Concept → Reality · Rewritten

Philips Fluid and the long wait for a wearable phone

In 2010, a Brazilian designer imagined a Philips phone that lay flat as a touchscreen and curled into a bracelet. Flexible screens did arrive. A phone that is both still has not.

The Design Blog editors

The first Samsung Galaxy Fold, unfolded

The first Galaxy Fold: the bendable OLED screen arrived, just not on the wrist. AI-retouched from an image by Sandro Scharf, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Verdict 2026

Still a concept

The Philips Fluid never left the render stage. Lenovo in 2016 and Motorola in 2023 built working phones that bend around the wrist, but neither went on sale, and flexible OLED reached stores in folding phones instead.

Withings ScanWatch 2Closest thing you can buyWithings ScanWatch 28.8Design ratingReads as a watch, not a gadgetCheck priceOur design review ↓

The idea today

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No phone yet lies flat in the hand and wraps the wrist, but these hybrid watches take Fluid’s idea in a quieter direction: technology that looks like something you would wear anyway.

  • Withings ScanWatch 2

    Withings ScanWatch 2

    A stainless-steel case, sapphire glass and real watch hands keep the health tracking out of sight until you want it.

    Our design review

    8.8Design rating

    The ScanWatch 2 hides a health tracker inside a classic analog watch: real hands, a stainless steel case, sapphire glass and only a small inset display for data. Withings rates the battery at about a month, far longer than a full smartwatch. The trade-off is how little it shows on the wrist; notifications and workouts are glimpses, not screens.

    Strongest point
    Reads as a watch, not a gadget
    Compromise
    Tiny inset display shows little

    Full rating in Apple Watch Series 11 review & 5 alternatives →

    Check price on Amazon
  • Withings ScanWatch Light

    Withings ScanWatch Light

    The same calm analog face with a pared-back set of features, for people who want a watch first and a gadget second.

    Our design review

    8.2Design rating
    Form8.8
    Material8.2
    Detail7.6
    Longevity7.8

    ScanWatch Light is a 37 mm stainless steel case with real hands and a small grayscale OLED window, so it reads as a watch before a tracker. It weighs 27 g without the strap and sits behind Gorilla Glass, where the pricier ScanWatch 2 gets sapphire. The crown does all navigation, which a gstylemag reviewer found slow to learn. Battery life is rated at 30 days, but charging runs through a dock that worked only with the bundled cable in that review.

    Strongest point
    Small steel case with real hands
    Compromise
    Charging dock tied to its bundled cable
    Check price on Amazon

Product images from the retailer listings, cut out and staged with AI.

  1. 2008Nokia and the University of Cambridge present Morph, a flexible nanotechnology phone concept, alongside MoMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition in New York.
  2. 2010Brazilian designer Dinard da Mata publishes Fluid, a smartphone concept under the Philips name with a flexible OLED body that wraps around the wrist.
  3. 2016Lenovo shows CPlus at Tech World in San Francisco, a working Android prototype with a 4.26-inch flexible display that curls into a wristband.
  4. 2019Nubia shows the Alpha at MWC and puts it on sale: a wrist-worn phone with a 4-inch flexible OLED fixed in a permanent curve, so it cannot lie flat.
  5. 2019Samsung’s Galaxy Fold goes on sale, with a 7.3-inch flexible display that opens like a book; it reaches the US on September 27.
  6. 2023Motorola demonstrates its Adaptive Display Concept at Lenovo Tech World, a 6.9-inch pOLED phone that snaps onto a metal cuff on the wrist.

What it was

In August 2010, Brazilian designer Dinard da Mata published Fluid, a smartphone concept carrying the Philips name. Its whole body was a flexible OLED touchscreen. Laid flat, it was a tall, thin phone. Bent, it wrapped around the wrist like a bracelet, so the phone became something you wore rather than something you carried.

The renders showed the screen running the full length of the band, with the interface following the curve. Turned sideways, the long panel was also pitched as a small game screen with on-screen controls. There was no hardware behind any of it. Fluid was a picture of where displays might go, and it was not the first. Two years earlier, Nokia and the University of Cambridge had shown Morph, a flexible phone concept presented alongside an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The screen learned to bend. The phone never learned to leave the pocket.

Where the idea went

The bending part arrived first, just not in the shape Fluid proposed. In June 2016, Lenovo brought a working prototype called CPlus to its Tech World event in San Francisco. Its 4.26-inch flexible display ran Android and curled around a wrist like a snap bracelet. Lenovo presented it as a research project, not a product.

In 2019 the industry split the idea in two. Nubia showed the Alpha, a wrist-worn phone whose 4-inch flexible OLED sat in a fixed curve. It was a watch with phone ambitions, not a phone that could lie flat. The same year, Samsung put the Galaxy Fold on sale, and flexible OLED found its commercial home in phones that fold like a book.

Motorola, by then owned by Lenovo, came closest to Fluid in October 2023. Its Adaptive Display Concept used a 6.9-inch pOLED panel that worked as a normal phone when flat, stood up in an arch for video calls and snapped onto a metal cuff on the wrist. Like CPlus, it was a demo, with no price and no date.

What it means now

Fluid got the material right, and early. Screens bend now, and folding phones are an ordinary sight. What has not arrived is the single object that is a phone in your hand and a band on your wrist. The versions that bend, from Lenovo and Motorola, were shown on a stage, handled by the press and put away. The one that was sold, Nubia’s Alpha, stayed a bracelet and never lay flat.

The wrist itself went to the smartwatch, which solved the problem from the other side. Instead of a phone that becomes a bracelet, it is a small screen that borrows the phone. For now, that is the version of Fluid you can buy.

The original post, summarized

Our August 2010 post introduced Dinard da Mata’s Fluid concept for Philips: a smartphone built around a flexible OLED screen that could be used flat or worn wrapped around the wrist. It is summarized here rather than republished.

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