Before, all smartphones looked the same. But then some models started using three-sided bezel-less full-screen designs (like the Mi MIX), notch screens (like the iPhone X), water-resistant screens (like the Sharp Aquos), and punch-hole screens (like the Honor V20). Today, all major smartphone manufacturers offer phones with all of these solutions. So they started to look the same again. So, to make their phones have high recognition rates, they went back to the back of the phones. The rear camera layout is what they are all focusing on right now. We recently discovered that the ROG Gaming Phone 5 has added a secondary screen on the back. Then we saw the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra with an additional screen on the back as well. But these are not the first models to adopt such a design. All previous smartphones with a sub-screen failed. So why have the biggest smartphone vendors decided to resurrect this design?
Meizu Pro 7 / Plus
Speaking of the secondary screen on the back of the phone, the Meizu Pro 7 and Pro 7 Plus models should be mentioned. The secondary screen was located in the upper left part of the back. He had a long streak. At the time, Meizu called it a screen with images. Meizu tried to apply many features for this screen. But no one supported this idea. Although it was something new, over time users ignored this design. And Meizu dropped it too.
Nubia X
Meizu Pro 7's secondary screen design failed. But the story did not end there. When smartphones entered the era of full-screen screens, a new problem appeared. Where to put the front camera? As mentioned above, some manufacturers choose designs with notches / drops / hole punches or sump chambers. However, some other companies thought that the rear camera was enough. But is it so? In this regard, the smartphone with two screens Nubia X was a unique device. It came with only the main camera, but two screens. So, when you don't need the front camera, you can use the home screen. But when you need to make video calls or take selfies, you can switch to the screen on the back. This phone also solved the problem of heavy rear camera designs. The strategy worked.
However, a smartphone cannot have two wives screens. There are several reasons for this statement. First, the second screen would not have the high resolution and good parameters as the main one. This will kill the battery before you can say the knife. Second, the phone gets two screen panels on both sides. We mean that the internal space of the phone is small even on one screen. Can you imagine what happens inside when there are two screens? Heat removal will become an insoluble problem. In any case, ZTE decided to launch the next model in the face of the Nubia Z20. But that didn't make people pay much attention to it.
Xiaomi Mi MIX Alpha
Nubia could not change the industry. But Xiaomi has such experience. So when it unveiled the Xiaomi Mi MIX Alpha concept phone in 2019, the hope was that we'd see a true dual-screen phone go mainstream. In fact, it was not a double screen, but a surround sound screen. The middle frames on both sides also use screen material. Also, the screen quality of this concept phone is much better than Nubia's dual-screen phones. Unfortunately, it could not go into mass production.
Hisense A6
There is also an alternative approach. The secondary screen on the back of the Hisense A6 uses an ink screen designed for e-book reading. The oval button on the side can switch between the main screen and the secondary screen. Of course, compared to Meizu and Nubia, Hisense's share of the smartphone market is smaller. So this dual screen smartphone also did not attract much attention.
The closest smartphones with an additional screen design
Both models - Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra and ROG Gaming Phone 5 - are equipped with narrowed secondary screens. Also, while the former phone seems to use it to improve selfie operations, the ROG phone will use it to display various gaming effects.
In addition, these screens must cause a lot of problems. Let's say that while the secondary screen on the Mi 11 Ultra is acceptable for selfies, it will not perform well for blogging. The logic of placing an additional screen on the back of a gaming phone raises more questions. In this sense, we believe that these are more marketing gimmicks than anything serious.
So the question is, why didn't the secondary screen design eventually become public, but there are always manufacturers willing to try it? In fact, the main reason is its limited practicality. Additionally, allowing users to frequently use the secondary screen actually reduces the performance of the smartphone. However, when the frontal design of a smartphone can't change much, the appropriate addition of a small secondary screen can really play a role in highlighting individuality. But this subscreen can't add too many features because we
