I don't see how that's technically any less possible than a Galaxy Fold (6 years ago!). The flaws on the screen, risk of dust etc. is the very same as the first release from Samsung.
Some bits of background information:
##. The sample shown here is not production-ready, it's a revision "DV2" (visible at timestamp 5:50 in the upper left corner of the device) which was hand-assembled approximately one year before the planned launch (~Oct/Nov 2019) to be presented at CES and closed-door customer meetings.
DV stands for "Development version", which is the phase where all the parts are assembled to proceed development in the various SW/HW/Quality Teams.
In LG-terms that means it was only the SECOND revision of that hardware that the R&D built. Usually there were 4-5 additional revisions on mechanical design, board layout, RF-tuning etc. before entering mass-production (LG cycle: EV->DV1->DV2->DVx->PV1->PV2->MP--> Mass-production)
The MP-revision is the initial mass-production test, where the factory tested if they can efficiently mass-produce this design by producing ~500pcs and keeping notes on issues and difficulties to fix before entering actual high-volume production.
##. The big handicap of LG at that time: The launch of this product was still 10~12 months in the future, was definitely not going to be a high-volume product and the brand needed investment in many countries to carry such a premium device.
Meanwhile sales of the last flagships LG G8, V50, V60 was behind expectations, the period required a massive increase in R&D investment to commercialize 5G technology and Chinese vendors (Xiaomi, Oppo/Vivo/OnePlus, Lenovo) made a huge push into international carrier-markets.
It was all on thin ice already, but there were also some great Mid/High-tier devices in the pipeline, LG was in the lead for commercializing 5G in many markets and had a few aces up its sleeve for the coming quarters like this rollable device.
Then COVID came. Global Sales of the industry collapsed, everything became slower and also semiconductor pricing exploded.
The companies which made it through COVID better than others were those who already had solid brands and high-volume sales before that period. They had the warehouses filled with tested and launched devices, they cut a bit on profit, increased a bit on price and prepared a semi-hibernation mode.
LG's mobile division was not in such a state in most markets. It wasn't profitable for several quarters at this point, and it was clear that it won't be profitable for several quarters to come.
##. Rollables are most-likely not "a thing" today, because LG did so much fundamental research on this and owns many of the relevant patents.
The key tech is less in the panel itself than the supporting structure (the skeleton supporting and stabilizing the panel, you can also see this in the R&D involved in the hinge-tech of folding devices)
Oppo (and Lenovo iirc) were presenting similar rollable form-factors on roadshows or press-events ~2019, but this was prior to the patents (especially [0]) being granted, likely also used the OLED Panel from LG Display (but I'm not sure the designs were actually considering durability as much as LG already did at this stage)
Came here to say this. Glad to see it already posted. I remember going to CES every year in the mid/late 00’s, and always badgering vendors about their roll up oled advances, bend radius, tensile strength, impact resistance, failure behavior, etc… after a few years it became clear to me the inherent fragility wasn’t going to make it practical for use cases I wanted. Guess I’ll get comfy and keep waiting for a display tech closer to a textile.
- the original Motorola StarTac "Star Trek Communicator" flip.
- the Danger Hiptop / Sidekick II rotating screen-over-keyboard
- the Motorola Droid slide-out keyboard
- the OnePlus 7Pro slide-out selfie-cam
Only that last one was motorized, but mine is still working. Holes and divots and islands and any other kind of screen interference is strictly inferior.
I liked the slide down mechanism of the nokia 7110 also. Bonus points for the microphone being at the bottom of it so it served a purpose by putting the mic really close to the mouth (unlike later sliders like the banana phone which didn't do this)
The front camera was hidden and you would slide the back up to expose it. Was not motorized and functioned using magnets. Very similar to what old dumb phones used. Super reliable and easy to use.
I loved my LG Phones, once they gave up on making phones I moved on to iOS. There was always something nice about each model. The LG G2 had an IR at the top of it, so it was a universal remote control, it doesn't age very well (wife still has hers, but you cannot see the screen), but it was at its lifetime / prime an amazing phone, the only change I would have done is add an SD card to it.
The G5 was another great phone, I believe it was designed to be a "modular phone" the bottom would come out letting you take the battery out, but it could also add an attachment to the phone, I never did buy an attachment though, and I think the last one I had was the G7.
