Motorola’s practical Moto Rizr roll-up concept

Lenovo’s MWC booth had something interesting up its sleeve with Motorola’s rollable smartphone concept, also known as the Moto Rizr. Yes, a nod to the iconic Motorola Rizr Z3 slider phone from 2006. The newly designed device features a 5-inch display with a 15:9 aspect ratio that expands vertically to a 6.5-inch diagonal with a 22:9 aspect ratio.

Motorola roll-up concept

This means you can switch from a mini-sized phone to a larger one with the push of a button, giving you both a phone that’s easy to use with one hand and a larger screen for consuming media when needed. All it takes is a double tap on the side.

Motorola Roll Up Concept Profile

The screen is a pOLED display manufactured by BOE, and like all roll-up and foldable displays, it poses a number of questions about durability. The panel wraps around the back of the device, leaving a small area of ​​the display available for notifications or as a camera viewfinder to preview shots.

Motorola roll up concept camera interface

Another interesting aspect is that the headset and the selfie camera are actually hidden behind the panel, so the display goes down whenever you make/receive a call or want to take a selfie.

The roll-up mechanism automatically expands the view in apps like YouTube for a more immersive experience and in the email app to give you a larger canvas to type on. The icons and wallpapers on the home screen also realign themselves when you expand or contract the display.

Motorola’s rollable concept phone weighs a hefty 210 grams and packs a 3,000mAh battery – that’s pretty much all we get as far as specs go. It would be interesting to see where Motorola moves forward with this concept and how it plans to bring a rollable phone to market.

Motorola roll-up concept

Durability is a big question mark with roll up devices even more so than foldables. The roll-up screen of this Motorola is always exposed and a simple drop could potentially destroy the whole experience. We also need to account for the motion mechanism that moves the display up and down. Then again rollable phones make better use of space in a more compact form factor which is an attractive proposition.