Today, OPPO held its annual Inno Day event, where it usually unveils some of the bleeding-edge technology it"s been working on. This year, the company focused on three products, perhaps the most notable of which is the OPPO X 2021, a phone with a rollable (or scrollable, as OPPO calls it) screen. The concept of a phone with a rollable screen isn"t completely new, and TCL has shown off a similar idea a couple of times in the past, but OPPO went into a bit more detail on how it"s achieving the rollable form factor.
The OPPO X 2021 features a display that can be opened at multiple positions, with sizes between 6.7 and 7.4 inches. The rolling portion of the screen wraps around a scrolling mechanism on the left edge of the phone, which has a 6.8mm diameter. OPPO says that, with this diameter, it can completely prevent creases from forming on the display, a problem that has plagued the foldable phones that are out on the market.
Additionally, the company designed what it calls a "2-in-1" support plate for the screen. The two sides of the support plate fit into each other when the phone is closed, and separate when you expand it, offering equal support for the whole display when it"s opened. OPPO also designed Warp Track, a protective layer underneath the display so it doesn"t get damaged by rolling and unrolling.
OPPO also showed off new AR glasses, the OPPO AR Glass 2021. In terms of design, OPPO has delivered significantly over the previous iteration, reducing its weight by 75% and adopting a "split" design so it"s more comfortable. OPPO has also created different 3D molds for the nose support, which it says should allow 90% of users to wear the device comfortably.
In terms of image quality, the new AR glasses feature 53% higher image contrast, 98% better brightness uniformity, and a 40% increase in pixels per field-of-view (FOV) degree. OPPO says that using the OPPO AR Glass to watch video is like watching a 90-inch screen from three meters away. The glasses also feature hand tracking, with 21 markers on each hand tracking different types of movements, along with fast spatial localization and mapping to enable better AR experiences.
The glasses can connect to a phone via USB Type-C, allowing them to use that additional power, and also control AR experiences using the phone. OPPO says that connecting the new AR glasses to the OPPO Find X2 series phones gives the glasses a 40% performance increase over the previous generation.
We"ve yet to see a rollable phone make it to market, and OPPO"s goal at Inno Day isn"t to unveil new market-ready products, so there"s no indication of when we can expect to see these products in the real world. We"ll have to wait and see if 2021 is the year of rollable phones.