I didn’t have high expectations when I went to check out Motorola’s wrist-worn bendable smartphone at MWC 2024. I knew it was a concept device, a smartphone that won’t see a commercial launch for years, if ever. It didn’t help that I had visited Samsung Display’s booth earlier, where their wrist-worn smartphone concept didn’t look that great after being extensively used during the first few days of MWC.
Once I saw it though, I was pleasantly surprised by how good it looked and how well it worked during the brief live demo I watched.
This Moto concept phone has a large 6.9-inch OLED screen that’s bright and flexible. It also happens to bend like one of those slap bracelets from when we were kids. That presents the obvious question: How durable is this thing?
Unlike a foldable phone with just one hinge, this one has multiple hinges for each link that makes up its body. Yet the display had no creases or signs of wear and tear despite being shown off so much during the show.
The other question I immediately considered was battery life. Unlike a traditional phone or a foldable handset, the Motorola wrist smartwatch has to feature a battery pack that can bend or one that’s broken up into multiple pieces. Motorola didn’t have a battery life estimate for me when I asked about it.
Mototorla’s display on this cool concept phone looked crisp and vivid. During the demo I got, a small crowd formed at Lenovo’s booth, proving this unusual form factor will attract attention.
The display, by the way, features a hole-punch design with relatively small bezels. It’s the same OLED panel used in Motorola’s foldable smartphones that are commercially available right now. It’s just slightly larger than those screens.
The front-facing camera is the only camera on the handset. And that’s another immediately noticeable “issue.” Considering how large camera modules are, it’s unclear whether such a device could house a camera on the back.
The back of the prototype is made of some kind of textile fiber that can support the folding and unfolding. Or is it bending and unbending, considering you don’t fold this one like a regular foldable?
As for using Motorola’s wrist phone, you’d have various new experiences you can’t get from regular phones. A couple of magnets on a bracelet you place on your wrist will keep the handset attached firmly. It won’t fall off easily, as I was shown during the demo. It’ll act like a smartwatch while you wear it, but it doesn’t fully wrap around the wrist like a smartwatch.
Then, the smartphone supports a tent mode for selfies and even multiplayer games. And you get a stand mode, which is good for taking pictures and videos.
It also functions like a traditional smartphone, of course. It’s just too large to be used comfortably as a phone.
In addition to the camera and a game concept for dual-screen use, I also got to see the phone’s built-in generative AI wallpaper. The purple background in most of these photos is the work of AI. The Motorola rep demoing the feature took a picture of my gray sweater and the purple lanyard of the MWC badge I was wearing, producing several suggestions, including the wallpaper on the screen in these photos.
This is all to say that the Motorola wrist phone is a fully functional Android device that offers the same functionality you’d expect from a commercial model. It’s not one that I’d buy or that we even need right now, but it’s still very cool.
That said, you shouldn’t expect this Moto phone to hit stores anytime soon, if ever. It’s an exciting concept device, yes. But it’s Motorola’s way of prototyping new mobile technologies that could one day make it to actual smartphones, just like Lenovo does with its wild laptop concepts. After all, Motorola is a Lenovo company, so the two must share similar R&D principles.
