Motorola showcases unique flip phone concept

Motorola showed off a new flip phone concept at Lenovo Tech World 2022, and it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Over the years, we’ve seen a few foldable concept phones from the likes of LG (RIP), Oppo, and TCL, but none have gone as far as Motorola.

While most clamshell concepts give you a “regular” phone that turns into a mini tablet, Motorola’s concept (via CNET) starts as a compact 5-inch phone and then expands into a full-sized 6.5-inch phone. This is to the nascent foldable phone market what the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 is to the foldable phone market. Something like.

Particularly nice is how the wallpaper and home screen UI animate and expand with the physical space of the screen. Indeed, the display snippets we’ve seen show this to be a fully functional phone, although you’re unlikely to see it in stores.

This twist in format was predicted earlier this year, but this is the first time we’re seeing tangible proof of concept.

Last month, we received a surprise hands-on video of the canceled LG Rollable, which never went on sale due to LG’s parent company’s unfortunate exit from the smartphone market. This video showed off a seductively functional flip phone concept.

Along with the Oppo X 2021 and various TCL concept phones, we have now seen a number of seemingly complete foldable prototypes without any follow-on retail product.

Could 2022 finally be the year that changes this? We do not live up to expectations.