- LG has received a patent for a rollable phone with a retractable frame.
- The patent describes what the rumored Project B device from LG could be.
LG is certainly adventurous when it comes to smartphone design. After launching the LG Wing as part of its new Explorer project, the company is now in the news for an upcoming phone with a rollable display.
The phone, dubbed Project B, is slated to hit the market in March 2021 and may have been teased during the wing’s launch. Now it looks like we have an idea what it might look like.
LetsGoDigital LG has granted a patent for a smartphone with a rollable display. The patent is called “Roll-Slide Mobile Terminal” and was applied for by the Korean company in August 2019. It was published in September this year and has since been included in the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Office) database.
LG rollable phone design
The patent documentation describes a phone with a retractable frame and an OLED display that slides out from both the left and right sides. After pulling it out, the display area is doubled. In addition, users can roll out the screen from one side instead of both sides.
When you want to use the phone normally, this scrollable screen retracts into its case to form a normal rectangular phone.
The entire frame of the phone extends out when the rollable display is pulled out. To achieve this, LG reportedly used a second frame that pops out of the main body.
LG apparently uses sawmills and some elastic elements to allow the display to slide in and out smoothly. The company will also have a mechanism in place to prevent the display from being inadvertently inserted.
In the LG patent, it is noted that the display automatically adjusts the orientation to the extended / retracted state of the phone. More multitasking features that we’ve seen on Samsung foldable phones are also mentioned in the documentation.
Whether this is the Project B device everyone is talking about is currently unclear. We’ll only know more if we see render leaks from trusted sources or if the company officially announces something. Would you buy a rollable smartphone? Let us know in the poll above!