Move over, foldables — Motorola just showed off rollable phone concept

(Image credit: Lenovo)

While the best foldable phones might still be in their infancy compared to more conventional handsets, companies like Motorola are looking toward a future beyond current foldable designs. And that includes rollable screens.

That's not a new concept. LG gets credit for popularizing the idea when it showed off its rollable TV at CES 2019, and we've seen demos of rollable phones at recent CES trade shows. Nevertheless, Lenovo through its Motorola brand, is taking its own stab at rollable phones, and it's ready to show off its work.

Shared over on YouTube from this week's Lenovo's Tech World 2022 conference, we got a brief glimpse at what Motorola's rollable phone can do. It starts off "rolled up" with a square-ish aspect ratio that measures 4 inches — a positively tiny display. But with the press of a button, the phone enlarges, becoming a more normal 6.5-inch handset.

The video and demo aren't very long, but we do get to see how multimedia functions on the rollable phone. Watching video playback, for example, seems to work out well as the video adjusts itself as the phone's shape changes.

Rollable OLED technology certainly fascinates us and we're curious to see if it will ever see the consumer light of day. Besides that LG Rollable phone that got scrapped when LG abandoned its phone business, we've seen TCL show off a rollable phone prototype. Samsung, which currently dominates the foldables market, is also allegedly working on rollable tech.

In addition to a rollable phone, Lenovo also gave us a glimpse at a rollable laptop, which could be interesting for productivity use cases, even if the concept looks a bit odd in its current form. The phone is far more interesting to us, since it would give clamshell foldables like the Galaxy Z Flip 4 a run for their money in terms of pocketability and portability.

motorola rollable concept — (Image credit: Lenovo)

Seeing as this is just a concept at Lenovo's conference, we wouldn't expect to see a rollable Motorola phone for a while. Heck, we haven't even gotten the new foldable Motorola Razr 2022 outside of China yet. TCL might beat Lenovo to the punch since it seems to be a little further ahead of the curve, or Samsung may come out of nowhere with a Galaxy Rollable. Who's to say?

But rest assured that we're keeping our eye on this one. It's certainly an exciting concept.

Jordan is the Phones Editor for Tom's Guide, covering all things phone-related. He's written about phones for over six years and plans to continue for a long while to come. He loves nothing more than relaxing in his home with a book, game, or his latest personal writing project. Jordan likes finding new things to dive into, from books and games to new mechanical keyboard switches and fun keycap sets. Outside of work, you can find him poring over open-source software and his studies.