CES 2021: LG teases ‘world’s first rollable smartphone’

LG has announced that it will launch the world’s first rollable smartphone this year as it offered a preview of the device at CES 2021 with a five-second teaser video.

The clip features a smartphone held in landscape orientation as the screen rolls in from an expanded tablet-like form factor display to a more compact chassis.

The hybrid handset is said to be based on flexible organic light-emitting diode technology, reportedly provided by China’s BOE Technology Group, although details of the technology remain unclear. Speaking at CES, the company said Nikkei Asia that the product would be officially released later this year:

“Our management wanted to show that it is a real product as there was a lot of rumors about the rollable phone,” said Ken Hong, a LG spokesperson. “As it will be released at CES 2021, I can say it will be launched this year.”

LG’s roll-up display follows the mediocre success of Samsung’s foldable smartphones, as LG’s phone business is struggling financially due to fierce competition from Samsung, Huawei and Apple, among others.

Apple has researched retractable displays in the past based on the company’s patents. In March 2020, a patent attributed to Apple appeared in the US Patent and Trademark Office describing an “electronic device with flexible display structures”.

The patent describes a flexible display that can be wrapped around one or more internal rolling mechanisms, allowing the screen to be expanded out of the chassis. A sturdy section is left to house the printed circuit boards and other electronic components, but with the addition of the rollable display layers.

“Elongated bistable support elements can run along the edges of the screen or can be overlapped by a central active area of ​​the screen to stiffen and support the screen in its extended position,” explains the patent, which considers the technology adaptable to everything from a smartphone to a smartwatch.

As with all Apple patents, there is no indication that Apple has any plans to market such a device, but it is interesting to see what kind of future solutions Apple is looking at as it tries to innovate beyond the current technologies for consumer use.