Every year, CES is kicked off with LG’s press event, and that’s a little different this year. It’s press conference kicked off at 8AM ET this morning. And in the introduction to its press conference, LG decided to tease its rollable smartphone. A concept we’ve heard a little bit about over the last year or so. But haven’t seen many leaks about it.
Basically, LG used this rollable smartphone as a way to see the “virtual” stage at its event and then zoomed into Jin-hong Kim who is the SVP and Head of Global Marketing at LG.
Don’t expect LG to give any details about this rollable smartphone at CES
CES is not typically where LG announces its smartphones. If any smartphones are announced at CES, LG typically keeps that to mid-range and low-end phones. Not something as impressive as a rollable phone. Expect that to come out a bit later this year. However, we aren’t sure if we should expect this at MWC in June/July, or at a separate event. Knowing LG, they will want to announce this at a separate event.
LG has a rollable OLED TV that is actually available to buy, so seeing a rollable smartphone is not a big surprise. It’s essentially the same thing, but in a smaller package.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen a rollable smartphone though. Last year at CES, TCL showed off a rollable smartphone. However it was a non-working prototype. It basically had a printed screen on it. So you could roll and unroll it, but couldn’t open Twitter and other apps on it. OPPO also showed off a rollable phone last year, which actually worked.
So rollable phones is likely to be the next big thing, in the world of smartphones. And it’s going to be impressive to see how this works.