TCL’s Android concept phone has a folding and rollable screen

TCL isn’t exactly a household name when it
comes to smartphones, but the BlackBerry and
Palm phone maker is looking to change that in
2020. Ahead of the launch of its own phones later this
year, the firm is piquing our curiosity with a couple of
wild concept phones that make the Samsung Galaxy Z
Flip and Motorola Razr look like old news.
TCL’s Android concept
phone has a folding
and rollable screen
TCL’s folding phone concept
lies flatter than the Galaxy Fold
To be clear, these are concepts in every sense
of the word. They have no names, no specs and no
chance of being sold anytime soon. The models we
saw were basically movie props with few working
parts, but they’re certainly intriguing. And if they’re an
indication of what TCL has in store for future phones,
it won’t be an unknown name for very long.
While we’re somewhat accustomed to folding
screens at this point, TCL doesn’t think simply folding
in half is enough. To be fair, the company does have
a single-folding phone in development that folds
completely flat with ‘zero gap’, but TCL is staking its
reputation on two moonshots: a trifold display that
opens like an accordion and a rollable display that
slides out like sideways windows blinds.
If it can actually be mass-produced at a reasonable
price, the rollable display could be a game changer.
The idea is that most of the time, the phone looks
like any of today’s smartphones, but behind its 6.7in
display is another inch-plus of display stored around
the backs and rolls out to expand to 7.8 inches.
According to TCL, the mechanism is powered by “a
very simple pushrod motor that works with gesture
controls” and even seeing it in action without a
working motor or screen, it was kind of magical.
It’s very much a ‘now you see it now you don’t’
kind of thing and it presents a unique new direction
for foldables that solved the biggest issue: the hinge
crease. Of course, it raises numerous interface and
multitasking questions that TCL isn’t prepared to
demonstrate just yet, but it contends that extending
display is easier “from a UI/UX perspective” than
folding the display. “Because you’re not taking the
screen and then holding it this way or holding it this
way, but you’re just extending,” TCL said, “so it’s
keeping a standard aspect ratio, kind of like when
you do a screen share from your computer.”
Three for the show
If TCL’s rollable phone is ‘standard’, however, its trifold
tablet is anything but. The firm has combined two
different hinges to create a display that unfolds like a
pamphlet, with three panels becoming one. The demo
unit we saw technically worked, but like the rollable
phone, it was far from a finished product. TCL’s vision
is to once again turn a normal-sized 6.5in phone into
a 10in tablet. To accomplish the dual-fold, TCL uses
two different hinge technologies, Dragon Hinge and
Butterfly Hinge, to “ensure smooth folding inside and
out with a minimal gap”.
When closed, the trifold phone is thick and
the whole package was very heavy and clunky.
The screens looked and felt like plastic, and the
mechanism was creaky. In all honesty, it felt a lot
like Royale’s early FlexPai prototype. But TCL wasn’t
showing off a polished phone. It’s all about the
potential of what a smartphone display can be. When
TCL launches its first phones later this year, they’ll
look much more like traditional handsets, but down
the line, TCL is hoping to become an innovator in the
smartphone space with its outside the box displays.
And it might be able to do it. For years, TCL has
made some of the best budget TV sets in the business,
TCL’s rollable display
is a tablet when you
need it and a phone
when you don’t
including a partnership with Roku, as well as the
BlackBerry Key2 and tiny Palm phones. But with
these displays, it’s looking to combine innovation
with aggressive pricing to give Android fans another
option in an ever-shrinking field.
Of course, interesting ideas don’t necessarily
translate into building a good smartphone, and the
prototypes we saw gave little indication of how – or
if – they’ll work, so we’ll have to wait and see how
TCL’s first devices stack up to their peers. But if these
concepts are any indication, we’re in for a wild ride