Currently, most OEMs are working on foldable and flip smartphones but soon, users will be looking for more innovations at least for displays on mobile devices. It looks like Motorola may be working on something new as they have applied for a patent for an all-screen display, with the display wrapping completely around the device. This is of course still a patent so we do not know if it will make its way to production as previous planned full displays did not make it to production.
Let’s Go Digital shared renders based on the patent for an all-screen display that they were able to spot. There are actually two patents with the first one filed back in June 2020 and then the other one just last August 2021. The first patent shows a smartphone that has a flexible display surrounding the frame on all four sides. The newer patent shows use cases for touch-wrapped side panels of the device. But both refer to a large flexible display that covers the front and back panel as well as both sides.
The usual physical touch buttons on either side of the phone will be replaced with virtual buttons. This smartphone, if it will go to production, will use a gravity sensor, motion sensor, and temperature for the virtual buttons. These sensors will adjust the orientation and placement of the buttons. The renders show that there will still be ports on the phone for the SIM slot and USB-C port, as well as a speaker and microphone on the bottom part. At the top, you’ll get the on/off button and the secondary speaker and mic.
Camera-wise, there seems to be a front-facing camera in a hole-punch cutout but there’s also a hint of an under-display camera. The render doesn’t give much details about the camera so we don’t really know how that will work. Again, this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen plans to have an all-screen smartphone but a few years ago, this was not very feasible. Maybe this is the right time for such a product but we still have to see use cases and durability of these kinds of displays.
For now, what we can look forward to from Motorola is the upcoming Motorola Razr 3, the third generation of their Razr phones. It will reportedly come with the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC which will make it the first in the series powered by a Snapdragon 8-series processor. It’s expected to be released sometime this year.
