Slashdot Mirror
'We're Working On Rollable Phones,' Says LG CTO (tomsguide.com)
In a wide-ranging interview with Mark Spoonauer from Tom's Guide, CTO and president of LG Electronics, IP Park, said his company is working on both rollable and foldable smartphones, regardless of whether there's demand for them or not. Here's an excerpt from the report: Are you looking into rollable and foldable phones as well? We are exploring many different form factors for phones, including foldable and rollable. Because display technology has grown so much that it can make it into very flexible form factors. And with 5G, if the market requires much bigger screens, we'll need to fold it or roll it. So we'll explore.
A lot of people are saying the whole smartphone market has stagnated and there are even some who argue that LG should exit the business altogether. What's your reaction to that? The smartphone business is very tough because of the competition. Also because of the penetration. Everyone has a phone now, right? Everybody has a big screen, and everybody has many features that others have. I think this year could be the year of the upgrade in the smartphone industry because of 5G. 5G is going to be available this year, and people will come out with 5G phones. And 5G is different from LTE, not only because of bandwidth, but also latency. You may want to have even bigger screens on 5G phones because of the more content you can get. That could trigger different killer applications that you run on phones.
A lot of people are saying the whole smartphone market has stagnated and there are even some who argue that LG should exit the business altogether. What's your reaction to that? The smartphone business is very tough because of the competition. Also because of the penetration. Everyone has a phone now, right? Everybody has a big screen, and everybody has many features that others have. I think this year could be the year of the upgrade in the smartphone industry because of 5G. 5G is going to be available this year, and people will come out with 5G phones. And 5G is different from LTE, not only because of bandwidth, but also latency. You may want to have even bigger screens on 5G phones because of the more content you can get. That could trigger different killer applications that you run on phones.
I think this year could be the year of the upgrade in the smartphone industry because of 5G. 5G is going to be available this year, and people will come out with 5G phones. And 5G is different from LTE, not only because of bandwidth, but also latency. You may want to have even bigger screens on 5G phones because of the more content you can get. That could trigger different killer applications that you run on phones.
I know this is BS speak (marketing) but still, almost everything is wrong in that statement.
First of all, most people won't care about 5G and won't upgrade until forced to (new phones will be 5G, and old phones will break or become too slow at some point). Just like when going from 3G to 4G, except that it is going to be even worse since the added bandwith isn't as useful.
5G definately won't require or even benefit from bigger screens. Altough he's right that phone screens keep getting bigger every year, but this has nothing to do with 5G. And finally, there won't be any killer 5G application, especially not this year.
The first 5G phones are probably going to suck (expensive, poor battery life, non-existing networks) anyways.