- The phone, which is being shown off at the Mobile World Congress technology conference in Barcelona, has a flexible 5-inch screen that expands to 6.5 inches when pushed up.
- The phone is definitely in the early concept stage. It’s not something you’ll be able to buy anytime soon.
- The design at least shows innovation in a market that has struggled to come up with new features to excite consumers.
Motorola unveiled a “foldable” smartphone at Mobile World Congress.
Ryan Brown | CNBC
Barcelona – Motorola is showing off the concept of a smartphone that is thrown up when the user swipes it up.
The phone, which is being shown off at the Mobile World Congress technology conference in Barcelona, has a flexible 5-inch screen that expands to 6.5 inches when pushed up.
The idea is to allow for better productivity and multitasking, while being easy to fit inside your pocket.
A phone is definitely not something you can buy anytime soon. The phone is in an early concept stage, and there is no indication of how much it will cost.
Motorola is no longer the major player in the mobile industry that it once was — the company shipped 51 million units in 2021, according to Statista data.
The design at least shows innovation in a market that has struggled to come up with new features to excite consumers.
The companies are hoping to change that with new form factors, such as foldable displays.
“It underscores the explosion of innovation going on with flexible display technology with a slew of conceptual products testing a wide variety of form factors,” Ben Wood, senior analyst at CCS Insight, told CNBC.
The device comes at a time when smartphone makers are groaning.
Last year, the industry saw sales decline 11.3% as consumers tightened their belts, exacerbating the ongoing trend of people holding onto their phones longer as major players ramp up in upgrades.
Lenovo, which owns Motorola, also revealed a foldable laptop at the conference this week. Like a phone, the laptop slowly rises vertically so that you can see more web pages or open several applications on a single screen.
