“Just add a strap to it!” – LG plans to bridge the gap between smartphones and smartwatches, and it’s gonna take a strap, but also a few other functionalities.
LG introduced a new patent that shows a smartphone which can turn and serve as a smartwatch by using a strap. Now, let us clarify from the get-go: this is a patent, and it doesn’t mean LG are already producing these devices – the ideas from many patents just never come to be realized, and this is more interesting from what it implies for the future of LG and their technological pursuits more than the product itself.
The team at Phone Arena claim that LG’s phone would have to be entirely flexible, both screens and internal components, so they can “bend” along with the strap-bracelet, hooking up by using magnets.
This is just the design for an idea, and there’s a long distance between having an idea and knowing how to make it happen. LG has already done a bit of progress with the LG G Flex and the G Flex 2, but there is still quite a distance between these and a completely flexible device.
Even so, LG aren’t the only developers interested in the field, as we had already seen Samsung at the CES 2013, who had shown an amazing device that could bend, which had impressed everyone, but was only a prototype so far. The South Korean giant had announced the past month that maybe next year they would begin producing completely flexible phones.
We will have to wait until 2016 or 2017 to see if developers eventually cash in on these ideas, or if this is all just a pipe dream.
Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at A picture of the LG G4 emerges: is that a curved smartphone? and LG Introduces their first non-Android 4G smartwatch.
