A wearable smartphone?
Forget smartwatches, what if you could just have a device that acted as your smartphone and you could just slap it onto your wrist and it becomes a wearable? Well, that’s exactly what Motorola showcased at their Lenovo Tech World exhibition recently. Dubbed the “Adaptive Display Concept” or “e-Bangle”, the device is basically a smartphone with a flexible 6.9” display when fully flat and a 4.9” display when it is propped up like a tent or according to Motorola, “bent and shaped into different forms” based on your usage scenario and what you want to do. For example, the display can also be bent so that the top half curves upward for a more ergonomic viewing experience.
This self-standing position gives you a 4.6-inch display, making it perfect for video calls, scrolling through social feeds, and other vertical-aligned tasks. The use cases are numerous. Delving into the hardware of the display, it’s a 2220x1080 plastic OLED screen. This makes it lighter, thinner and more cost and energy effective compared to a glass-based display, but it also makes it more prone to scratches, since there’s little to no protection (Gorilla Glass or equivalent).
But that’s not all. Once you’re done using it as a phone or you just want to make an impression, you can literally fold the device and wrap it around your wrist like a watch and you have a new hitech timepiece. The e-Bangle also has a number of AI features, one of them being the ability to generate a wallpaper that can be used to match your outfit. So it doesn’t matter if you’re dressed to kill or just lounging about on a lazy Sunday, your e-Bangle will be an extension of your clothing choice.
While flexible and foldable displays are not exactly new to the scene, the tech behind the Adaptive Display Concept or e-Bangle isn’t available yet. But it would be quite interesting to see if Motorola can manufacture this at a consumer level. From there, we might even see flexible laptops from their parent company Lenovo take to the stage.