LG Rollable (Photo by BullsLab / YouTube)
With all due respect to the “Dynamic Island” of the iPhone 14 Pro, which will be launched tonight in Israel, this article is about a phone that brought a significant innovation by several orders of magnitude, and was supposed to open a new era, where you can buy a relatively small smartphone, and when you want – simply increase it. And no, it does not require a folding screen with a “socket” in the middle, or the enormous thickness of a device with such a screen.
The device in question is the LG Rollable – a smartphone from the Korean giant that was never launched, but now it turns out that it was already fully ready for launch last year, just before the company announced that it was completely shutting down its mobile division and canceling all future launches it had planned.
More in-
In a video that was uploaded yesterday (Tuesday) to a Korean YouTube channel, the device is shown in detail – starting with its box, which was already ready with all the design, contents and even a page that includes an explanation of the special configuration, through the dedicated cover that was also adapted to the concept, to the interface, which seems to have been built in detail to optimize the use of the unique device.
As you can see in the video, at first glance this is not a very special device (or beautiful, by the way), and it is reminiscent of Samsung’s Galaxy S8 in its design, with the curved screen on the sides, which “slides” into the frame. But the Rollable has a very interesting use of the flexible screen that actually stretches behind the edges into the device: in a three-finger swipe gesture on the screen towards the right edge, the device begins to stretch, and the screen expands from 6.8 to 7.4 inches – the size of a small tablet.
These are sizes that were supposed to be convenient for use with one hand when the device is closed, and for maximum utilization of space when it is open, but without compromising on rigidity (therefore it expands by less than its full width, and not more than that). On the one hand, it is better than folding devices, since the screen is flat, and does not form a fold that is prone to breakage or malfunctions. On the other hand, it forced the company to use a POLED screen – that is, a plastic-coated OLED, which looks and feels less good than a glass-coated one as we are used to from devices from Samsung and other manufacturers.
In the video, you can see the device expand and shrink again and again, without any malfunction, when everything displayed on the screen adapts itself to each of the configurations – websites, videos, apps that move from the mobile interface to the desktop or tablet interface divided into columns, and so on. Even the backgrounds adjust themselves to the changing screen size. There is also a second screen, on the back, for taking selfies using the rear cameras (64 megapixel primary and 12 megapixel secondary), fingerprint scanner, Snapdragon 888 processor, 12 GB memory, 256 GB storage, battery 4,500mAh and a weight of 285 grams – which makes it the heaviest smartphone in history except for those that come with huge batteries for use in the desert and bodies that are resistant to everything that we are assured that every phone today should be resistant to.
As mentioned, the company presented the device in a teaser in January 2021, in preparation for the announcement and launch event planned to be held later that year. However, a few weeks later she left the mobile phone market and left it without the device that might have brought her back to the top. Three months later, by the way, the Chinese Oppo introduced a similar device – but it too has not yet been launched.
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