These once very popular mobile phone designs have now disappeared. Have you used them?

The recent wave of new phones still dazzles me.

Although it has always been said that smartphones are seriously homogenized and there is no innovation.

But in fact there are still many new things every year, but only a few can really hit the pain points of users.

Those that have been verified by the market and remain are considered "finished".

And those disappearing technologies have become the representatives of "wrong direction" in everyone's mouth.

Ji Ge briefly recalled it and found that many once very popular technologies or designs have disappeared in recent years.

Lift sliding cover

For example, the once very popular lifting camera.

Ji Ge, the first wave of manufacturers to realize this idea, is quite respectful.

Hide the camera and leave the front to the screen.

For a straight man like Brother Ji, who is as handsome as Daniel Wu but doesn’t take selfies, he is indeed quite appetizing.

However, problems such as increased costs, reduced reliability, and large lifting structures do exist.

To put it bluntly, it’s all for the full screen.

Something that leads to the same goal is the sliding cover full-screen solution, which does not need to be lifted electrically, but manually slid open.

(Doogee Mix4, the first sliding screen mobile phone)

I don’t know if this is the wrong skill, but it is definitely more compromise than benefit.

At least weight and thickness must be sacrificed.

If I want to comment on it, I can only say that it is a somewhat paranoid pursuit of a true full screen.

Large curved screen

How many phone enthusiasts have returned to straight screens after using curved screens? Raise your hands to show me.

Yes, it matters whether the mobile phone screen is curved or straight.

Both sides of the screen are curved backwards and integrated with the middle frame. When I saw this design, I could only say that I was shocked.

It looks good, the width is reduced, and the edge sliding feels good. The overall quality of the mobile phone is much higher.

Flagship-level curved screens are becoming more and more exaggerated, even a bit confusing.

There will be problems such as the system's anti-accidental touch optimization is not in place and the edge content is not fully displayed.

Maybe the market has returned to rationality, and many people are thinking about the benefits of direct screens again.

Today’s curved screen mobile phones have tended to be restrained. Even Samsung, which made curved screens popular, now only uses curved screens on Ultra models, or slightly curved screens.

(S21 Ultra’s slightly curved screen)

Curved screens with large curvatures have gradually become rare.

The flexible screen technology under the curved screen has also found its own field of folding screens.

Multi-screen mobile phones

Before the folding screen, there was also a "folding phone".

It is not a matter of folding or not, it is really that kind, that kind of rare kind.

For example, the Microsoft Duo phone.

To put it bluntly, two screens are connected with a hinge.

But if you use it vertically, there will be a gap in the middle, which will cause obsessive-compulsive disorder.

It might be easier to understand if you think of it as the ultimate version of the NDS game console.

This expandable multi-screen design is not an isolated case.

The mobile phone I think is the most magical one is the LG Wing.

On the surface, it is a full screen, and it can be expanded into a T-shaped dual screen by sliding. It looks a bit like the spiritual sequel to Sharp's rotating flip phone.

Although LG has designed a lot of ways to play it, I always feel that it is still too tasteless.

For example, use the secondary screen as a console when taking photos or watching videos, and display a track map on the secondary screen when playing racing games.

It’s just that these unique gameplays rely on APP adaptation, and also sacrifice the thickness and weight of the phone.

It is true that the gain outweighs the loss.

I feel that this is no longer a matter of going left or right, but that the road has been built underground.

Strange multi-camera

As for the familiar multi-camera on mobile phones, it has gone astray in the past.

In fact, when Duoshu just started to develop, there were many plans.

(HTC One M8 is equipped with a ToF camera)

For example, there is a ToF camera that only collects depth of field information and does not directly participate in imaging.

There is also a black and white secondary camera that allows for a greater amount of light to assist the main camera in improving the quality of photos.

Among these blooming plans, only Nokia 9 Pureview can shock me all year long.

There are 7 holes on the back and 5 cameras, 3 of which are black and white and 2 of which are color, all certified by Zeiss.

It is said to be able to greatly increase the amount of light, but the reality is very disappointing. The effect of the five cameras is not even as good as the single camera of the flagship machine at that time.

Nokia has finally brought this genre to an end. After that, multi-camera solutions with multi-focal length combinations became mainstream

So much so that if new phones now use black and white secondary cameras or Depth of field secondary shooting is likely to be criticized by everyone for "making up the numbers".

Modularity

When it comes to the most experimental designs in the history of smartphones, I think modularity can be ranked in the top three. ,

The so-called modularization means that modular components can be replaced to replace or add functions.

We won’t talk about projects like Google Project Ara that are just concepts.

The first one is LG G5, yes, it’s LG again.

The G5 came up with a chin-replacement design at that time, and the only modules provided were Hi-Fi audio modules and camera handles.

The design of the replacement chin also comes with the retro function of a replaceable battery.

But it is obvious that this kind of modularization breaks the integrity of the mobile phone, but does not bring enough attractive functions, so sales are naturally very bleak.

Moto also has a more ambitious modular mobile phone plan-the Moto Z series.

Its design is more mature than LG. The module is magnetically fixed on the back of the phone and connected with 16 contacts.

There are also more and more creative functional modules, including speaker modules, battery modules, Hasselblad photography modules, and a very special projection module.

The modular design of Moto Z still inevitably sacrifices a lot, the battery is very small, the fingerprint recognition module can only be placed on the side, etc.

Severely lower than expected sales are enough to illustrate the problem, and modularization will soon become history.

Non-mainstream control

As all smartphone enthusiasts know, the core operation of smartphones is the tap and touch of fingers.

However, some manufacturers may not be willing to be bound by touch and have come up with many imaginative technologies.

HTC once launched an “Edge Sence” function on the U11 machine.

To put it simply, there are sensors under the frame of the mobile phone that can recognize the pressing movements of human hands.

For example, on rainy days, if the screen of your phone is wet and it is inconvenient to operate, you can pinch the frame of your phone to quickly activate some functions.

Brother Ji, if you think about it carefully, wouldn’t it be possible to use a gyroscope to identify the movement of shaking the phone?

Or just let the voice assistant do it. Is it a bit costly to add hardware for such operations?

Similar functions have continued on Google’s Pixel series for some time.

Ji Ge also recalled Samsung’s previous eye movement page turning function.

You may not be able to successfully identify someone even if you wink at your phone for a long time. He was also a pioneer in creating memes back then.

Same as the function of pressing the border, it is optional but not necessary.

Ji Ge said that the direction is wrong, who agrees? Who objects?

Ji Ge saw that many people would say that the Android camp is always going off track and is not as stable as Apple.

Indeed, there are many technological innovations in the Android camp that ultimately failed to become mainstream, or even completely faded out of the market.

Some of the innovative directions are indeed inconsistent with reality, and some have been replaced by better solutions.

If a person never takes the wrong path, he either stays put or follows the crowd forever.

For technological innovation, there may be many attempts in the wrong direction.

But this gene of constant innovation and trial and error is actually "in the right direction" in a higher dimension.