OPPO shows off "slide-phone" concept with three hinges

About a month ago, OPPO held its Inno Day event, where it showed off the concept for a rollable phone, featuring a screen that would expand by rolling out from underneath the primary display. Today, the company revealed a couple more concepts, this time in partnership with Japanese design studio nendo.

The first and most notable concept is a "slide-phone", which uses a triple-hinge design to offer an adaptable screen experience. When it's fully collapsed, the phone has no usable interface, but it's more compact than a typical phone. Users can then unfold the first hinge to reveal a 40mm portion of the screen, which is enough to control music playback, check the time, or take calls.

The display can extend further by unfolding a second hinge, making it more usable as a typical smartphone, and this pose is ideal for taking selfies, with the camera setup still facing the user. It can then be unfolded yet again for the tallest screen possible with a rear-facing camera. The concept also includes a stylus stored in the phone that can be used for specific tasks.

Another concept shown off by OPPO and nendo is "music-link", which is more of an ecosystem of products built around a pair of truly wireless earbuds. These include a wireless "AI speaker", a smartwatch, a wireless charger, and a portable charger.

The earbuds slot into the sides of their charging case, which can be inserted into the top of the speaker to continue playing music from it instead of the earbuds themselves. The earbuds case also fits in a hidden compartment of the wireless charger, which, combined with the power bank, can be used to charge the earbuds and a smartphone at the same time.

Since the earbuds can be stored by fitting into each other, they can also be placed around a smartwatch serving as a casing for the watch when not in use.

Of course, these are simply concepts, so there's no indication as to when or if these will become real products anytime soon. Still, it's interesting to see these visions of what technology might look like in the future.