Moto Rizr foldable phone shows why foldable devices don’t work in the real world

This week is the Mobile World Congress, which means wild flexible display concepts that will probably never see the light of day. Motorola is letting everyone try out the new “Moto Rizr”concept, a name it revived from its line of all-in-one slider phones in the early 2000s. The new Rizr is a rollable display phone that was originally announced in October, but Motorola shared much more details about the phone at MWC.

Motorola’s concept phone is a chunky-looking 5-inch device with a flexible POLED display that covers the front of the phone, then curves around the bottom edge and extends almost to the middle of the back. Press the button and the motorized internals push the top of the phone up, pulling the screen with it. At the end of the process, all that “extra”display that was on the back of the phone has rolled off the bottom edge and is now on the front, and you have a 6.5-inch display that looks like a normal smartphone.

The sliding component of the phone is a thin rectangle that contains only the display, and it looks very fragile. In addition to moving up to support a larger display, this rectangle can also move a few millimeters from its closed position, exposing the body of the phone it normally covers. This small area, usually located behind the display, contains what are usually top bezel components such as the front camera and earpiece. When closed, the display wraps around the back of the phone, and that part of the rear display isn’t wasted: it can display the top status bar on the back of the phone or switch to viewfinder mode, allowing you to use the main cameras like a selfie camera.

It’s not as small as the razr @moto and who knows how durable it will be if you drop it or throw it in your pocket unprotected, but if someone tells you phones are boring, show them that. #mwc2023 pic.twitter.com/FnoooMysnc

— Avi Greengart (@greengart) February 26, 2023

You can double-tap the power button to make the phone spin up and down, but Motorola’s concept also makes the dubious decision of automatically raising and lowering the display depending on what the software does. The YouTube example makes sense: a horizontal video is probably widescreen, so the screen expands. Another example is the keyboard, where the screen rises when the keyboard is opened and shrinks when it is closed. The motorized screen takes a few seconds to open and close, which is more likely a screen gimmick than anything useful. Waiting for the screen to move up and down when you’re multitasking with a messaging app sounds very slow and frustrating.

It’s all neat, and the promise of a phone that’s small in your pocket but big in your hand would be a compelling idea if not for a long list of practicality issues. First, as with the Moto Razr, which has a flexible display that seems to be a close relative of this phone, there is nothing that attaches the display to the body of the phone for most of the length of the display. The bottom edge of the display is attached to the phone and part of the top is attached to the phone, but the middle must float freely for the sliding mechanism to work. There is nothing holding the middle part of the phone’s body, so the display often rises above the phone., exposing the sides of the display and potentially collecting debris that could damage the display. We’re used to displays being solid, perfectly flat slabs of glass, so having a display that doesn’t stick to the phone’s body and squish under your finger is a very strange feeling.