I tried Motorola's Rizr rollable phone – and it blew my mind

Coming to Mobile World Congress, the largest mobile show in Europe, is always a pleasure for me, as it's a given that some of the best phones of the year will be on show. It's especially exciting when the show reveals total gems like the Motorola Rizr - the company's rollable phone proof of concept.

Okay, so Motorola isn't officially calling this rollable the Rizr, but that is exactly what's written on the device - and I think it's a fun play on the Motorola Razr flip phone's name, irrelevant of whether it means much or not.

I actually knew about this Motorola rollable since summer 2022, when I saw visualisations of it at the company's headquarters in Chicago. However, the papers I signed meant no disclosure about it... until now. So to actually see and handle the handset at MWC 2023 really blew my mind.

Despite being a concept device, the Rizr is fully realised. The device's screen is 5-inch as standard, but a double-tap of the power button makes it extend upwards to a larger 6.5-inch scale (as you can see in my Twitter video above). It does it so smoothly it seems effortless - and it doesn't mess up what's showing on screen, which was a pleasant surprise.

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Because the display is rollable, Motorola has implemented it in a wrap-around way, so what's not shown on the main display is visible on the device's rear. Because it's OLED, however, that portion can be deactivated, thus black, or treated as a second display despite being part of the same single panel.

That brings up some clever software possibilities: I've been using a lot of the best foldable phones lately, in particular flip phones, and their presence of a small front display (or cover screen) is accomplished better in this rollable concept format in my opinion, simply because it's a more responsive panel - something the Oppo Find N Flip could learn from, for example.

That's what makes the Motorola Rizr a genuinely viable idea, despite only being a proof of concept at this stage. But prove it very much does - it's blown my mind and I want one already. So here's to 2024, the future of phone tech, and the very real possibility of rollables becoming real products.