motorola
Mobile World Congress is happening this week. This means a wild flexible display concept that will probably never see the light of day. Motorola has made their new “Moto Rizr” concept available for everyone to try. It’s a revived name from a line of candy bar slider phones from the early 2000s. The new Rizr is his rollable display phone that was first announced in October, but Motorola has shared even more details about the phone at his MWC.
Motorola’s concept phone is a chunky-looking 5-inch device with a flexible POLED display that covers the front of the phone, then rolls around the bottom edge and continues almost halfway to the back. When you press the button, motorized internal components push the top of the phone up and drag the screen. At the end of the process, all the “extra” displays that were on the back of the phone are wrapped around the bottom edge to the front, resulting in a 6.5-inch display that looks like a normal smartphone.
The phone’s sliding component is a very thin rectangle that only houses the display and looks very fragile.In addition to sliding to support larger displays, this rectangle can also slide under It’s a few millimeters away from the closed position, and you can see the phone body it normally covers. This small area behind the display usually houses the top-bezel components, such as the front-facing camera and earpiece speakers. In the closed position, the display wraps around the back of the phone. No part of this rear display is wasted. You can use the primary camera like a selfie camera by displaying the top status bar on the back of the phone or entering viewfinder mode.
not as small as @motorazr and who knows how durable it will be if you drop it or toss it in your pocket without protection, but if someone says your phone is boring, show this. #mwc2023 pic.twitter.com/FnoooMysnc
— Avi Greengart (@greengart) February 26, 2023
Tapping the power button twice will rotate the phone up and down, but Motorola’s concept also makes the questionable decision to automatically rotate the display up and down based on what the software does. Makes sense. A landscape video is probably widescreen, so it extends your screen. Another example is a keyboard with a rising screen. when the keyboard opens And when you close it, it shrinks. It takes a few seconds to open and close the motorized screen. Waiting for the screen to move up and down while multitasking in a messaging app sounds very slow and frustrating.
It’s all great, and if it weren’t for the laundry list of practicality concerns, the promise of a cell phone that’s big in your pocket or small in your hand would be a compelling idea. None like the flexible display Moto Razr (which looks like this phone’s cousin) attaches most of the display’s length to the phone’s body. The bottom edge of the display is attached to the phone and part of the top is attached to the phone, but the center must be free floating for the sliding mechanism to work.Since there is nothing to secure the middle section to the body, the display often lift from phone, can expose the sides of the display and collect debris that can damage the display. We’re used to the display being a rock hard, perfectly flat plate of glass so it’s a very strange feeling when the display doesn’t lie flat against the phone body and gets squished with your fingers is.
