Last month, Chinese phone maker Oppo offered a glimpse into a possible smartphone future with the Oppo X 2021, a concept with a rollable display. Now the company has demonstrated another concept at the China International Industrial Design Expo – the slide-phone.
The very first foldable screen phone to go on sale wasn't made by Samsung, Huawei or Motorola, it came from China's Royole and was called the FlexPai. Like the devices that followed, this pioneer rocked a single hinge, though two hinges have been floated since at least early 2019. The Oppo slide-phone goes for the triple.
Created to "explore the possibilities of future design" in collaboration with Japan's nendo, the slide-phone's display area increases in size depending on what the phone is being used for. When closed, the clamshell comes in at 54 x 86 mm (2.1 x 3.3 in), or about the same size as a credit card, and has a series of ridges on its outer shell.
Sliding the first hinge up reveals a 40-mm (1.57-in) portion of the screen, which can show such things as current time, notifications and a music player interface. The next slide makes 80 mm (3.14 in) of the display visible, as well as placing the camera module to the top of the phone. The final slide moves the camera module around back while also making the full 7-inch screen viewable.
Orienting to landscape view, the screen can have side panels on either side of a main display for controlling video playback without masking the main viewing area, or serve as game controllers on either side of the action.
There are split physical buttons to the side too, which can function as either two big controls or three/four smaller ones when the phone is folded all the way out. And there's a stylus built into the frame as well.
The slide-phone is purely conceptual at the moment, but Oppo does have form in turning ideas into real products so we may yet see this becoming a working prototype, and even an actual product at some point in the future.