After being immersed in technology my entire life, it's become increasingly rare to find devices that truly excite me. This is especially true when it comes to smartphones. Smartphones have been mainstream for over a decade now, as manufacturers have integrated and refined, devices have become rather homogenous. Every smartphone kinda looks the same, and does the same thing. Yearly upgrades are becoming smaller than ever.
OPPO's X 2021 concept smartphone is one of the rare exceptions to that rule. A smartphone where the screen can expand or shrink on demand. An an engineering marvel. Witchcraft. It took all my will to not sneak the handset into my backpack at the end of my half-an-hour hands on. It's mesmerising to the point I was willing to risk OPPO jail.
The OPPO X 2021 is essentially what we're now calling a rollable smartphone. It uses similar flexible display technology similar to devices like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2, but instead of unfolding the screen, it unfurls. Swiping the power button will expand the screen from 6.7-inches to 7.4. When you try it, it's a little bit like magic. It's surreal to see the device smoothly grow and then disappear again.
Using a rollable display solves two issues with foldables. The first is rather minor. Since the display unfurls rather than unfolds, it doesn't have a crease. While the crease in the middle of devices like the Fold 2 is more of a niggle than an annoyance, the perfectly flat display of the OPPO X 2021 is rather lovely.
More importantly, the OPPO X 2021 feels like just a regular phone when you haven't unfurled it. For the most part, you have to unfold a foldable to get the most of it. The external displays have gotten bigger and more useful, but they're thinner and taller than regular smartphone screens. It makes them a little awkward. While you can certainly get used to the external display on the Fold 2, for example, you shouldn’t have to adapt to tech.
The OPPO X 2021 is also lighter and thinner than most foldables. It felt just a touch heavier than my Galaxy S21 Ultra, which weighs in at 229 grams, and only a little thicker. For comparison, the Galaxy Z Fold 2 weighs 279 grams and is about as thick as two phones when folded up.
On the other hand, the rollable design does mean the OPPO X 2021's flexible display is constantly exposed. Flexible displays are less durable than a traditional screen and don't have the same kind of protection. They're typically covered in either plastic or ultra-thin glass, neither of which are as resilient as what you'd find on a typical phone. OPPO has opted for plastic with a protective coating for the X 2021. While it's hard to gauge how effective this would be from a short hands on, I've got concerns. The Huawei Mate XS featured a constantly exposed external display which was a magnet for scratches, for example.
And of course, a phone with so many moving parts is going to be less durable by nature. The OPPO X 2021 definitely isn't the kind of phone you'd want to drop, or get wet. Especially given that there's no way it will be cheap.
Since the OPPO X 2021 is a concept phone, it doesn't have a price-tag. It might not even make it to market. But if it does, it's not unreasonable to expect it to be a similar ballpark to other foldable devices, which have ranged between $2,000 to $4,000 locally.
The device's concept phone status also creates a few other caveats. It doesn't have a selfie camera, OPPO has no idea how a case for it will work, and the software is very unfinished. While some apps scale well - YouTube automatically adjusts video size as the screen grows and shrinks - the process was a little bit jankier when looking at websites in a browser. The camera app kept crashing when the phone was unfurled, and would only take an image in phone mode. You can't resize the keyboard when the phone is unfolded, which just leads to a very awkward typing experience.
All of this is understandable - once again, the X 2021 is a concept device, rather than a product destined to come to market any time soon - but it shows that there are still challenges OPPO needs to address if it plans to make a commercial rollable. And honestly, I hope it does.
Phones like the Galaxy Z Fold 2 have proved that there's value in a device that can change in size, and the OPPO X 2021 is a rather elegant implementation of the concept. I don't want to have a tablet on me at all times, but being able to make your phone just a little bit bigger if you want to watch a video, read a book, or edit photos in Lightroom. It's not essential, but it's still a welcome luxury.
And ultimately, a commercial version of the OPPO X 2021 would likely be a luxury. But if it can genuinely replace a smartphone and a tablet with one device, it could even be worth what will almost certainly be a sky high price-tag. And even if it's not, OPPO's rollable technology is still an engineering marvel that deserves praise.
Alex Choros
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