Chinese smartphone manufacturer Oppo and nendo, the Japanese design studio founded by Oki Sato, unveiled a new concept for a foldable smartphone that can slide into different shapes, based on the user’s needs.
The “slide-phone”, as the concept’s called, is made of three different foldable screen units. Thanks to a hinged mechanism, the user can therefore re-arrange the size of the device, which doesn’t need to be always folded out to perform the most common activities, such as checking a map, writing a text or making a call. The idea behind the concept is that our smartphones, as they grew bigger and bigger, got too big and therefore too heavy and difficult to hold. A device like the “slide-phone”, conversely, could let the user shape their device as they like, based on their specific current need.

Oppo and nendo’s idea is definitely worthy of notice, but it’s easy to see how such a smartphone would generate more problems than the ones it tries to solve. The multiple screen units would multiply the device’s point of failures, while in its spread-out form the form would be way too narrow and way too wobbly, due to the multiple connecting hinges. On top of that, good luck finding enough developers adapting their most popular apps to display properly in such overly-complicated display form factor.