We’ve seen practically as many different folding phone concepts as there are phone manufacturers, but one particularly intriguing idea may soon be coming back from the dead — CNET reports that BlackBerry and Alcatel brand owner TCL is working on as many as five different foldable devices, one of them a phone that can bend around your wrist like a bracelet, per the image you’re seeing immediately above these words.
That’s actually not a new idea: one of the very first folding phone prototypes we saw from Lenovo was a bracelet-watch, back in 2016. Here’s a video of that one from Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Anshel Sag:
To be honest, details on TCL’s devices are pretty scarce. CNET’s only got the renders above and an image from a patent filing to show how these gadgets might work, and neither of them answer the all-important question: will it automatically snap into place if you smack it onto your wrist?
But the report does suggest that all five of these devices are in development, and so not just an art department’s interpretation of five different directions that TCL might go if it wants to build a folding phone in the future. Because that’s definitely what it looked like to me at first.
Plus, a source tells The Verge that TCL may have more to say and show at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.
This article is from The Verge
