Slap bracelet phones: a reality
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could wear your phone as a bracelet? Granted this technology might turn up sooner than you would have thought. In fact, its first demos have already been delivered at Lenovo’s tech conference this past month.To be honest, this revolution was precedented by consumers, keeping in mind that it’s been a while since we’ve seen gear watches and curved displays. After this gap, another technological revolution in similar fields had to be due.
Lenovo’s come up with two devices with flexible foldable screens but sadly, these phablets are stillborn and have yet not surpassed the incubation phase. They are nowhere near being qualified as produce quality but hey- they work. After this bold step, the least we can do is cut them some slack by commending this bravado.
Here’s your guide to what a not-so-distant future might have in store for you:
Let’s get into the details of the smaller of the 2 devices. It’s a phone, alright, but it transforms into a bracelet if you slap it atop your wrist. There are hinges lining the back and soft areas that allow bending and folding. The OLED display up front is flexible all over. The hard parts of the back is where all the internal hardware and chipsets lie. No they are not flexible- yet! Those babies are still in the future.
We’ve seen the demo. The OLED display causes black bubbles to appear when the device is folded but Lenovo wavered the trouble of explaining this to us by saying that these devices have still not passed the experimental phase. We guess it’s alright? You be the judge.
The bigger of the two devices was a tablet. It does not completely folds on your wrist (that would be ridiculous for an 8 inch tablet). It folds to form a rather thick android smartphone with all the regular functionality. It has one hinge at the center of the device that allows foldability. The display is the same OLED panel and some sources confirm it’s coated with a plastic sheath. Once unfolded, this sheath lies atop the OLED display and has a visible gap between the screen and itself. This is because it is bigger than the screen as it needs to be able to fully stretch when folded. This, to us, seems to be a deal breaker. Why not leave the OLED panel uncovered? Also there’s no pliable plastic sheath hiding the hinges at the back of this tablet-phone hybrid and it looks plain ugly.
We think that a lot of thought needs to be put into the design of these 2 devices. Lenovo’s not ready to let them out just yet. When asked about their plans to release such products, they meekly mentioned sometime in the upcoming five years. They also did not leak the name of the manufacturer of the OLED panels who has accompanied them on this venture.
Though these phones may not be ready at the time, we’d like to commend Lenovo’s effort at making this big a leap and hope to God that other competing manufacturers will follow its suit.
, 2016-08-02 18:31:55 Like : 0 , DisLike : 0 Comments : 0
⇪