Hands on: Motorola has a phone that's somehow also a bracelet
Motorola's got a bending phone concept that we'll probably never be able to buy. But it is very, very cool.
How would you like to have a smartphone you can bend all you like without it breaking? Motorola's got you covered.
At this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company brought a new bendy phone concept (the company showed a similar, yet far more primitive prototype back in 2016). The phone was announced in 2023, but now we got to see how it actually works in person.
A Motorola rep gave me a short demo, and I was pleasantly surprised with how well the phone worked. It supports several modes of operation, including "tent mode," which we used to play a simple game (I lost. Badly). You can also bend a smaller portion of it to turn it into a stand, and the phone will actually push its user interface upwards, giving you full control of the apps on the screen.
Finally, yes, you can use the phone as a bracelet, though you do need to wear a smaller bracelet to attach the phone to. Would we do this? It's probably not very comfy to wear for longer stretches of time. But as a fashion accessory, or something that you'd wear to a very special type of party (keyword: cyberwear), it could work.
The way Motorola did this, the rep explained to me, is by using a bendable pOLED display, and a number of smaller batteries instead of the typical one big unit, arranged in such a way to form a sort of a spine for the device, supporting it when you bend it.
We don't expect to see the bendy phone on the market very soon (if at all). Motorola wouldn't let me take it into my own hands and bend it myself, though I did test the touch display (it works the same it does on any other phone, except it's bendy). The company rep also told me that there aren't too many apps designed for it at the time - understandable, given it's just a concept at this stage. But it did work surprisingly well throughout the demo. Perhaps Motorola is onto something here?