on the screen. This material is tough and not afraid of falling. But there is a fatal disadvantage, that is, the hardness is not high, easy to scratch, so at that time many people's mobile phones used for a long time on the screen is a variety of scratches and wear.

The change began in 2005, when Motorola first replaced plastic screens with high-strength glass in a generation of classic flagship Razr V3. This incident attracted the attention of another glass giant, the famous Corning.

Razr V3, photo from: Wikimedia Commons Corning saw the prospect of glass application in consumer electronics and quickly began to restart the Chemcor glass-ceramic project, which had been refrigerated for many years. Chemcor is the predecessor of Corning Gorilla Glass, which will be famous all over the world.

What really made Corning Gorilla Glass famous was the original iPhone. Jobs and Corning teamed up to use gorilla glass, which Corning developed specifically for him, on the original iPhone. With the popularity of iPhone, gorilla glass is also well received by users.

As a result, this glass brand, which has a profound impact on the reliability and quality of smartphone screens, began its era.

In 2012, Corning released the second generation of gorilla glass, which is 0.8mm in thickness compared to the first generation, while maintaining leading wear resistance, hardness and scratch resistance.

Since then, Corning Gorilla Glass has been iterated continuously, improving the strength of screen glass through technological innovation, and has gradually become standard for smartphone screens.

Today, the latest generation of Corning Gorilla Glass is the Victus 2 panel released last year, which can fall from a height of 1 meter to the surface of simulated concrete and remains intact.

The quality of Corning gorilla glass can almost represent the reliability of mainstream smartphone screens, but at the same time, mobile phone manufacturers are also looking for other ways to improve the reliability of screen glass in search of differentiation.

For example, as early as before 2014, some mobile phone brands have tried to use sapphire glass as the screen cover, such as Huawei Ascend P7 sapphire version, vivo X5L sapphire version, HTC U Ultra sapphire version and so on.

Sapphire is a substance second only to diamonds, so the scratch resistance of sapphire glass is much higher than that of Corning gorilla glass at that time. However, although sapphire glass is hard and brittle, it is easy to break, and the cost is higher, so mobile phone manufacturers have no follow-up products after a small attempt.

By 2020, Apple and Corning jointly developed super-ceramic panels through heavy investment, which has been in use since the iPhone 12 series. The falling resistance of super porcelain crystal panel is four times higher than that of ordinary glass, and its hardness and scratch resistance are also enhanced, which greatly reduces the probability of iPhone broken screen.

Then, in 2022, Huawei introduced a nano-glass-ceramic screen in a new color version of the P50 Pro, using stronger nanocrystals, which are five times more resistant to falling than ordinary glass.

In the Mate 50 series of mobile phones in the same year, Huawei Kunlun Glass was born, the panel glass contains hundreds of millions of high-strength nanocrystals, impact resistance cracking, so that the whole machine drop resistance increased to 10 times, and won the industry's first Swiss SGS five-star fall resistance certification.

It is worth mentioning that Huawei Kunlun Glass does not rely on Corning, but is jointly developed by Huawei and domestic suppliers, which is really a new domestic road opened up outside Corning.

2. Besides the screen, the overall reliability of the fuselage is also concerned by consumers.

In the functional phone era and the early stage of the development of smart phones, because the technology accumulation of mobile phone manufacturers and upstream supply chain is not much, the plastic with strong plasticity and low cost has become the main material of mobile phone shell.

However, the overall strength of the plastic is a major defect, bumps or falls are easy to leave scars on the surface, even if used carefully, long-term wear is inevitable.

In 2010, Apple innovated the design of front and rear glass panels and metal frames on the iPhone 4, which not only pulled up the beautiful ceiling but also made the phone stronger and more wear-resistant, but the drawback was that the glass was fragile. So at that time, apart from iPhone, few other brands used glass fuselage.

The Android camp has made more unrestrained attempts at fuselage materials, such as glass, bamboo backshell, Kevlar, leather, ceramics, carbon fiber, and so on, which we have seen in those years. but most of these materials failed to continue because of cost, heat dissipation, strength, blocking signals and other factors, and the metal fuselage eventually became popular.

Mobile phones made of all-metal materials are more hard and wear-resistant than other materials. as long as they are used with some care, the shell of many mobile phones will still be almost the same as the new ones when they are retired.