I enjoyed their tablets too.
For some reason people cling to other brands, and slept on LG which made some really decent Android phones.
Both my G5 and G7 still turn on, I always say that by the release of the G7 (I forget the year) and possibly the G5, all decent quality smartphones got to the "good enough" stage of smartphones where it feels like I could own one for more than just 2 years before it shows signs of wear.
My G4 succumbed to this issue, and I was never able to revive it. I had some important documents and images there that I hadn't yet backed up to cloud that disappeared along with it. Still very sour about that. Other than that I enjoyed the phone, felt the dimensions were perfect and the camera was good for its time. But a defect of that nature is too serious to overlook so that was the last LG phone I ever owned.
The V series were always my favorite - also moved to iOS after owning a V60.
Never used it with the dual screen case as it was too large. But funnily enough I now use it all the time as a pro music player, remote for my Tv, tablet, etc. The dual screen is actually very well implemented and so is the "desktop" mode if you plug it in via usb-c to a big screen. The thing even shoots 8K video !
My first LG ended up being my last LG because it was defective. Screen issues started popping up about a year after purchase. Sending it in repairs didn't accomplish anything. They probably returned the same phone to me untouched since the screen issues would go away if the phone wasn't used for a few weeks (but it would always come back). While other people had similar issues, LG never acknowledged the problem. It was not confidence inspiring.
In terms of what the phone delivered between software and hardware: it was a wonderful phone, but I lacked confidence in the brand to buy another.
In contrast, I have never had a defective phone from another company. Heck, I've only had two phones that ended up with cracked screens (and those were clearly my fault).
I had a similar experience. I had an LG V20 and I loved so much about it, especially the extra display at the top for notifications and such, and the really incredible DAC. But the glass, both on the screen and the camera on the back, broke 4 times over the two years I owned it. It's still the only phone I've ever broken glass on.
I will forever remember the V20.
I was at the mall shooting the shit with some friends in late 2016 waiting for the bus to bring us back to campus. We went to the Verizon store to look at the hottest new phones none of us could afford.
There was a V20, and someone had changed the little top screen to display the static text "dicks out for harambe"
I still have a photo of it kicking around here somewhere.
Which model was it? Curious, I know older LG models were not the best, but it felt to me that their last few sets were good enough for me. I am a power user for phones too. I use Discord, Slack, etc.
If I recall correctly, the G4. The issue was definitely more memorable than the model name: the image on the right half the screen would gradually compress vertically.
I liked my LG phones until I broke a screen and the cost to get a replacement was absurd because noone has them in stock.
I am still kind of shocked that the non-leading manufacturers haven't standardized on hardware. Every company besides Apple, google, and Samsung, should get together and create the beige box computer of cell phones, you can get influencers modding them, gamers overclocking, etc. all the things that keep the desktop market alive.
Instead of working together, every one of these companies acts like a greedy monopoly when they don't have monopolistic powers, or even any soft form of lock-in. Even if all they did was make phones that had easy to replace standardized screens and batteries. I could see them quickly making in-roads in corporate IT, and for kids.
But none of them want to work together, so we get iphones, a few higher end iphone ripoffs, and a bunch of low end iphone ripoffs.
edit:
I'm also mad that I lost my cat S61, and that the S62 looks like everything else.
edit 2:
I also hate that I switched to an iphone, and how comfortably easy it was to get full locked-in in two years.
LG got it right with the original Nexus 4, although battery life was a problem for all phones in that era. That phone had everything in a small form factor and it also came with a glass back that enabled the phone to fall off a perfectly level service, which was rectified with a little rubber piece.
The Nexus 4 should have lofted LG into the big league and the Nexus 4 owner should have graduated to a LG flagship. But this didn't happen, in part because people stayed with Google and moved on to what would become the Pixel series.
The problem with smartphones is that they are ultimately 'hand rectangles' and the average customer only needs adequate rather than super-deluxe. For a while it was possible to compete on features, battery life and mega-pixels, for people to queue outside phone retailers to be first with the new status-symbol-gadget. But times changed as the tech matured.
