“Moto Rizr” rollable phone shows why rollables don’t work in the real world

Enlarge / The Moto Rizr is unrolling. (credit: Motorola)

Mobile World Congress is this week, and that means wild flexible display concepts that will probably never see the light of day. Motorola has been letting everyone try out the new "Moto Rizr" concept, a name it resurrected from its line of candybar slider phones in the early 2000s. The new Rizr is a rollable display phone that was initially announced in October, but Motorola is sharing a lot more details about the phone at MWC.

Motorola's concept phone is a stumpy-looking 5-inch device with a flexible POLED display that covers the front of the phone, then rolls around the bottom edge and continues almost halfway up the back. Press a button and motorized internal components push the top of the phone upward, dragging the screen up with it. At the end of the process, all that "extra" display that was on the back of the phone has rolled around the bottom edge and is now on the front, and you have a 6.5-inch display that looks like a normal smartphone.

The sliding component of the phone is a wafer-thin rectangle that houses only the display and looks very fragile. Besides sliding up to support the larger display, this rectangle can also slide down a few millimeters from the closed position, revealing the phone body it normally covers. This small area that is typically behind the display houses what would normally be the top bezel components, like a front-facing camera and earpiece speaker. In the closed position, the display wraps around the phone to the back, and this bit of back display doesn't go to waste: It can show the top status bar on the back of the phone or can kick into a viewfinder mode, allowing you to use the primary cameras like a selfie camera.

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