For several years, companies that produce smartphones and notebooks – but also televisions – have been engaged in a rush to foldable screens which can better meet user needs.
A foldable smartphone, for example, makes sense because the inches of its display double if necessary. A foldable notebook takes up half the space. A TV that unrolls (and rolls up) aims to save domestic space.
But the screens that flex represent, ultimately, also a promise: one day, who knows when, we will walk around with a smartphone rolled up on our wrist. A bit like Leelathe main female character of the cartoon Futuramawho wears a flashy device on his arm.
He has been working on this idea for several years now Motorolawhich this year at Mobile World Congress in Barcelonathe most important fair in the world dedicated to mobile telephony, allowed some journalists to try its “bendable”, a smartphone whose screen folds outwards until it takes on an arched shape that fits the wrist.
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Motorola calls it, not surprisingly, “adaptive display”. But to make it stay still on your wrist you need to wear a thin bracelet equipped with a magnet that mates with the magnets on the back of the phone.
We tried Motorola’s “bendable” too, and it felt like exactly what it is: and proof of concept very advanced with apps that actually work. Like the one, for example, that uses AI to generate wallpapers matching your look.
In short, we are talking about a product that today can be considered more or less useful but at least it is credible. So much so that Motorola has promised to finally launch this device on the market during 2024probably in the second half of the year, with adjustments to the shape or materials.
Motorola’s smartphone-bracelet is in fact not free from technical problems. And – most importantly – has yet to find a possible place on the market. Who is such a product designed for? What advantages can wearing a smartphone on your wrist have? And above all: why should we prefer such a cumbersome and precarious device to smartwatches?
Many have rightly focused on these questions. However, losing sight of the real objective of the prototype: demonstrate that another type of smartphone is possible.
The smartphone becomes a bracelet: the exclusive test of Motorola that seems to have come out of a science fiction film
Likewise Lenovothe Asian multinational that acquired Motorola in 2014, amazed visitors in Barcelona with the prototype of a notebook that a transparent display. The effect is similar to that imagined in the most famous science fiction films, in which the protagonists consult information that seems “suspended” in the air and which can be looked past.
We also tested this computer, as far as possible, and beyond one obvious critical issue – whoever is behind the notebook can see what is happening on the display – everything worked well. The screen, moreover, is touch and allows writing with a smart pen.
The bendable and the “transparent” notebook took a lot of the spotlight at the Mobile World Congress. At the fair they attracted the gaze of numerous visitors. They have destroyed the competition online. Opening Instagram or TikTokand carrying out a search with keywords linked to the Barcelona fair, the devices that catch the eye are the Motorola and Lenovo concepts. Two products that actually don’t exist yet.
The interest in these two prototypes – even from the traditional media – has even exceeded that for many “real” products, launched precisely on the occasion of the Mobile World Congress.
“My wrist phone is finally here”he wrote Ctnet about the bendable. The header Androidpolice is more skeptical: “Motorola’s flexing smartphone is a dead-end future”.
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A correspondent from Cnnhowever, claims that Lenovo’s transparent notebook “It’s the most incredible thing” which he tried this year (it must be said that 2024 has just begun). TechCrunch however has some doubts, expressed with a subtle play on words: “Lenovo’s concept is transparent but the purpose is not so clear”.
Lenovo’s transparent notebook: is this the computer of the future?
If the attention towards the two prototypes was so high, it was due to the fact that Motorola and Lenovo made available to journalists, influencers and even visitors prototypes that companies are usually careful not to let touch.
In 2019 Huawei e Samsung they presented at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona their first foldable smartphones. But at the time, although the two phones were really one step away from commercialization, no one was able to come close. And at the fair they remained under glass cases the whole time.
The risks that Motorola and Lenovo have taken in recent days have certainly paid off in terms of visibility. Suffice it to say that Motorola in Barcelona has not announced any new phones but only services and partnerships: the one with Corneringfor example, which in 2024 will bring the most resistant glass in circulation, Gorilla Glass, on all company phones. But this type of announcement is not newsworthy.
The success of the two prototypes, however, was not determined only by a clever marketing strategy. He has affected, in equal measure, a sudden hunger for innovation and anticipation of the future.
Just a few weeks ago Apple – which never set foot at the Mobile World Congress – has put the Vision Proa viewer that allows you to live an augmented or virtual reality.
In the meantime, artificial intelligence allows us to do increasingly extraordinary things. From the generation of texts it has moved on to the creation of images and music, and recently he learned to produce videos: Sorathe latest model of OpenAIcan generate high-quality videos from text.
While algorithms and software progress at unprecedented speed, hardware lags behind or at least tries – much more slowly – to find new forms. “In the next five years we will need more than a smartphone to make the most of AI,” he said Demis HassabisCEO of Google DeepMindduring his speech at the Mobile World Congress 2024.
Mobile World Congress 2024 Lights and shadows of AI according to Demis Hassabis (Google DeepMind): “We will have to worry in three or four years” from our correspondent Pier Luigi Pisa 26 February 2024
Hassabis was referring, in particular, to smart glasses and viewers. But that doesn’t mean that a bracelet like Motorola’s, more refined than the current version, can’t have a significant impact on the future.
And if these days it comes naturally to think so, it’s also because Mark Zuckerberg – not long ago – he talked about a technology he’s working on Meta which will allow, through electromyography, to capture the nervous system signals that start from the brain and reach the hands, with the aim of controlling other digital devices through mental “gestures”..