Most people couldn't care less about their phone specifications, so long as it works. Getting the latest and greatest phone makes as much sense as on insisting on the latest model of hand basin or the most hi-tech garden trowel. Who cares apart from reviewers or people with little going on in their lives.
> it also came with a glass back that enabled the phone to fall off a perfectly level service
I used to put mine on my wallet, and it took ages to figure out why I kept dropping it: the moment you set it down, it would start sliding _incredibly_ slowly.
I can't really speak for other Android users, but in those eras I either owned or was paying more attention to the HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Pixel, etc. phones because of their aftermarket OS support.
I really liked the G2 as well. It was the first phone (at least that I saw) to put the power and volume buttons on the back of the phone, where a ton of later phones would eventually start putting the fingerprint sensor.
I replaced LG's ROM with CyanogenMod back in the day, and it was such a smooth experience. The main reason I moved on from it was because I cracked the screen and the replacement screen I got (installed by a local repair shop) had a touch sensitivity issue along the top edge.
I think the article gets at it indirectly: a complex mechanism with multiple motors, tracks, arms, etc, substantially more complicated and thus more failure-prone than any folding phone ever and also substantially more expensive to make.
Additionally, the flexible screen is on the outside which will quickly get damaged since it is made of soft plastic. It's too fragile for something that lives in your pocket every day. All modern foldables have the folding screen on the inside to keep them protected, and a standard glass screen on the front.
The whole display is plastic, including the part on the front that doesn't wrap around. Yes the part behind the glass panel on the back would be protected, but the front of the phone wouldn't be.
"they" being Huawei, and their phone suffers from the same problem, the main display can be easily damaged by dust, dirt, or just your fingernails pressing into it. Notably Samsung's trifold kept the folding display entirely inside when folded, presumably to avoid this problem.
LG made nice phones. It was also ahead with the Optimus 3D, which could take stereoscopic photos and show them without glasses. Never understood why this didn't take off. My G6 spend a night in the ocean and was working fine afterwards. My Pixel gave up immediately after being dipped into a clear lake briefly.
I don't really care to roll it up but why not an bit soft? To cup in my hand or fitted in my pocket would be nice instead of this brick. We can make lighter thinner phones if they don't need so much rigidity.
Yes, these additional ads on embedded videos are often even shown to YouTube Premium subscribers, because the embedded widget doesn't have access to cookies to tell you are a subscriber. I think it depends on how the site configures CORS.
The last few times I bought a phone for myself or the company my main question was how low the price per years of software support is. Then I pushed the proposals up for approval and they asked me... the same thing.
Phones get the crap kicked out of them. They need to be really robust.
I have an iPhone 17 Pro, and it's the first one that I've had (since the SE), that seems to have some "clunk" to it. I've already dropped it a couple of times, with no issues.
I want one of those "shake to flip" phones they had in Geostorm.
I don't see how that's technically any less possible than a Galaxy Fold (6 years ago!). The flaws on the screen, risk of dust etc. is the very same as the first release from Samsung.
Some bits of background information:
##. The sample shown here is not production-ready, it's a revision "DV2" (visible at timestamp 5:50 in the upper left corner of the device) which was hand-assembled approximately one year before the planned launch (~Oct/Nov 2019) to be presented at CES and closed-door customer meetings.
DV stands for "Development version", which is the phase where all the parts are assembled to proceed development in the various SW/HW/Quality Teams.
In LG-terms that means it was only the SECOND revision of that hardware that the R&D built. Usually there were 4-5 additional revisions on mechanical design, board layout, RF-tuning etc. before entering mass-production (LG cycle: EV->DV1->DV2->DVx->PV1->PV2->MP--> Mass-production)
The MP-revision is the initial mass-production test, where the factory tested if they can efficiently mass-produce this design by producing ~500pcs and keeping notes on issues and difficulties to fix before entering actual high-volume production.
##. The big handicap of LG at that time: The launch of this product was still 10~12 months in the future, was definitely not going to be a high-volume product and the brand needed investment in many countries to carry such a premium device.
Meanwhile sales of the last flagships LG G8, V50, V60 was behind expectations, the period required a massive increase in R&D investment to commercialize 5G technology and Chinese vendors (Xiaomi, Oppo/Vivo/OnePlus, Lenovo) made a huge push into international carrier-markets.
