Foldable is the buzzword in the tech world in 2019 but what if we tell you there’ll soon be a rollable phone as well. While Huawei and Samsung are yet to mass retail their foldable smartphones that caught the attention earlier this year, it’s now time for Sony to make the jump to the latest flexible display bandwagon with their rollable smartphone.
It’s reported that Sony is working on a competitor to the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X. The company is developing prototypes of a phone whose display can be rolled up, reports tipster Max J.
The tipster revealed that he had intel about prototypes of the device being made at Sony. What’s interesting is that the rollable Sony phone could be launched as early as December 2019 or early 2020.
The Sony rollable phone will come bearing a “Nautilus design” that will incorporate an LG display. While the retail device will be powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 855 flagship Chipset with Snapdragon X50 5G modem, the current prototypes are reportedly being powered by a Snapdragon 7-series SoC, codenamed SD7250. The camera on the phone will come with 10X zoom and the device will be backed by a 3220mAh battery.
Similar to Sony, Samsung is also working on a rollable display smartphone. The rolling mechanism will be similar to the BlackBerry Private’s but instead of a QWERTY keyboard, you’ll now have more screen in continuity. On the topic of rollable displays, LG was, however, the first in the world to introduce a rollable OLED TV – the LG Signature OLED TV R.
Unlike Sony, Microsoft is working on a foldable Surface PC with Android App compatibility. The foldable PC is expected to run on Windows Core OS for dual displays and will employ a 10 nanometer Intel Lakefield Processor which itself is set to release later this year.
Google has also patented a foldable phone with multiple pages. The patent shows a book-style phone that opens and closes like the Galaxy Fold, but with more that one displays on the inside. As a book, the patent revealed a hinge where multiple screens will be hooked like pages in a book.