At Lenovo Tech World ’23, Motorola unveiled some bizarre ideas that might or might not come to fruition. The smartphone manufacturer, which has been a Lenovo subsidiary since 2014, revealed a prototype of a “adaptive display” that can be folded into a phone, stand, or smart bracelet. (It appears to be an improved version of a prototype Lenovo displayed in 2016). The business also highlighted a number of forthcoming AI-powered capabilities for the Lenovo products that are currently on the market.
A rollable smartphone with an FHD+ pOLED display is the display concept. The prototype “can be bent and shaped into different forms depending on users’ needs,” the company claimed in its announcement blog post. The gadget can be fully extended to be used as a conventional smartphone, or it can be partially bent to sit on a desk (like foldable phones). The idea device can even be partially wrapped around your wrist to create a smart slap bracelet-like accessory.
The conceptual prototype has a 6.9-inch display and “a full Android experience, just like any smartphone” (well, excluding iPhones). When it is upright in stand mode, it switches to a smaller version of Android on a 4.6-inch part of its display.
While admiring future concepts can be amusing, we wouldn’t suggest holding your breath for this technology to be made available as a consumer commodity any time soon. Who knows, Lenovo has often shown that it isn’t afraid to ship strange consumer goods.
Motorola revealed a number of AI-driven concepts in addition to its flexible prototype because it is what businesses will be doing in 2023. The company is using generative AI to provide users with… better wallpaper?
“With this concept, users can upload or capture a picture of their outfit to produce multiple unique AI-generated images that reflect their style,” the business stated. After that, you can create a personalized wallpaper for your smartphone using those AI-created photos. In a video the business posted on its blog, a person takes a selfie of their clothes (of course using the rollable display gadget), and the software converts the image into a number of wallpaper selections for the flexible phone.
The business also disclosed that it is developing a voice and text personal assistant for PCs and smartphones that use a large language model (LLM). The business refers to the assistant as MotoAI and claims that it can “answer questions, draft messages, schedule tasks, and so much more.” MotoAI would place a strong emphasis on data processing, privacy, and local task execution as opposed to cloud computing. The technology, according to the business, might uniquely tailor your device as it gains more knowledge about you and grows more practical over time.
A function that can reduce creases and shadows when scanning actual photographs or documents with a phone’s camera was teased by Motorola as another approach to document scanning. The company stated that the new technology “aims to improve final image quality by reducing wrinkles and shadows to ensure documents or images appear as crisp and clear as possible.”
