Oppo has announced plans for Oppo X 2021, the Chinese manufacturer’s first roll-up smartphone.
Revealed in a video teaser presented at the Inno Day conference, the new OPPO phone is presented with a minimalist design, very similar to conventional smartphone products.
Oppo X 2021 could be the first mobile phone available in 2021
Instead of a hinge that allows the screen to be folded by bending, we have a housing with an extendable chassis on one side and a mechanism that allows the screen to be hidden by rolling. The screen is not wrapped in the pattern of a roll of paper, but just slides over a 6.8 mm roll in an invisible compartment under the cover on the back of the phone.
The design has multiple advantages, starting with the elimination of the crease in the folding area and the reduction of mechanical wear on the OLED panel, eliminating the need for a second screen and operating with one hand.
Oppo states that the extension and retraction of the screen is done by electric drive, by virtue of a mechanism similar to the solutions used for retractable cameras. The display diagonal thus varies between 6.7 inches and 7.4 inches, the phone becoming a mini-tablet. The width of the screen thus varies between 70 mm and 107 mm in fully extended mode.
To accommodate the rolling screen and the mechanism responsible for operating it, Oppo states that certain internal components have been rethought and placed in an overlapping model, while the antennas have been moved to the fixed side of the housing.
At the rear, the housing separates into two halves that slide over each other, without exposing a bending area or visible hinge.
The only conventional aspect to the new Oppo X is the camera with lenses arranged vertically, accommodated on the fixed half of the case.
Expected features of the new Oppo flagship include a front camera hidden under the active surface of the scroll screen, 32MP periscope camera with 11X optical zoom, fast charging system with power up to 125W via USB-C cable, and 65W in mode wireless.
