A Huawei Mate X Rollable is in the works

By Scott Marlette Last updated Aug 6, 2021

Concept images of a Huawei rollable phone

These days, it seems, Huawei has been hard at work developing its own new rollable smartphone, and is making considerable progress as shown by a new patent discovered by LetsGoDigital.

The Chinese phone manufacturer may have gone through a lengthy period of disgrace, but it has not slowed down in forging its own path in the mobile industry. The Huawei P50 series, for one, is very soon going to be entering the global market, arriving out of the box with the company’s first native mobile operating system, Harmony OS.

And now, Huawei seems to be well on its way to becoming one of the leading innovators when it comes to rollable and foldable screen technology, after Samsung (whose Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 will finally be revealed at the fast-approaching Unpacked event.)

Samsung’s lauded Galaxy Z Fold 2 last year was matched head-on, 5 months later, by Huawei Mate X2—the Chinese company’s second folding smartphone, but the first truly practical and successful one. Coupled with the older Huawei Mate X, Huawei is the only company alongside Samsung so far to have two separate smartphones featuring a foldable screen, and that will eventually become three.

This Mate X2 is soon to be joined, it seems, by the “Huawei Rollable”—although nobody knows yet what its official name is going to be.

Sketches from Huawei’s patent in 2020

The mysterious device first appeared on our radar back in April 2020, when Huawei submitted a patent application for a future smartphone with a sliding display. This patent, pictured above, has since evolved into an even better design and has just made a sudden reappearance yesterday, showing improved functionality and some neat solutions to potential issues.

The improved design was published in the 21-page documentation of a new patent, for which Huawei Technologies had filed with WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Office) on the last day of January 2021.

The new patent contains plenty of detail about how the roll-out technology is going to work, focusing particularly on avoiding potential creasing. Huawei aims to do this with two strategically placed magnets, above and below the roller which unravels the smartphone into a larger tablet on command. The magnets will pull the display flat down as it rolls out, and keep it from shifting.

A Huawei Mate X Rollable is in the works

The roller itself is between the magnets and reaches just a tad beyond them into the housing, to make sure there isn’t any unnecessary friction happening and that the wheel can perform its job unimpeded, while the magnets ensure that the screen is flat and uncreased—whether it is in a folded or unfolded position.

The comprehensive WIPO patent also reveals that the “Huawei Rollable” screen will feature a POLED panel (which is an OLED screen but made out of a lighter and more flexible plastic than the traditional glass).

Apart from the “rolled-in” (6.5-inch smartphone) position, and the “rolled-out” (11-inch tablet) position, Huawei will include a middle, partly-rolled-out position, in which the device remains bigger than a smartphone but still comfortably compact. The maximally rolled-out position gives about 70% more surface area than the minimal smartphone position.

Naturally, in tablet position, there will only be one large front screen, but when rolled back into a regular-sized smartphone, both the front and back panels will feature a functioning display (although what degree of functionality the back smartphone screen will enjoy, we can only surmise).

As for the name, because both of Huawei’s previous foldable phones have fallen into the X series, it wouldn’t be outlandish to suspect that this newest rollable device will succeed the Mate X2 in the series, although it’s still too early to know.

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