OPPO seems to be developing a sliding smartphone with an extendable display. Well, at least if the latest design patent is to be believed. OPPO patented that design with CNIPA (China National Intellectual Property Administration) quite recently.
That patent shares several images of the device itself, giving us a good look at the thing. These are sketches, but they’re quite nice sketches, as we usually get from CNIPA.
As you can see in the provided images, this phone is quite compact. It becomes much taller when the display extends. Based on what we can see here, I’d say that you get around 40-percent extra screen real estate when the display is fully extended.
When not extended, this phone offers a 1:1 display aspect ratio
When it’s not, the phone’s display offers a 1:1 display aspect ratio, or something very close to it. Unfortunately, this patent listing did not share the dimensions of the device, that would be interesting to check out.
The bezels should be pretty thin on this phone, though do note that some black bars may be included. This particular model seems to have three cameras on the back, or at least two plus an LED flash.
What’s interesting here is that I don’t see a power key, or volume rocker buttons. There are some cutouts on the side, but those seem to be too thin to be buttons.
What is also not visible here is the fingerprint scanner, and the front-facing camera. It is possible OPPO envisioned an under-display camera for this device, and the same goes for a fingerprint scanner.
On the flip side, this is just a design patent, so it’s possible that the physical buttons, front-facing camera, and fingerprint scanner may be implemented later on. They may not even be a part of the picture at the moment.
This is just a patent, but it does suggest that OPPO is developing a smartphone with extendable display
This is just a design patent at the moment. Just because OPPO patented this device does not mean it will become a reality, of course. It would be nice to see it announced at some point, though.
We’ve seen a lot of phones with extendable displays patented by various companies. In the past, LG patented several such patents, for example, and now OPPO is one of the companies that joined it.
LG still did not release such a phone, though. It remains to be seen if we’ll ever see such a phone, but it would be a nice contrast to foldable devices, that’s for sure.
