BARCELONA – Motorola is showing a concept smartphone that rolls out as a user slides.
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The phone, which is being showcased at the Mobile World Congress tech conference in Barcelona, features a five-inch flexible display that expands to 6.5 inches when pushed upwards.
The idea is to allow better productivity and multitasking, as well as fit easily in your pocket.
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To be sure, the phone isn’t something you’ll be able to buy any time soon. The phone is still in the initial stage of concept and no one can tell how much it will cost.
Motorola is no longer the dominant mobile industry player – the company shipped 51 million units in 2021, according to Statista data.
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The design at least shows innovation in a market that is struggling to come up with new features to excite consumers.
Companies are hoping to change this with new form factors such as folding displays.
“This underscores the explosion of innovation using flexible display technology, with a number of concept products experimenting with a variety of form factors,” Ben Wood, principal analyst at CCS Insight, told CNBC.
The device is coming at a time of pain for smartphone makers.
Last year, the industry saw an 11.3% drop in sales as consumers tightened their belts, fueled by the trend of people holding on to their phones for longer periods of time as upgrades from major players became incremental.
Lenovo, which owns Motorola, also unveiled a rollable laptop at the conference this week. Like the phone, the laptop gently lifts itself up so you can view more of a web page or have multiple apps open on a single screen.