It was all on thin ice already, but there were also some great Mid/High-tier devices in the pipeline, LG was in the lead for commercializing 5G in many markets and had a few aces up its sleeve for the coming quarters like this rollable device.
Then COVID came. Global Sales of the industry collapsed, everything became slower and also semiconductor pricing exploded.
The companies which made it through COVID better than others were those who already had solid brands and high-volume sales before that period. They had the warehouses filled with tested and launched devices, they cut a bit on profit, increased a bit on price and prepared a semi-hibernation mode.
LG's mobile division was not in such a state in most markets. It wasn't profitable for several quarters at this point, and it was clear that it won't be profitable for several quarters to come.
##. Rollables are most-likely not "a thing" today, because LG did so much fundamental research on this and owns many of the relevant patents.
The key tech is less in the panel itself than the supporting structure (the skeleton supporting and stabilizing the panel, you can also see this in the R&D involved in the hinge-tech of folding devices)
Oppo (and Lenovo iirc) were presenting similar rollable form-factors on roadshows or press-events ~2019, but this was prior to the patents (especially [0]) being granted, likely also used the OLED Panel from LG Display (but I'm not sure the designs were actually considering durability as much as LG already did at this stage)
[0] https://patents.google.com/patent/EP3506247A1
[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2014123272A1
[2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10564676B2
I've been waiting for a Global from Earth Final Conflict for nearly 2 decades.
https://community.ultimaker.com/topic/15743-global-link-prop...
Also reminds me of the rollable map screen from Red Planet (2000).
As seen here: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsN...
Came here to say this. Glad to see it already posted. I remember going to CES every year in the mid/late 00’s, and always badgering vendors about their roll up oled advances, bend radius, tensile strength, impact resistance, failure behavior, etc… after a few years it became clear to me the inherent fragility wasn’t going to make it practical for use cases I wanted. Guess I’ll get comfy and keep waiting for a display tech closer to a textile.
Phone mechanisms which worked for me:
- the original Motorola StarTac "Star Trek Communicator" flip.
- the Danger Hiptop / Sidekick II rotating screen-over-keyboard
- the Motorola Droid slide-out keyboard
- the OnePlus 7Pro slide-out selfie-cam
Only that last one was motorized, but mine is still working. Holes and divots and islands and any other kind of screen interference is strictly inferior.
I liked the slide down mechanism of the nokia 7110 also. Bonus points for the microphone being at the bottom of it so it served a purpose by putting the mic really close to the mouth (unlike later sliders like the banana phone which didn't do this)
I loved the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 slide mechanism.
The front camera was hidden and you would slide the back up to expose it. Was not motorized and functioned using magnets. Very similar to what old dumb phones used. Super reliable and easy to use.
The slide out cam on the One Plus 7 Pro was exceptional. I still miss it sometimes.
I had that phone and it was a great phone with the percentage screen real estate.
Bummer that AT&T dropped network support for it just a year after I got it
I liked the Startac and Razr formfactor.
I loved my LG Phones, once they gave up on making phones I moved on to iOS. There was always something nice about each model. The LG G2 had an IR at the top of it, so it was a universal remote control, it doesn't age very well (wife still has hers, but you cannot see the screen), but it was at its lifetime / prime an amazing phone, the only change I would have done is add an SD card to it.
The G5 was another great phone, I believe it was designed to be a "modular phone" the bottom would come out letting you take the battery out, but it could also add an attachment to the phone, I never did buy an attachment though, and I think the last one I had was the G7.
I enjoyed their tablets too.
For some reason people cling to other brands, and slept on LG which made some really decent Android phones.
Both my G5 and G7 still turn on, I always say that by the release of the G7 (I forget the year) and possibly the G5, all decent quality smartphones got to the "good enough" stage of smartphones where it feels like I could own one for more than just 2 years before it shows signs of wear.
LG never really recovered after releasing several phones with bootlooping issues between 2015-16: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_smartphone_bootloop_issues
Plus their software support was poor, even for the era.
My G4 succumbed to this issue, and I was never able to revive it. I had some important documents and images there that I hadn't yet backed up to cloud that disappeared along with it. Still very sour about that. Other than that I enjoyed the phone, felt the dimensions were perfect and the camera was good for its time. But a defect of that nature is too serious to overlook so that was the last LG phone I ever owned.
