LG’s Rollable was a flashy party trick that would have bankrupted anyone daft enough to ship it.
A teardown video of LG’s never-released Rollable phone shows why rollables never became a real category, with cost, fragility and manufacturing pain written all over it.
According to Ars Technica: “The complexity of the internals would have made the Rollable extremely expensive to manufacture, and it would have demanded a high price tag.”
“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.”
The Rollable was one of several rollable concepts that emerged in the early 2020s, after flexible OLED screens finally became cheap enough to tempt phone makers.
That led to foldables like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, though “affordable” is relative here, and those handsets still cost a small fortune.
JerryRigEverything, YouTuber Zack Nelson, got hold of a working LG Rollable prototype, possibly the same unit LG showed off at CES 2021.
It looks like an ordinary phone until a swipe kicks the motor into life and pulls an extra screen from the back, growing the usable display by about 40 per cent without foldable bulk.
Two tiny motors drive straight teeth along an internal track, while zipper-like teeth in the screen assembly keep it locked into the frame as it slides.
The motors make a surprising racket, so LG tried to mask the noise by making the phone play a musical chime.
Inside, a lattice of articulating spring-loaded arms keeps the OLED panel even as the frame moves side to side, with the battery and motherboard sitting in a tray that lets the back expand.
As prototypes go it is chunky, with visible screws, which meant Nelson could disassemble and reassemble it without turning this odd bit of mobile history into scrap.
