Samsung Rollable Smartwatch Hides A Secret In The Middle
Samsung has so far proven that it is at the top of the game when it comes to foldable devices, but its ambitions hardly stop there. The grand vision it has for flexible screens naturally includes rollable ones, though it hasn't yet shown any interest in making the final product out of those, not even rollable TVs. That doesn't mean it isn't toying around with some ideas, some of which really border on the fantastical. A case in point is this patent for a rather unusual smartwatch that can roll to expand and become a miniature smartphone on your wrist.
Smartwatches that use flexible displays aren't new, but those tend to have the softer screens fixed in a certain form or with very limited room for movement. The nubia alpha and nubia watch are examples of these, and their longer screens simply curve around your wrist, offering a little bit of flex when putting it on or taking it off. This patent shown by LetsGoDigital, however, goes to the extreme and literally transforms a smartwatch into something like a smartphone.
The wearable looks like an innocent smartwatch with a circular display, at least until you make a pinching gesture or push a button. At that point, the top and bottom halves expand with the screen rolling out to form an oblong surface. According to the report, this would give 40% more screen real estate, not exactly like a smartphone but definitely more spacious than a smartwatch.
Curiously, the patent also hints at a camera underneath the display, right in the middle of the screen. This would utilize under-display technologies like that on the Galaxy Z Fold 3, most likely for video calls. It doesn't indicate whether the camera is usable only if the screen is fully expanded or if it is still functional when in the default compact form.
While this presents an interesting vision of a more flexible smartwatch, it doesn't look practical or doable in the very near future. The round shape of the device's display is a big puzzle that needs to be solved first, even for a rollable screen. It will also need to have a user experience that can adapt to that kind of changing screen shape, and neither Wear OS nor Tizen OS currently can.