However, in the era of metal fuselage popularity, there is a problem that often occurs, that is, the fuselage bending. This problem is best known for the "curved door" encountered by Apple's iPhone 6 series after its launch.

For example, the iPhone 6 Plus,5.5 inch large screen, the thickness of the fuselage cut to 7.1mm, even if the use of integrated metal body material, but due to the use of aluminum alloy strength is not enough, still can not escape the fate of easy bending, many netizens put iPhone 6 in jeans, a butt can sit on the phone.

There is a reason behind this: because the metal fuselage is easy to make the phone thin, when the phone becomes thinner, the pressure on the middle frame will be reduced. At that time, the bending of most mobile phones did not bend from the middle, but began to bend near the volume key, because that place had to be hollowed out for the button, and the area that actually carried the external force was very narrow. Once the force exceeds the strength that the fuselage can bear, it has to be released from this point.

It can be seen that the overall reliability quality of the fuselage is not only related to material and technology, but also to the consideration of stress distribution in the structural design of mobile phone.

In the 5G era, the design of the antenna has become complex, and the signal-blocking characteristic of the metal material itself makes it difficult to exist as the main material of the fuselage, coupled with the progress of glass technology in recent years, the iPhone 4 classic front and rear panel + metal frame "sandwich" design has regained attention and become popular again.

We have talked a lot about the reliability of glass. What I want to talk about here is another material that has become more and more popular recently: plain skin.

From the point of view of reliability, as a kind of artificial soft material, plain skin is not the same dimension as glass in terms of fall resistance, which is its main advantage. At the same time, plain skin is also lighter, and the surface is easy to make high-end texture. As for wear resistance, in fact, it has been significantly improved in the past two years under the efforts of mobile phone manufacturers and the supply chain. For example, the newly launched Huawei Mate 60 series south waxy purple and Yadan black color matching uses a newly upgraded plain leather material and a high-strength fiberglass base cover, which has excellent impact resistance and resilience. The uniformity and stability of the surface treatment layer are also improved to a certain extent, and it is more wear-resistant.

It is believed that with the iteration of technology and technology, plain skin will play a more important role in the reliability and quality of smartphone body in the future.

3, waterproof and dustproof in the reliability of mobile phones, there is also a more important, that is, three defenses: waterproof, dustproof, shockproof, of which waterproof is the most important.

When it comes to smartphone waterproofing, there are two main ways. One is structural waterproofing, that is, physical obstacles such as sealing rings and waterproof tape are used to block places where water may enter. The second is to use waterproof film and nano-coating to block the infiltration of water and let water molecules out in the form of water vapor in the unavoidable position of easy water seepage.

The waterproofing technology of smart phones is basically improved and optimized under this idea.

Early classics such as Ericsson R250 PRO and Motorola Moto Defy are close to professional three-defense mobile phones, which are not discussed here. Since then, many models in Sony's Xperia series of phones have become a benchmark for both beauty and waterproofing.

For example, in 2013, the Xperia Z L36h passed the protection certification of IP55 and IP57. In addition to reaching the fifth level of dust protection, the splashing part can also resist low-pressure water jet.

In the same year, Huawei also launched the first three-proof mobile phone, Huawei G350, which reaches the level of IP68. Although it is a three-proof mobile phone, it has a compact and beautiful appearance, which is very close to the standard of ordinary mobile phones.

By 2015, Sony has made some breakthroughs in waterproof technology in Xperia Z3 +, using Capless uncovered and exposed waterproof technology in the USB interface, making the waterproof level up to IP65 / IP68 level.

Another more important product is the Galaxy S7 launched by Samsung in 2016, which provides IP68-level waterproof, with a special waterproof coating on the components, and some adjustments to the internal structure due to the addition of waterproof function, so that it can be soaked in 1.5m water for 30 minutes without damage.

Today, most flagship phones and some mid-range phones already support IP68-level waterproof and dustproof, and in May this year, Nokia even launched a new XR21 that supports IP69K waterproof and dustproof. The reliability and quality of smartphones in three defenses will continue to advance in innovation.