At least they gave us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbiEESkyaeM
The V series were always my favorite - also moved to iOS after owning a V60.
Never used it with the dual screen case as it was too large. But funnily enough I now use it all the time as a pro music player, remote for my Tv, tablet, etc. The dual screen is actually very well implemented and so is the "desktop" mode if you plug it in via usb-c to a big screen. The thing even shoots 8K video !
LG was way ahead of the time.
My LG G3 overheated so much that the screen unglued itself from the case.
Sent it to warranty 3 times, but it happened again every time. The middle of the screen got so hot I could barely hold my finger there.
My first LG ended up being my last LG because it was defective. Screen issues started popping up about a year after purchase. Sending it in repairs didn't accomplish anything. They probably returned the same phone to me untouched since the screen issues would go away if the phone wasn't used for a few weeks (but it would always come back). While other people had similar issues, LG never acknowledged the problem. It was not confidence inspiring.
In terms of what the phone delivered between software and hardware: it was a wonderful phone, but I lacked confidence in the brand to buy another.
In contrast, I have never had a defective phone from another company. Heck, I've only had two phones that ended up with cracked screens (and those were clearly my fault).
I had a similar experience. I had an LG V20 and I loved so much about it, especially the extra display at the top for notifications and such, and the really incredible DAC. But the glass, both on the screen and the camera on the back, broke 4 times over the two years I owned it. It's still the only phone I've ever broken glass on.
My wife had that one, her screen cracked after she dropped it... after she sneezed lol! I was there, I wouldn't of believed it otherwise.
It was a nice phone. The G7 was peak LG phones.
I will forever remember the V20. I was at the mall shooting the shit with some friends in late 2016 waiting for the bus to bring us back to campus. We went to the Verizon store to look at the hottest new phones none of us could afford. There was a V20, and someone had changed the little top screen to display the static text "dicks out for harambe"
I still have a photo of it kicking around here somewhere.
Which model was it? Curious, I know older LG models were not the best, but it felt to me that their last few sets were good enough for me. I am a power user for phones too. I use Discord, Slack, etc.
If I recall correctly, the G4. The issue was definitely more memorable than the model name: the image on the right half the screen would gradually compress vertically.
I liked my LG phones until I broke a screen and the cost to get a replacement was absurd because noone has them in stock.
I am still kind of shocked that the non-leading manufacturers haven't standardized on hardware. Every company besides Apple, google, and Samsung, should get together and create the beige box computer of cell phones, you can get influencers modding them, gamers overclocking, etc. all the things that keep the desktop market alive.
Instead of working together, every one of these companies acts like a greedy monopoly when they don't have monopolistic powers, or even any soft form of lock-in. Even if all they did was make phones that had easy to replace standardized screens and batteries. I could see them quickly making in-roads in corporate IT, and for kids.
But none of them want to work together, so we get iphones, a few higher end iphone ripoffs, and a bunch of low end iphone ripoffs.
edit: I'm also mad that I lost my cat S61, and that the S62 looks like everything else.
edit 2: I also hate that I switched to an iphone, and how comfortably easy it was to get full locked-in in two years.
LG got it right with the original Nexus 4, although battery life was a problem for all phones in that era. That phone had everything in a small form factor and it also came with a glass back that enabled the phone to fall off a perfectly level service, which was rectified with a little rubber piece.
The Nexus 4 should have lofted LG into the big league and the Nexus 4 owner should have graduated to a LG flagship. But this didn't happen, in part because people stayed with Google and moved on to what would become the Pixel series.
The problem with smartphones is that they are ultimately 'hand rectangles' and the average customer only needs adequate rather than super-deluxe. For a while it was possible to compete on features, battery life and mega-pixels, for people to queue outside phone retailers to be first with the new status-symbol-gadget. But times changed as the tech matured.
Most people couldn't care less about their phone specifications, so long as it works. Getting the latest and greatest phone makes as much sense as on insisting on the latest model of hand basin or the most hi-tech garden trowel. Who cares apart from reviewers or people with little going on in their lives.
> it also came with a glass back that enabled the phone to fall off a perfectly level service
I used to put mine on my wallet, and it took ages to figure out why I kept dropping it: the moment you set it down, it would start sliding _incredibly_ slowly.
