Teardown of Unreleased LG Rollable Shows Why Rollable Phones Aren't a Thing (arstechnica.com) 44
A teardown video of LG's never-released Rollable phone helps explain why rollable phones never became a real product category: they were likely too expensive, fragile, and complicated to manufacture at scale.
"The complexity of the internals would have made the Rollable extremely expensive to manufacture, and it would have demanded a high price tag," reports Ars Technica. "Durability is also a big concern. There's just a lot going on inside this phone, with multiple motors, springy arms, tracks, and a screen that has to loop around the back. [...] It seems unlikely the LG Rollable could have survived daily use for multiple years." From the report: The LG Rollable is just one of several rollable concept phones that appeared throughout the early 2020s. Flexible OLED screens had finally become affordable, leading to foldable phones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold. Although, "affordable" is relative here. Foldables were and still are very expensive devices. Based on what we can see of the complex inner workings of the LG Rollable, these devices may have commanded even higher prices. Noted YouTube phone destroyer JerryRigEverything managed to snag a working prototype LG Rollable. It may even be the unit LG demoed at CES 2021.
The device looks like a regular phone at first glance, but a quick swipe activates the motor, which unfurls additional screen real estate from around the back. This makes the viewable area about 40 percent larger without the added thickness of a foldable. The device expands with the aid of two tiny motors, which are attached via straight teeth to an internal track. The screen assembly has zipper-like teeth that keep it locked into the frame as it moves. The motors make a surprising amount of noise when operating, so LG designed the phone to play a musical chime to hide the sound. While the motor does the heavy lifting, the phone also has a lattice of articulating spring-loaded arms inside that keep the OLED panel even as the frame slides side to side. The battery and motherboard sit in a tray that allows the back of the phone to expand as the OLED rolls into view.
This is a prototype phone, featuring a chunky frame and visible screws. That helped Zack Nelson from JerryRigEverything successfully disassemble and reassemble the phone. So this little bit of mobile history was not destroyed, and the teardown gives us a good look at how LG was hoping to attract new customers before calling it quits.
"The complexity of the internals would have made the Rollable extremely expensive to manufacture, and it would have demanded a high price tag," reports Ars Technica. "Durability is also a big concern. There's just a lot going on inside this phone, with multiple motors, springy arms, tracks, and a screen that has to loop around the back. [...] It seems unlikely the LG Rollable could have survived daily use for multiple years." From the report: The LG Rollable is just one of several rollable concept phones that appeared throughout the early 2020s. Flexible OLED screens had finally become affordable, leading to foldable phones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold. Although, "affordable" is relative here. Foldables were and still are very expensive devices. Based on what we can see of the complex inner workings of the LG Rollable, these devices may have commanded even higher prices. Noted YouTube phone destroyer JerryRigEverything managed to snag a working prototype LG Rollable. It may even be the unit LG demoed at CES 2021.
The device looks like a regular phone at first glance, but a quick swipe activates the motor, which unfurls additional screen real estate from around the back. This makes the viewable area about 40 percent larger without the added thickness of a foldable. The device expands with the aid of two tiny motors, which are attached via straight teeth to an internal track. The screen assembly has zipper-like teeth that keep it locked into the frame as it moves. The motors make a surprising amount of noise when operating, so LG designed the phone to play a musical chime to hide the sound. While the motor does the heavy lifting, the phone also has a lattice of articulating spring-loaded arms inside that keep the OLED panel even as the frame slides side to side. The battery and motherboard sit in a tray that allows the back of the phone to expand as the OLED rolls into view.
This is a prototype phone, featuring a chunky frame and visible screws. That helped Zack Nelson from JerryRigEverything successfully disassemble and reassemble the phone. So this little bit of mobile history was not destroyed, and the teardown gives us a good look at how LG was hoping to attract new customers before calling it quits.
never? (Score:2)
Until we can 3d print metal, glass, and silicon in situ. Then you just print it instead of assembling it, and possible within reach of an ambitious middle schooler when the printer technology is off-the-shelf. (So maybe when I'm 80)
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Why glass? Plastic would work just as well.
No, it wouldn't, and that's why. We started using glass on phones for a reason, and that reason is that it works better.
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If you can print rollable plastic phones for cheap, then you can sell disposable phones for cheap. Not everyone wants overpriced premium looking jewelry that they have to treat with care.
You have to treat the plastic screen with more care than the modern glass screen.
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Actually, all phones had plastic displays for unbreakability untill the iPhone, indeed glass because shiny. Glass also conflicted with resistive touch sensing, but Apple/Jobs worked around that by pushing for a finger touch device.
Er what? You do know that Apple "worked around" that by employing capacitive multi-touch technology, right? They bought a company specifically for the patents and tech. Also you do know that Apple worked with Corning to make a type of glass that was rugged, thin, and strong enough for phones. Corning had been experimenting with Gorilla Glass for decades for other applications. Now Gorilla Glass is used in phones and laptops.
