LG may have plans of shutting down its smartphone business completely, but the brand continues to build on its smart TV market. In the past, LG has explored different display types for its smart TV, including rollable and transparent TV designs. The company has recently been granted a new patent for an extendable display.
The patent application was filed on September 1, 2020, with the State Intellectual Property Office of China and was approved on February 26, 2021. The TV consists of two parts, a host and a base, with the TV’s design seemingly being an intermediate product between LG’s rollable TV and transparent TV.
In its usual fashion, LetsGoDigital has come out with a set of renders showing the retractable TV. By collecting information from the patent sketches and LetsGoDigital’s renders, the TV seems to adopt a retractable design whereby its base size is similar to that of the TV itself. When the TV is not in use or for other purposes, the length can be adjusted freely.
Besides, there is a long strip opening in the middle of the base that can display the date and time when the TV is completely stored in the base. When the user listens to music on the TV, the opening will contain control elements such as play, pause, up, and down.
The new patented TV brings to mind the Korean tech giant’s Signature R smart TV, which was first unveiled at CES 2019 but only went on sale in Korea for around $87,000 in October last year. The smart TV utilizes a 65-inch flexible OLED panel, and among its several noteworthy features, the most impressive is the ability of the screen to be partially or fully retracted into the base.
At this year’s all-digital CES, LG announced a 55-inch transparent OLED TV. When the TV is in the storage state, there is a long strip window to display the date, time, etc. It can also display the user’s sleep duration, heart rate data, and other health data, and it is a complete big screen TV when fully raised.
The two existing models and this patented version all adopt a retractable design. Still, the only difference we expect is that this version might be a bit more affordable.