I think the nexus 5 was better. Except the ceramic letters that fell off. It had real 4G (on the Nexus 4 it was unofficial) and was a lot faster
I can't really speak for other Android users, but in those eras I either owned or was paying more attention to the HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Pixel, etc. phones because of their aftermarket OS support.
I really liked the G2 as well. It was the first phone (at least that I saw) to put the power and volume buttons on the back of the phone, where a ton of later phones would eventually start putting the fingerprint sensor.
I replaced LG's ROM with CyanogenMod back in the day, and it was such a smooth experience. The main reason I moved on from it was because I cracked the screen and the replacement screen I got (installed by a local repair shop) had a touch sensitivity issue along the top edge.
Interesting video, but it didn't tell me why rollable phones aren't a thing. It doesn't appear any more flawed than the foldable concept.
The impression I got was "too many parts, too much to go wrong, too expensive to build".
It doesn't rule out that other people might have better ideas, but it does suggest why LG decided it wasn't worth it.
I think the article gets at it indirectly: a complex mechanism with multiple motors, tracks, arms, etc, substantially more complicated and thus more failure-prone than any folding phone ever and also substantially more expensive to make.
Additionally, the flexible screen is on the outside which will quickly get damaged since it is made of soft plastic. It's too fragile for something that lives in your pocket every day. All modern foldables have the folding screen on the inside to keep them protected, and a standard glass screen on the front.
It slides behind a glass panel on the back, so I don't think that's true.
The whole display is plastic, including the part on the front that doesn't wrap around. Yes the part behind the glass panel on the back would be protected, but the front of the phone wouldn't be.
Yet they still make trifold phones where one of the folds is on the outer side...
"they" being Huawei, and their phone suffers from the same problem, the main display can be easily damaged by dust, dirt, or just your fingernails pressing into it. Notably Samsung's trifold kept the folding display entirely inside when folded, presumably to avoid this problem.
If motor is a problem, why don't they make manual rollable by hand?
Screen wouldn’t stay in place, it would keep sliding around
Can be solved with magnets and friction i guess.
LG made nice phones. It was also ahead with the Optimus 3D, which could take stereoscopic photos and show them without glasses. Never understood why this didn't take off. My G6 spend a night in the ocean and was working fine afterwards. My Pixel gave up immediately after being dipped into a clear lake briefly.
I don't really care to roll it up but why not an bit soft? To cup in my hand or fitted in my pocket would be nice instead of this brick. We can make lighter thinner phones if they don't need so much rigidity.
The batteries have to be rigid. That's the problem at the moment.
Direct link to video: https://youtu.be/vDMpANNGND4
The site also puts two non-youtube video ads in front of the youtube video so you can't just watch it.
Those are YouTube ads. YouTube shows more ads in embedded videos than when watched on YouTube itself.
https://citl.news.niu.edu/2024/07/08/upcoming-changes-to-you...
They didn't look like YT ads (visually the UI was different) - I also have YouTube Premium and it has no ads.
Yes, these additional ads on embedded videos are often even shown to YouTube Premium subscribers, because the embedded widget doesn't have access to cookies to tell you are a subscriber. I think it depends on how the site configures CORS.
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/1n04464/i_have_you...
Huh. I didn't get those ads.
But it (looking at the demo innards) doesn't add much of anything you wouldn't get from watching one expand and comparing that to opening a foldable?
LG had quite good phones and unique ideas. Too bad nowadays almost all the phones look and feel the same.
idk, debatable.
The last few times I bought a phone for myself or the company my main question was how low the price per years of software support is. Then I pushed the proposals up for approval and they asked me... the same thing.
That was too delicate for everyday use.
Phones get the crap kicked out of them. They need to be really robust.
I have an iPhone 17 Pro, and it's the first one that I've had (since the SE), that seems to have some "clunk" to it. I've already dropped it a couple of times, with no issues.
I want one of those "shake to flip" phones they had in Geostorm.
Yeah, one trip to the beach, and it's all seized up/scratched.
Now roll me a 27” screen on my laptop and a 13” on my phone
Lenovo has a laptop with a rolling screen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GsJi1KvHhA