Typing on an on-screen keyboard, where your key presses are obscured by your finger is really not all that. Sadly, no alternative made it, partially for being too cumbersome, too expensive or just not from Apple
There have been alternatives as Blackberry existed after the iPhone was introduced
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Apple didn't want to use resistive touch which was very precise
I've owned a lot of resistive touch devices. Zero of them were "very precise". Most of them had a lot of depth so you'd struggle to pick pixels even when they were big enough to easily count. Palm Pilots and Visors, Zoomer/GRiDPad 2390, an HTC phone, blah blah blah. Phones had plastic screens because gorilla glass hadn't been invented yet. Jobs was irritated by his scratched plastic screen at exactly the right time and yes, made the right call. Yes, a plastic stylus on a resistive screen is more precise tha
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Regarding precision, on my Nokia internet tablet I got near pixel precision, yes, not at the level of using a mouse on a pc b
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ideally you'd want to print aluminum oxide but I'd take some tough glass instead.
and if you make your chips outside of the crazy design, you are then stuck having to assemble a possibly impossible jigsaw puzzle.
No, I think in the far future there would be no point in doing traditional photolithography for a low performance consume device that's sub-100 TOPS could be a lower density chip-on-glass or flexi-chip design and much thinner than your typical substrate and packaging.
This is all supposition and armch
Re:never? (Score:4, Interesting)
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What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Informative)
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That's exactly the problem a rolling screen solves.
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Literally every design choice is you phone is an engineering tradeoff. Calling one a dipshit idea because it doesn't fit your use case doesn't make it a bad idea, it makes you a moron.
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And? Early adopters have bugs. The question is was your ex happy with the phone, not whether it lasted as long as someone other than her expected it to.
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Surely she's overjoyed by a line of nonfunctional pixels and your objection is logical.
No, wait, scratch that. That's all 100% wrong, and you're going nutso.
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Surely she's overjoyed by a line of nonfunctional pixels and your objection is logical.
No, wait, scratch that. That's all 100% wrong, and you're going nutso.
Except you're making assumptions. Early adopters, and adopters of new shiny tech very frequently are overjoyed and accept that their toy may not have the same longevity as something else. It's literally why we call these people early adopters. It's literally the purpose for using a term to separate them from people like you.
You never asked the person, you're making an assumption. OP said she got the phone to impress her friends. Did it work? Maybe it did exctly what she hoped it would do and and was an inve
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You're asking someone on slashdot to "be better."
I'll call that out as a nutso statement. We know people on this site can't "be better." They do, or do not.
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You never asked the person, you're making an assumption
Why don't you go read his response, Dildo Draggins?
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No such problems after two years with the Honor Magic V2. It's prone to develop bright spots on the big display though, if something pointy touches it too forcibly anywhere, which does not need that much force at all. More recent Honor folders may be somewhat improved there.
Re: What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
What is even better than being able to brag to your friends is to be able to complain to your friends and family. So this is the gift that keeps on giving.
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My ex didn't ask me for advice first and bought the Samsung folding phone to impress her friends. Yep, it's got a big line of non-functional pixels down the middle now, exactly as I would have expected.
Even when they are functioning for a bit, that fold is a real distraction. I looked at one once, and it was a big nope. You can't unsee the fold. I can't be the only person who wants to look at a nice, flat screen.
Conjecture - as the Millennials are reaching the age of presbyopia, I wonder if that is driving some of this foldable technology?
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The only advantage of that phone was you could use a photo of an open toilet for a screensaver, so every time you closed the phone it looked like you were closing a toilet lid. I tried to set that screensaver up for her, but she wouldn't let me.
That's because only men are supposed to put the toilet seat down....
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The devil is moving parts. (Score:4)
Moving parts is the curse on durability.
Todays phones have 0 moving parts. If you exclude the external buttons for volume and power etc.
Moving parts are point of failure. Moving parts almost always point to a point of dust/liguid intrusion. Moving parts are extensive to build assemble and maintain.
Rollables as designed currently are a mess of moving parts. And in this LG phone case. Motorised moving parts. Which is even worse.
I don't really think you will see a rollable until almost all moving parts are gone. The only way I see them working is if you get a screen that literally rolls up all by itself. No extra casing, mechanisms etc. Just the screen that rolls up into tube around a solid core body. To do this the durability of the screen needs to improve vastly. The structural regidity needs to be a core attribute of the screen not the thing holding the screen.
And to top it all off it has to be cheap. Lets face if a rollable is going to wear out much faster than a modern gorilla glass phone. So replacement cycles are going to be much quicker. People will not shell out $3000 every 6-12 months for a phone. ( I acknowledge the apple cult does have a subset of people that do this. )
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I'd trust the durability of every other part more than the durability of the screen itself.
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There are moving parts in all the cameras, you know, for being abot to focus.
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What vibrates the phone? Is that not a moving part? I thought it was a tiny motor with an off-balance weight attached to the central shaft.
Also, speakers are a moving back and forth to generate sound.
Why (Score:2)
Why would you want to roll a phone anyway?
Too expensive, fragile (Score:2)
...and stupid.
After all, we gave up scrolls for books, because rolling the things is dumb.
two separate screens would be better.... (Score:3)
...if your browser was on one screen and all the popup ad windows were on the other.
We are way past these things being phones. (Score:3)
Letâ(TM)s just call them what they are, dopamine delivery devices.
In which case no idea is too far out in order to monetize what goes through them.