Widescreen Concept

[Brian706]

So I came across a concept video for iPhone 7, but it's just a concept and there is no reason it couldn't be considered for any smartphone. In fact, if it's even possible, we'd probably see it on Android first.

Here's the video:

What do you guys think? I think the idea is pretty cool, myself. With flexible screen technology already starting to see the light of day, do you think something like this is feasible? I image that it would start out as more of a manual thing; IE: You pull the extended display out yourself and push it back in, maybe out one side of the device. But it would be sort of a best of both worlds situation. Bigger screen for gaming or watching movies, then back to a normal pocket sized phone when you're finished.

 

[Hadron]

I see a possible competition between 2 technologies here. Flexible screens provide one way of producing a large display which can be carried in a compact form. But a "smart glasses" solution (somewhat on the back burner after the Goggles experiment) could also do this in a way that is even more portable (you'd need a pairing function to share what you are looking at with someone else, but that doesn't seem a big problem).

I don't know how close we are to foldable screens with a touch layer that are durable enough and provide adequate resolution for a larger screen. On the other side we've seen that smart glasses aren't ready for the mainstream either, their control interface is less obvious (voice has its limits and there's no obvious way of providing a pointing interface - having to use the phone screen would be undesirable, and we're a long way from an eye tracking interface in a pair of specs). But if I forget where we are and think about hypothetical technologies I could imagine that SciFi a visual overlay could win over a SciFi foldable screen for most people.