Today, many manufacturers have a clearly defined strategy for their launches in Spain and other countries, and they measure their innovations and the way of showing them very well. But this has not always happened like this, since we have also seen big brands like Samsung or Xiaomi show the most interesting mobile concepts, but which have never been able to be purchased.
Devices such as the LG roll-up mobile phone or the Ubuntu Edge , which was committed to the convergence between smartphone and PC in the same device, are some examples, but these have never come to market or, if they have, it has been of a limited nature. extremely limited way.
we have made a small selection of some of the most innovative mobile phones that we have seen, but which, unfortunately, have not gone on sale. Who knows if, if they had come onto the market with sufficient success, they could have influenced current smartphones.
Samsung Galaxy Flex
Samsung’s folding phones are among the most recognizable in the Android world, and for years it has been possible to see how the company has experimented with different concepts until polishing them and turning them into devices ready to go on the market. However, the Galaxy Flex have not experienced the same fate.
These are two devices, also foldable, that the company showed at the CES in Las Vegas at the beginning of 2022 as a sample of what they are capable of doing. On the one hand, the Galaxy Flex Slidable is a rollable mobile concept that, by pressing a button, is capable of lengthening the width of the panel to change its format and increase its size.
On the other hand, the Galaxy Fold S and Fold G also proposed new dynamics in Android, since one of them was a device with two folds on the screen, which meant that it could go from having a mobile screen to a widescreen tablet by simply unfolding it completely.
Motorola Rizr
At the Mobile World Congress in 2023, the company has gone one step beyond its foldable mobile phone, the Motorola Razr, to show a roll-up phone in vertical format , a true rare bird that also has intelligent functions to become larger or smaller automatically.
For example, when viewing multimedia content or browsing social networks, the device would be able to increase its size to provide the user with the experience they need at the right time. However, its shape is somewhat curious, since the way it expands reveals a thin support for the screen that can make it more fragile.
Furthermore, even though the screen was not fully expanded, it remained completely on , which is not ideal in terms of battery optimization and efficiency. It is confirmed that it will not reach the market, although it is not ruled out that the manufacturer will improve this concept in the future.
Xiaomi MIX Alpha
Without a doubt, the MIX Alpha was one of the phones in which Xiaomi made the greatest display of strength. However, it did not do so in something that would be especially useful to users. This mobile phone had a screen that practically surrounded the entire body of the device, with a size of 7.9 inches.
Its design, of course, was spectacular, but it has nothing to do in terms of productivity with the Xiaomi MIX Fold 3 , the brand’s most recent folding mobile. The MIX Alpha went on sale, but difficulties in manufacturing meant that the company was unable to mass produce it. Its price was 19,999 yuan, around 2,560 euros.
This format does not provide more advantages than disadvantages, so it is not very likely that something similar will be seen on the market again, at least in the short term. A demonstration of strength from the brand that gave it a lot of attention at the time due to the great surprise that this mobile was.
Ubuntu Edge
Many years before Samsung launched DeX , a kind of Desktop Mode included in its mobile phones, Canonical wanted to jump into the pool to bring this concept to reality. The company launched a crowdfunding project on Indiegogo with the intention of raising $32 million in one month .
He managed to raise half, but, in the end, it did not go ahead. The hardware of the Ubuntu Edge was going to be made up of 4 GB of RAM – high-end at that time –, 8 Mpx camera, HD screen and NFC connectivity, as well as 128 GB of storage, which was a huge amount for that time.
However, the most interesting thing about the device was its ability to carry a dual system with Android on one side and Ubuntu on the other, so that the device could be connected to a monitor and thus used as if it were a computer, being able to carry a station of work in your pocket. This type of functionality has not been very successful, but there are manufacturers that continue to bet on it.
Tecno Chameleon
This same 2023, very interesting technologies have been seen at the MWC in Barcelona, and one of them has been developed by Tecno and shown on a most peculiar mobile phone. This is capable of changing its color back, although, unfortunately, it does not do so completely.
This mobile prototype does not have a screen on the back, but rather it is a panel created on a microscale with a prism-shaped material that is capable of reflecting colors in different ways depending on how the light hits it, something that It can be modified in less than a second using its specialized software.
As can be seen in some images of the device , the panel that can change color only occupies a part of the back, so it is not capable of changing this part completely. The rest was white, including the camera module. At some point it might be possible to see a version with this technology on the entire surface.
Samsung Galaxy Round
The Korean company began experimenting with flexible screens a long time ago, and good proof of this is the Samsung Galaxy Round , a mobile phone with a concave screen that was very surprising. It was released in 2013 shortly after some leaks about its design came to light.
Its main distinctive feature was its curved OLED screen, in the purest style of some of the company’s current Odyssey monitors . However, the benefit of curving the screen of a mobile phone was not – and is not – very clear, since it does not provide greater immersion, as it has a small screen and is used at a certain distance from the eyes.
This device did not leave South Korea, but with it, Samsung managed to surprise quite a bit with its great progress with flexible panels, something that a generation later would take advantage of to introduce in a device that did leave its native country: the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge .
LG Rollable
Although LG remains immersed in the consumer technology business with products such as laptops , monitors and televisions , the company abandoned the smartphone business a few years ago. Although, surprisingly, it launched a tablet in 2022 .
However, before doing so, the company had time to develop and manufacture the LG Rollable , its first rollable mobile phone that, unfortunately, never saw the light of day, even though the company was very close to launching it on the market. . In fact, a very advanced prototype has even been discovered.
Some of its distinctive features are that, when it was in its compact position, the back was capable of displaying notifications and widgets, and it also did not have any physical buttons, but rather they were all touch-sensitive, something quite shocking.
