It wouldn’t be a Mobile World Congress without some incredible concept phones, and so far the MWC 2023 hasn’t disappointed. In fact, Lenovo came to the show with two different concepts for us to look at – a rollable phone and a rollable laptop.
Rollable phone concepts are of course nothing new. We’ve seen concept devices from various companies over the past few years, including those from LG and Samsung. But now Lenovo is adding two new rollable concepts to the mix. And there are no creases seen on these displays in the Lenovo versions.
Lenovo gave us a look at both devices back in October at the Lenovo Tech World 2022 conference. But this time we actually got to see the two concept devices up close and get a feel for what they’re actually capable of.
(Image credit: Tom Pritchard/Tom’s Guide)
Lenovo’s rollable phone remains unnamed but bears the distinctive logo of Lenovo’s own Motorola. What we have is a 5-inch display that expands up to a 6-inch display with the push of a button. What’s unique about this device is that you don’t lose access to that extra inch of screen space when the screen contracts.
Anyone who has seen a foldable device like the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 or the Oppo Find N2 Flip will know all about the cover display. This smaller standalone screen sits outside of the phone, allowing you to access apps, view notifications, and take photos when the phone is closed.
(Image credit: Tom Pritchard/Tom’s Guide)
Lenovo’s twist takes the best parts of the cover display but doesn’t separate it from the main screen. Instead, it’s part of the main screen and simply rolls away on the back of the phone. This means that, unlike some other rollable phone concepts, you can take full advantage of the display no matter what configuration your phone is in.
(Image credit: Tom Pritchard/Tom’s Guide)
The rolling mechanism can be activated with the press of a button, although Lenovo’s phone has some context sensitivity. One of the examples of this was opening a YouTube video and switching the phone to landscape mode. This caused the phone to expand the display and go into full screen mode. The screen would also expand in Gmail when composing a new message.
(Image credit: Tom Pritchard/Tom’s Guide)
There is also a selfie camera hidden behind the display. When you open the camera in selfie mode, the camera pops out from behind the screen. Apparently, there’s no need for an under-display camera when the screen can simply be moved out of the way.
(Image credit: Tom Pritchard/Tom’s Guide)
The cover display-like feature also has an added benefit with the camera, allowing photo subjects to see themselves from the camera’s perspective. It’s something we’d like to see in other top folding phones, if we’re being honest. Nothing prevents this feature from appearing on devices like the Galaxy Z Flip 5 or even the Motorola Razr 2023.
(Image credit: Tom Pritchard/Tom’s Guide)
Lenovo’s rollable laptop concept doesn’t have that much to offer right now – at least not from a feature perspective. All we saw during our demo was the display stretching upwards to double the available screen real estate. Not that that isn’t impressive, of course. We all love a big screen, we just don’t like that they usually have to come in big laptops.
(Image credit: Tom Pritchard/Tom’s Guide)
The rollable laptop measures 12.7 inches when closed and 15.3 inches when extended. According to Lenovo, the expansion mechanism lets your laptop’s display go up from a 4:3 aspect ratio to 8:9 — which is the equivalent of two 16:9 displays stacked on top of each other. All of this fits into the form factor of a typical 13-inch laptop.
The screen mechanism is rated for 20,000 to 30,000 roll cycles, and the extra screen lives under the keyboard when not in use.
(Image credit: Tom Pritchard/Tom’s Guide)
This screen uses the same flexible OLED as the ThinkPad X1 Fold concept, but the mechanism keeps the whole thing much tighter – so there’s no noticeable crease. The mechanism itself runs at 10mm per second, which Lenovo admits needs improvement.
(Image credit: Tom Pritchard/Tom’s Guide)
As impressive as these devices may seem at the moment, they remain concepts, with Lenovo admitting that more work needs to be done before they’re ready for mass production. That means there are no potential release windows, spec lists or anything like that for either the rollable phone or the laptop.
With the rollable laptop, Lenovo focuses on making the mechanism more robust and reducing the size of the components. This would mean there’s room for more hardware, including things like bigger batteries. The company had less to say about the rollable phone – only that it sought feedback on how it could be better refined.
So we just have to sit down and see what the future brings. In any case, the future looks very impressive when it comes to the expansion of displays.
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