TCL is not really a household name when it comes to smartphones, but the maker of BlackBerry and Palm phones is looking to change that in 2020. Before launching its own phones later this year, TCL piques our curiosity with a few phones at wild concept that make the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip and Motorola razr look like old news.
To be clear, these are concepts in every sense of the word. They have no names, no specifications and have no chance of being sold anytime soon. The models we saw were basically movie props with few working parts, but they’re certainly intriguing. And if they indicate what TCL has in store for future phones, it won’t be an unknown name for very long.
Although we are somewhat used to folding screens at this point, TCL does not think that simply folding in half is enough. To be fair, the company has a single fold phone in development that folds completely flat with “zero gap”, but TCL is building its reputation on two lunar planes: a three-pane screen that opens like an accordion and a roll-up screen that slides like side window blinds.
If it can indeed be mass produced at a reasonable price, the roll-up screen could be a game-changer. The idea is that most of the time the phone looks like any smartphone today, but behind its 6.7 inch screen is another multi-inch screen stored in the back and extends to extend to 7.8 inches. The mechanism is powered by “a very simple push rod motor that works with gestural controls”, and even seeing it in action without a motor or a functional screen was a bit magical.
It’s really kind of something that you see now that you don’t do and presents a unique new direction for the foldables that have solved the biggest problem: the hinge crease. Of course, this raises many interface and multitasking issues that TCL is not yet ready to demonstrate, but argues that it is easier to extend the display “from a UI / UX perspective” than to fold the display. “Because you don’t take the screen and you don’t hold it that way or hold it that way, but you just stretch out,” said TCL, “so it keeps a standard aspect ratio, much like when you are sharing a screen from your computer. “
Three for the show
If TCL’s roll-up phone is “standard”, its tri-fold tablet is anything but that. TCL has combined two different hinges to create a display that unfolds like a brochure, with three panels becoming one. The demo unit we saw worked technically, but like the roll-up phone, it was far from a finished product. TCL’s vision is to transform a normal-sized 6.5-inch phone again into a 10-inch tablet. To accomplish double folding, TCL uses two different hinge technologies, Dragon Hinge and Butterfly Hinge, to “ensure smooth folding inside and out with minimal space”.
When closed, the tri-fold phone is quite thick and the entire package was very heavy and awkward. The screens looked and felt like plastic, and the mechanism creaked. In all fairness, it looked a lot like Royale’s first Flexpai prototype. But TCL did not show a polite phone. It all depends on the potential of what a smartphone screen can be. When TCL launches its first phones later this year, they will look a lot more like traditional handsets, but in the end, TCL hopes to become a smartphone innovator with its ready-to-use screens.
And maybe he could do it. For years, TCL has made some of the company’s best budget TVs, including a partnership with Roku, as well as the BlackBerry Key2 and the tiny Palm phones. But with these screens, it seeks to combine innovation with aggressive prices to give Android fans another option in a constantly shrinking field.
Of course, interesting ideas don’t necessarily translate into building a good smartphone, and the prototypes we saw gave little indication of how they would work – or if – so we’ll have to wait and see how the first TCL devices will stack up to their peers. But if the concepts of TCL are an indication, we are ready for a crazy race.
Ben Patterson contributed to this report.