Phones Are About to Get Weird

HAVE PHONES BECOME BORING? WELL, THEY’RE ABOUT TO GET WEIRD

LAUREN GOODE GEAR | Wired Magazine | 01.23.2019

THIS WEEK, CHINESE smartphone-maker Vivo released a video calling out one of the brand’s signature innovations from 2018: a pop-up camera that extends from the top of the phone’s metal frame and eliminates the need for a cut-out notch in the display. Vivo calls this particular feature the Elevating Front Camera, which makes it sound like it hovers above the phone in an act of magic. In reality, the camera behaves like the mechanical flash module on a digital camera.

The Vivo video primarily highlights last year’s tech, and since it’s already late January, it seems belated. But it also included another message—that the company plans to “take the Elevated Front Camera further in 2019!” Based on early reports, this year’s innovations might just be a phone without ports. Your new Vivo smartphone might look like something akin to a large pebble or a bar of metallic soap.

Smartphones, it seems, have gotten weird. And they’re only going to get weirder in 2019. Our glass slabs will be punctuated by pop-out cameras, foldable displays, hole-punched notches, and invisible fingerprint sensors. These features will be marketed as innovations. Some will be innovative. Some will just be weird, in the way that tech inevitably feels forced when design decisions are borne out of a need to make mature products appear exciting and new.
Just look to foldable displays. The concept isn’t new, but Chinese display maker Royale kicked off the most recent hype cycle at the end of October when it debuted a 7.8-inch flexible display named FlexPai. A week later, electronics giant Samsung showed off its own concept for a folding phone, one that “fits neatly inside your pocket” and then unfurls into a 7.3-inch display. The company declined to share a timeline for when the concept phone will be released, but Samsung’s annual flagship phone event is scheduled for next month, and it’s possible we’ll see more demos of the folding phone in addition to a new Galaxy smartphone.

Then last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Motorola Razr phone will make a comeback this year, evolving from a flip phone into a high-priced smartphone with a foldable display. (WIRED emailed Lenovo-owned Motorola for comment; a spokesperson responded with an animated “shrug” emoticon.) Chinese smartphone maker Oppo is also reportedly planning to unveil a folding smartphone at MWC Barcelona next month.

Flexible display tech has clearly gotten good enough that smartphone makers believe it can be deployed in a mass-market consumer product. During the Samsung event, company executives suggested that the “tech has improved to the point where it’s possible to fuse an ultra-thin screen onto the foldable design,” as WIRED’s Arielle Pardes wrote.

But those technological leaps don’t automatically create a use case. Wayne Lam, principal analyst at IHS Markit, says he sees two paths for foldables: a larger foldable, in which a phone-like device turns into a 7- or 8-inch tablet; or “making the thing smaller—you take a phone and fold it in half, or you wrap it around your wrist and it becomes a wearable.” Either path presents challenges in terms of cost, value proposition, even ergonomics. “Everyone is making foldables out to be the next savior of the industry, and that only makes sense if they can deliver on the value, if you can truly replace your phone and your tablet,” Lam says. Continue Reading . . .