Last month we got a look at what might have been for LG, had it not decided to get out of a smartphone market that had shown little recent interest in its products. The LG Scroll was clearly almost ready to go judging by the packaging, but the company gave up before any units could be sold.
Now it looks like Motorola is picking up the baton and running with it. The company has shown off not one but two scrollable prototypes that show us what’s possible with the quirky new form factor.
First up is a dinky 4in smartphone, at a time when most people want a comically big screen to stretch out their pockets. But wait! With a touch of a button on the side, the screen extends upwards to a more conventional 6.5in size. All the while, the content on screen dynamically adapts to its new dimensions, meaning it can be used in either form.
That’s probably a bit more practical than clamshell foldables (including Motorola’s own Razr) which fold in half for the same space-saving effect. Not only is it still usable in its small form factor, but it doesn’t have the finite number of uses that a folding screen has.
The next concept is actually more exciting for my money: a laptop with the same party trick. In the video (00:52 if you want to skip to it) you can see a laptop with a seemingly normal landscape display shifting to a taller, more square shape giving you extra space to multitask windows or just get the biggest possible spreadsheet open without whacking down an extra screen.
Both are concepts for the moment, but hopefully this is something that Motorola intends to bring to market at some point. The only issue is likely to be price: don’t expect these to be cheap — at least not at first. And if a dinky scrollable laptop costs considerably more than a standard 15- or 17-inch model, then it’ll seem a whole lot less appealing to the busy multitasker on the go…
