Foldable phones are all the rage right now and Oppo has its own in the form of the Find N2 and Find N2 Flip. But what comes next? Oppo seems to think that it might have the answer.

A new report claims that Oppo is hard at work on something that goes beyond the foldable. It's a rollable, with the phone unrolling at the touch of a button to turn a standard phone into something much bigger. And what's more, there's no crease the likes of which we're all far too familiar with.

A rolling phone with hidden cameras

A 91mobiles report looks into a filing with the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) that appears to show the phone in semi-detailed drawings. The CNIPA is a patent office so there is always the chance that this phone design is nothing more than Oppo sticking its flag in the ground and saying that it's come up with something that it may or may not produce in the future. But it sure does look interesting.

The filing describes a phone that looks like most others with a rear camera module and flash. But the way the image is drawn appears to suggest that the cameras will be hidden inside the phone itself, only revealing themselves when the phone is expanded into its full tablet-like size. The bottom of the phone houses a USB-C port and a speaker grille, while it appears that the phone could expand from both the left and right sides - with a button or on-screen command causing the display to unroll itself.

It all sounds pretty fancy and again, there wouldn't be any kind of crease thanks to the way the display rolls rather than folds. That isn't to say that there wouldn't be potential issues with that screen, however. The mechanisms needed to handle the rolling and unrolling could prove problematic but we have to imagine that Oppo would test those things to oblivion and back before releasing anything.

As for whether Oppo will actually release anything, we don't have the answer to that at this point. The patent itself was filed in December 2021 and was approved in April 2023.