vivo patents vertically rollable smartphone

Rollable smartphone concepts have come and gone in the past few years, but we've yet to see an actual product using a rollable display (there are, however, rollable-screen laptops already).

While the rollable smartphone concepts we've seen thus far have all rolled the screen out of the side, vivo has patented something else entirely - a rollable screen that becomes longer, not wider.

The vivo rollable device pictured in the patent application becomes taller as you roll out the screen, which is definitely interesting to see, yet we can't help but wonder what the actual use cases for something like this would be.

Apps today are already pretty well optimized for tall screens, so what exactly would making the screen even taller accomplish? Don't pay too much attention to these questions, however, as this is just a patent application - it's not even a concept (yet?).

And it's really unclear if it will ever get to that stage - smartphone makers file for a lot of patents they never actually use, and we wouldn't be surprised if this was one of them.

Via