Just three months before it quit the smartphone business for good, LG insisted it had actually built — and would shortly sell — a rollable phone. But did it really make one? The only proof was a brief teaser at the top of a virtual press conference that could have totally been CG, and the phone never saw the light of day, unless you believe the rumor that the company sold a handful to its own employees in Korea.

















Rollable unrolls.


GIF by Sean Hollister / The Verge







But now, for the first time, we can see a real LG rollable phone unrolling its screen in the wild (via NotebookCheck). It’s a dead ringer for the image that Korea’s Agency for Technology and Standards regulatory body revealed last March, and we see it unroll from so many angles (with so much glare and other hard-to-fake video elements) that it seems wholly legit.

As you probably just saw, it’s a brief video, and there’s not a lot to glean beyond the utter awesomeness of beholding a screen that rolls. The LG Rollable is clearly motorized since the screen extends automatically at the press of a button, and it’s neat to see how you automatically get more screen real estate (and app icons) as it does. You could totally hide some tablet-mode apps in that rollable “drawer.” The phone was rumored to have a 7.4-inch, 1600 x 2428 screen that shrinks down to 6.8-inch, 1080 x 2428 when you roll it, in case you’re wondering.

We also get to see the back, with its highly reflective finish and what appear to be three camera modules plus a flash. There’s also a green sticker with the number “3,” which could mean anything, I suppose.
























While LG Electronics’ rolling phone dreams were dashed, you should know that LG Display’s might live on — both LG and Samsung’s display divisions are still pursuing all sorts of wild concept screens. Reputable leaker Evan Blass also reported in May that Motorola is developing a rollable codenamed Felix.

If any of our readers happen to stumble across an LG Rollable we can play with — or any other amazing device that never saw the light of day, like the Nvidia Shield Portable 2 — please get in touch with me at sean.com. We can’t ethically pay for stories, but we can pay shipping, we’ll treat it gently, and we’ll return it to you promptly afterward.

Source: The Verge

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