This morning Oppo held its annual Inno Day 2020 event to showcase some of the new technological breakthroughs that the company is working on, as well as how it has performed in a tough year for most organisations.
It was the former that grabbed our immediate attention, and an hour into the presentation (pasted below) we got to see the new Oppo X 2021 concept phone.
What makes this device particularly noteworthy is the flexible display technology it touts, specifically the new rollable OLED display, which takes some inspiration from a similar TV that LG recently made available for purchase in South Korea.
Unlike LG’s version, however, the Oppo X 2021 is modelled after a scroll in terms of its rolling mechanism, with each edge of the smartphone capable of pulled from another to increase the size of the display.
It is an interesting approach, and at the very least an engineering feat.
To that end, the 6.7″ ph
one’s OLED screen can be rolled out and expanded to 7.4″ to offer up a tablet-esque amount of screen real estate.
To date, we’ve seen the folding method be employed, most noticeably on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2, but this new design from Oppo seemingly takes care of any creases on the screen as a result of folding.
For now the X 2021 remains a concept, with no official word on when or indeed if it will make its way to market as a fully fledged device. That said, given Oppo’s increasing reach and robust manufacturing/supply chains, bringing one to market should not prove too large of a hurdle.
We’ll have to wait to see whether the X 2021 becomes its own device, or whether the concept phone will be used as a reference to future rollable smartphones that Oppo plans to work on.