Over the last several years, TCL has committed to showing off weird and whacky smartphone concepts. It is no different at MWC 2022. TCL has shown off the Ultra Flex at Mobile World Congress – a phone with a 360-degree rotating hinge and display that folds with it. This means the display has to be able to fold shut, but more challenging, it has to fold and span the outside of the chassis.
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This is an immensely difficult feat to pull off, as the hinge has to be completely redesigned and sit differently inside the chassis of the device, but more importantly, the screen is undergoing a lot more flexing and folding that any other type of display. The strip that’s right above the hinge, in particular, would probably suffer the most stress.
It is very much still a prototype, with the show device experiencing several issues. Its 8-inch, 2,480 x 1,860 PLP AMOLED screen remained disappointingly dark, though TCL representatives showed off photos of it working better. But why would you want such a device, you ask? According to TCL, it would offer the benefits of both inward-folding devices like the Galaxy Z Fold as well as those that bend outwards like Huawei’s first Mate X foldable. It seems that there is no use case to it really, just showing off the tech more than anything else (at least, in our minds). Having a panel you could fold outwards could offer a preview for your camera subjects to see how they look while you frame them up, for example, or let you present slides to someone facing you. Given that Huawei has since adopted Samsung’s approach instead of sticking with an outside-facing flexible screen, it appears that style of foldable might not be very feasible.
