"Moto Rizr" rollable phone shows why rollables don't work in the real world

Mobile World Congress is this week, and that means wild flexible display concepts that will probably never see the light of day. Motorola has been letting everyone try out the new "Moto Rizr" concept, a name it resurrected from its line of candybar slider phones in the early 2000s. The new Rizr is a rollable display phone that was initially announced in October, but Motorola is sharing a lot more details about the phone at MWC.

Motorola's concept phone is a stumpy-looking 5-inch device with a flexible POLED display that covers the front of the phone, then rolls around the bottom edge and continues almost halfway up the back. Press a button and motorized internal components push the top of the phone upward, dragging the screen up with it. At the end of the process, all that "extra" display that was on the back of the phone has rolled around the bottom edge and is now on the front, and you have a 6.5-inch display that looks like a normal smartphone.

The sliding component of the phone is a wafer-thin rectangle that houses only the display and looks very fragile. Besides sliding up to support the larger display, this rectangle can also slide down a few millimeters from the closed position, revealing the phone body it normally covers. This small area that is typically behind the display houses what would normally be the top bezel components, like a front-facing camera and earpiece speaker. In the closed position, the display wraps around the phone to the back, and this bit of back display doesn't go to waste: It can show the top status bar on the back of the phone or can kick into a viewfinder mode, allowing you to use the primary cameras like a selfie camera.

It's not as small as @moto's razr and who knows how durable it will be if you drop it or dump it in your pocket unprotected but if anyone tells you phones are boring show them this. #mwc2023 pic.twitter.com/FnoooMysnc

-- Avi Greengart (@greengart) February 26, 2023

You can tap the power button twice to make the phone roll up and down, but Motorola's concept also makes the questionable decision to have the display roll up and down automatically based on what the software is doing. The YouTube example sort of makes sense: a landscape video is probably widescreen, so the screen extends. The other example is the keyboard, where the screen rises when the keyboard opens and shrinks when it closes. The motorized screen takes several seconds to open and close, which is likely more of a screen gimmick than something useful. Waiting for the screen to move up and down when you're multitasking with a messaging app sounds very slow and frustrating.

That's all neat, and the promise of a phone that's small in your pocket yet big in your hand would be a compelling idea if not for a laundry list of practicality concerns. First, just like the flexible-display Moto Razr--which seems like a close cousin of this phone--there is nothing that attaches the display to the body of the phone for a large portion of the display length. The bottom edge of the display is attached to the phone, and a portion of the top is attached to the phone, but the middle has to be free-floating for the sliding mechanism to work. There's nothing that holds the middle section to the phone body, so the display often lifts up off the phone, exposing the sides of the display and potentially collecting debris that will damage the display. We're used to displays being rock-hard, perfectly flat glass slabs, so having a display that doesn't sit flat against the phone body and squishes under your finger is a very strange feeling.