Kerry Wan/ZDNET
Scheduling my week at Mobile World Congress to reveal Motorola’s bendable phone concept could have been the perfect and worst decision of my life. On the one hand, the coolness factor of a phone that will be wrapped around your wrist is unmeasurable. On the opposite hand, it’s so ambitious that if you finally put it on, you quickly realize how far-fetched the concept is.
Motorola first showed off the bendable concept at Lenovo Tech World last October, but I’d prefer to imagine it was in Barcelona that the corporate first took the phone to a demonstration, as the general experience was definitely similar, right right down to the glitches and bugs to a different journalist interviewing impromptu drop test because… magnets and unpredictable forces that include beta hardware.
But in those moments when each of us within the room could sling the phone around our wrists, there was at all times a respectful nod of approval followed by shutter sounds left and right. This thing rocks. And it is so bizarre that I’m still fascinated about it hours later.
The concept phone starts with a 6.9-inch slab covered with a flexible fabric backplate. Look closely and you will see bits of the fabric begin to loosen and tangle at the sides, but I’m sure even Motorola wasn’t prepared for all of the smartphone origami that was going to unfold that evening.
Depending on where you stand within the wrist-worn phone debate, the perfect a part of Motorola’s concept is either the actual fact that it could actually be bent to develop into its own kickstand, or the best way it magnetically attaches to a fitted band. Bend your phone like a rainbow and you’ll be able to even start a two-player Connect Four session.
Kerry Wan/ZDNET
The band holding the phone on the wrist reminded me of those within the Milanese style, reminiscent of those for the Apple Watch. You snap the band firmly shut, align the magnetic pin with the back of the concept phone, after which bend the device until it covers all but one among your hands. The attachment a part of the method took several tries from several journalists, and because the concept phone already had some heft, it gave the look of a two-person job slightly than one.
To put it nicely, I could swipe across the phone like anyone else, browsing through app folders and the clock widget. But on this case the errors were severe and most frequently the phone didn’t register my touches and inputs.
Kerry Wan/ZDNET
On the opposite hand, Motorola also showed off its “Moto-roll” concept from the recent MWC and I couldn’t help but keep leaning towards it. Pressing the side key twice allowed the rollable display on the back of the device to slip out to the front, expanding the 5.8-inch screen to a similar size to six.8 inches. The software was way more sophisticated in comparison with the bendable one, and playing a YouTube video routinely triggered a scrolling sequence.
This means that I’ve officially tried out each of Motorola’s latest concept phones, and if I had to decide on one among them, I’d select the foldable one over the bendable one. Perhaps next 12 months, the bendable model will eclipse Motorola’s 2025 concept device. We’ll just should wait and see.
Credit : www.zdnet.com
