Motorola is using the world’s largest mobile technology fair to gauge interest in a radical new smartphone design. Spotted for the first time at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona, Motorola offered GB News a quick demo of its Rollable Concept Phone.
But what it lacks in a catchy codename, it makes up for with a mind-boggling trick.
Motorola developed a band with two magnets that locks the top and bottom of the rollable phone in position, so people with different wrist diameters never need to worry about it sliding off
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The touchscreen is flexible, so you can curve the handset into a C-like shape to snap it to your wrist like a slap bracelet. Due to the sheer variety of wrist sizes, Lenovo isn’t recommending anyone snaps the phone on their arm without a bracelet with two small magnets to keep the bendable handset locked in place.
At the stand on the MWC showroom floor, a representative from Motorola demonstrated driving and waving to someone ― and the phone didn’t budge.
When contorted into certain positions, the Rollable Concept Phone can support its own weight ― perfect for watching a TV show, making a video call, or taking a video hands-free
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Sticking with this same shape, the Rollable Concept Phone can support itself on a flat surface. Motorola says this is ideal perfect to shoot photos or videos without the need for a tripod. Samsung often cites this example with its foldable Galaxy Z Flip 5, which launched in the UK last summer.
In another demo to GB News, Motorola contorted its pliable phone into a tent-like shape and loaded up an app to play Connect 4.Each boardwas shown on a different side of the screen, which could support itself on the table between the players.
Motorola has tweaked the Android operating system so that it adapts to its orientation, only displaying video on the part of the screen that’s visible ― useful if the phone is using a folded part of the screen to support itself on a table ― or run two different views on each side of the bend, like the Connect 4 demonstration mentioned above.
When bent into a tent-like shape, Motorola's one-of-a-kind concept can be used to host a two-player game of Connect 4 on either side of the device
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Since the screen on the Rollable Concept Phone doesn’t fold in half like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold or Galaxy Z Flip range, the touchscreen has no crease. While these rival foldables have a single hinged point, Motorola’s concept phone has multiple to enable all the different shapes. This makes it much tougher to house a lithium-ion battery, which doesn’t handle being folded particularly well.
Motorola says it's using a few battery cells inside the Rollable Concept Phone ― but wouldn’t tell us exactly how many were tucked inside. It also wouldn’t speak about battery life, since this is just a concept handset and there are no plans (for now) to launch this as a consumer product.
To enable the extreme amount of flexing this phone is capable of, the rigid battery cells are distributed throughout the body. Motorola is using a fabric material for the rear case, which handles flexing much better than a traditional phone body ― usually plastic, glass, or metal.
While the flexible screens inside Samsung’s foldable phones are certified to endure 200,000 folds. With normal use, that’s equal to about 5 years before the Galaxy Z Fold or Galaxy Z Flip could be susceptible to issues with its pliable AMOLED screen.
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Motorola is keeping quiet about the overall durability of its Rollable Concept Phone, which has multiple hinge-points as part of its design. While that means that it’s not always the same crease that’s enduring the folding and unfolding motion ― unlike Samsung's Galaxy Fold models, the fact Motorola wouldn’t allow visitors at MWC to test the mechanism themselves could suggest that it doesn't fancy its chances when faced with 90,000 visitors desperate to try it for themselves.
Of course, this is still just a proof of concept. Motorola is keen to stress to us that it currently has no plans to launch the Rollable Concept Phone as its next flagship phone.
But if this whole exercise was about gauging interest ...the long queue at its booth with people desperate to get a glimpse of this never-before-seen blower suggests it could be a popular purchase.
