Motorola’s teasing a rollable concept phone

The ‘proof of concept’ featured in a brief demo video doesn’t fold — it rolls

by Allison Johnson

Oct 18, 2022, 4:00 AM UTC

The device appears to extend and retract with the push of a button.

Image: Motorola

Allison Johnson is a senior reviewer with over a decade of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview.

At parent company Lenovo’s Tech World 2022 event, Motorola is showing off a rollable mobile phone in a quick video demo. With the press of a button, the screen extends and retracts, with a moving wallpaper to match.

The demo video only gives us a glimpse of the front of the device, and the screen appears to wrap around the phone, rolling up from the bottom edge. At least as far as prototypes go, this concept appears to be on the “operational” side of the spectrum — there are at least battery and cellular indicator icons on screen. The rolling display is a flexible OLED panel, measuring 6.5 inches when extended and retracting down to “just over” 4 inches.

The device wallpaper expands and contracts to mimic the action of the screen.

Image: Motorola

Motorola isn’t providing any more details about it at this point. It’s unclear whether it will ever reach the market, and flexible concepts aren’t exactly batting a thousand right now. TCL has been teasing flexible products a-plenty over the past few years without a viable commercial product to show for it. LG’s rollable concept may have been closest to market, but… well, we know how that went. Honestly, we’d settle just to get Motorola’s China-only folding 2022 Razr — one can hope, right?

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