Huawei Mate 60 ultra-reliable Black Tortoise architecture, a milestone in the development of mobile phone reliability in the review of the development and evolution of smartphone reliability quality, I believe many friends can feel a feature: these reliability achievements are basically scattered, single-point and unsystematic.

For example, the reliability technology and results of screen strength and fuselage materials often appear in different products of different brands, and most brands only focus on the reliability of a single point in a product.

However, reliability and quality is always a systematic project, just like doing security work for a vault, not just setting up an access control at the door, but considering all aspects of security details. Similarly, the reliability quality that consumers really need on mobile phones is also more comprehensive protection.

While the reliability quality of smartphones has been developed in complexity and disarray for so many years, it is indeed time for a systematic "security".

In fact, there is just one phone that is trying to do this: the Huawei Mate 60 series, which was launched not long ago.

In the Mate 60 series, Huawei uses a set of ultra-reliable Black Tortoise architecture, which is a comprehensive and reliable protection system that integrates super drop-resistant second-generation Kunlun glass, super tough Black Tortoise fuselage and super durable polyamide fiber material.

Among them, the super tough Black Tortoise fuselage can be compared to the F1 car "Halo" head protection system, which can protect the core devices of the mobile phone at all times as well as the lives of racing drivers, increasing the extrusion resistance of the whole machine by 10 times and bringing users full sense of security.

The second generation Kunlun glass is the upgrade of Huawei Kunlun glass mentioned earlier, it forms a stronger glass network skeleton by improving the glass formula composition, and upgrades the composite ion strengthening technology to effectively prevent the outer screen from deforming or breaking when being squeezed by external forces, and the falling resistance of the whole machine is twice as high as that of the first generation Kunlun glass, which can easily deal with the accidental drop of mobile phones in daily life.

The ultra-durable nylon fiber material is the first in the industry, using ultra-tough and ultra-light fiber materials to improve the impact resistance by 5 times. And this material has a jade-like three-dimensional texture and rich sense of layers, but also delicate skin touch, not afraid of fingerprint contamination.

In addition, Huawei Mate60 RS extraordinary Master is equipped with the new Black Tortoise toughened Kunlun Glass, made by the second generation Kunlun Glass to Black Tortoise toughened technology, to further enhance the outer screen wear resistance, anti-fall ability, to achieve a more all-round protection effect. Is the aggregator of the ultra-reliable Black Tortoise architecture.

Not only that, the Mate 60 series brings 6 meters of IP68 dust and water resistance: more waterproof, water resistance is fully upgraded, whether it's walking in the rain, swimming pool parties or rainforest exploration, you can deal with it calmly, flying with water and dust, and safe and sound.

In addition to the Huawei Mate 60 series, the brand new Huawei MateX5 folding screen phone is also comprehensive and reliable inside and outside. With its ultra-reliable Black Tortoise toughened Kunlun glass outer screen and ultra-impact flexible inner screen, this phone has won the world's first Swiss SGS gold standard five-star scratch resistance and fall resistance authority certification.

On the whole, Huawei's ultra-reliable Black Tortoise architecture can be said to integrate and integrate the achievements made in the development of smartphone reliability in the past years, and further innovate in materials, design and technology on this basis. as a result, a comprehensive and reliable protection system is formed, which is reliable from the inside to the outside, covering almost all the complex scenarios of consumers using their phones. Whether it is daily use of friction, bumping, falling, or falling into the water, you can safely cope with it.

It shows systematicness, comprehensiveness and innovation that previous smartphones do not have. it has not only become a new benchmark for the reliability quality of today's flagship mobile phones, but also a milestone in the history of smartphone reliability development.

In conclusion, the editor would like to say that the reliability quality of comprehensive protection of smartphones should be a basic feature that every consumer can enjoy, but in the past years, its development is undoubtedly incomplete.

Huawei Mate 60 series ultra-reliable Black Tortoise architecture achieves systematic and comprehensive protection for the first time in ordinary smartphones, which will undoubtedly play a key leading role in the entire mobile phone market and promote the progress of reliability and quality requirements in the mobile phone industry as a whole.

I believe you would like to see that not only Huawei, but also other brands will pay more attention to the construction of product reliability and quality system, so that this "industry infrastructure" can be consolidated, and finally all consumers can get a comprehensive and reliable machine experience.

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