The big picture: Before LG packed up its smartphone division in 2021, its engineers were apparently cooking up something wild. At the time, many companies thought that rollables were the future, leading to fancy concepts dropping left, right, and center. LG, known for its cutting-edge smartphone designs, also showed off its knack for the technology with a concept. The device has now made its way into the hands of YouTuber JerryRigEverything, who's done what he does best with it.
JerryRigEverything has taken apart a working unit of the never-released LG Rollable on camera. The basic premise with these devices was that instead of folding open like a Galaxy Z Fold, the Rollable uses a small motor to slide an extra screen out of the side. With a simple swipe of the screen, the smartphone turns into a tablet, offering roughly 40% more viewing area. There's less manual effort involved, provided you're patient with the somewhat glacial speeds of the rollout mechanism. And yes, there's no crease either.
What's inside is even more impressive. It also explains why nobody has bothered trying to sell you a rollable phone. There's a shocking amount of engineering crammed into the thing. There are two tiny geared motors driving the expansion along an internal track. A set of three spring-loaded articulating arms sits underneath to keep the flexible OLED panel smooth and even as it moves. The edges of the screen assembly have zipper-like teeth that lock it into the frame during transitions. And lining the housing are little bristles, like a tiny brush, designed to keep dust from sneaking into areas you'd never be able to clean.
LG even thought about the noise. Those motors apparently hum loud enough to be distracting, so the software plays a little musical chime whenever the screen extends or retracts.
The rest of the hardware reads like a standard 2021 flagship. It includes a Snapdragon 888 processor, 12GB of RAM, a 4,500mAh battery, and a 64MP main camera with OIS. There's even a trick where the rolled portion of the display tucks behind a glass panel on the back and functions as a secondary screen for widgets and camera previews.
Perhaps the most surprising moment in the video is that JerryRigEverything actually manages to put everything back together and power it on again. For a device this complicated, that's not an easy feat.
So, why didn't this ever ship? Well, just take a look at all those moving parts. Manufacturing something like that at scale would have been incredibly expensive. Moreover, LG was already struggling to convince people to buy its phones at normal prices. Durability is another obvious question. Samsung has already spent years figuring out how to keep dust from killing a simple folding hinge. A more active mechanism would have been even more prone to damage from the elements.