We played with the Lenovo-made gadget for a while at MWC 2024.
Crocodile Dundee voice that is over the top in a cartoonish way That doesn’t fold up. You can fold this up. In particular, it’s a folding concept phone from Lenovo and Motorola that was shown off at this year’s MWC. The company showed us how to use a device that is yet another great example of how it can get creative with design.
Lenovo isn’t giving it a real name yet, so they’re calling it the Rollable Concept Phone for now. It’s not getting as much attention as the transparent laptop we told you about yesterday, but it’s a great example of what concept devices can and should be.
The word “concept” is really the most important thing here. It
Makes it clear that there is no chance at all that the device will ever be made and
This is why the company isn’t giving out many demos. Lenovo is taking extra care of the devices it has on hand because it’s not certain that one at this point will be able to handle four days of steady demos.
If you asked me to picture a folding phone before Samsung’s first Galaxy Fold came out, it would have looked something like this: bendable at more than one hinged point. People have thought about rollable displays for a long time, but companies probably can’t make them on a large enough scale right now because of some very practical problems.
In my mind, I keep going back to the early days of the Galaxy Fold and how many screen problems there were that made Samsung start over. To be honest, you can make robots that can do thousands of folds before a product even comes out, but you can’t really know how it will work in the real world until it does.
Yesterday, someone asked me if I thought Lenovo would ever make the item reality. I don’t know which way to go. If it does, I can only say that this will have to go through some very tough tests first. In a way, showing it off here at MWC for several hours every day is an important step in the process.
This kind of show is also used to find out what people are interested in. When new form factors come out like this, it’s always unclear whether people want them and whether they will ever become more than just interesting. I could see people being interested, as long as the company can make it at or below the foldable price (I think it costs a lot to make right now).
The rollable design is more useful than the folding design, but since it doesn’t have a crease, you can’t just snap it shut and put it in your pocket. You can, however, use it as a big smartwatch. Some people compare it to a big, high-tech slap bracelet. To keep it on, the person wearing it needs to have a magnetic band on their wrist.
What we can see with our eyes is all we know about the thing. It has a cloth back, which is much more flexible than most phone backs. However, it makes me wonder if you’ll be washing it by hand all the time. The OS changes based on the device’s position and gives more attention to the screen area you use the most. We also know it can handle a Connect 4 game for two people.
Lenovo says that rollable has more than one battery, but it won’t say how many. In the same way that foldable batteries have two separate sections, the hard pieces need to be spread out to make the battery flexible, at least until we can get batteries that are just as flexible.
Lenovo is the company that I think is most likely to release something like this, which is something I like about productization. When compared to its rivals, the Chinese company isn’t afraid to get creative with its products, which is something I really like. It’s a whole different question whether that actually leads to goods sales.
There were concerns about the first foldables, for sure. Even though this group only makes up a small part of the smartphone market as a whole, I still think it was a success. As always, the question of whether Apple will try it looms large over the matter.
Also Read: Lenovo’s Idea for a Laptop is Completely Clear, but the Point Isn’t
As long as the design doesn’t make it hard to use every day, I’d be happy to try one of these, if only for the funny looks I get on the bus (though New Yorkers are still cool). Of course, I still have a lot of questions. How strong is it? If you drop it, will it still work? What would a case look like? It would have to be just as flexible and cover the corners at the very least. It reminds me of the question about how a dog could wear pants.
But I like it because it’s cool, different, and strange.
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