Official LG Wing announcement provides first glimpse of the company’s expandable phone

LG today announced a two-screen smartphone with a swiveling mechanism. Called LG Wing, it is a part of the company’s Explorer Project, under which it will experiment with new ways to interact with mobile phones. The South Korean manufacturer has already started teasing the second Explorer Project device, and it seems to be a rollable phone.

This was already expected, thanks to a design patent for an expandable phone that was spotted last year. In July this year, it was reported that LG’s rollable smartphone is codenamed Project B and it would be launched early next year. 

Per that report, the  rollable phone will feature a BOE-made OLED display with input from LG and this has been backed up by supply chain insider Ross Young who also says Wing’s main display has also been manufactured by BOE.

Per Young, the new device will expand from 6.8-inch to 7.4-inch. He has also corroborated the H1 2021 launch time frame.

The previous quarter marked LG’s smartphone unit’s 11th straight quarter of year-on-year decline. The silver lining is that the revenue was an improvement over the previous quarter and its loss narrowed slightly when compared to Q1 2020 and Q2 2019.

LG is desperate to turn the situation around. It has axed the G series after an eight-year run and it has been replaced with low-cost premium phones like the recently released Velvet. 

The LG Wing is being touted as a device that will unlock new use-cases. Thanks to the new form factor, the phone features a Gimbal Motion Camera that allows the secondary screen to be turned into a grip. It also comes with functions that are specific to a real gimbal, such as joystick controls for adjusting the camera angle. 

That sounds exciting, at least in theory, and we wonder what LG will bring to the table next with its rollable phone.