Lenovo has unveiled the world’s first foldable PC at a press event, with the company’s new Thinkpad laptop shipping with a folding screen.
Technically, Lenovo’s newest laptop is part of the ThinkPad X1 family, but it’s still at such an early phase that it doesn’t have a name, and it’s not even really finished: this foldy chap won’t be available for consumers until sometime in 2020.
A folding laptop makes sense. Laptops by their nature already fold up, and 2in1 laptop, allowing laptops to fold over onto themselves to fill a role as a large tablet are already quite popular. Lenovo’s option has a single 13-inch 2K OLED screen that can fold up in half to reduce its size by half.
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Lenovo say that rather than a gimmick, the laptop is a response to the different needs of workers, highlighting an 140 percent increase in remote work between 2008 and 2016.
From a press release, Lenovo seems to believe this could be your one true device, mentioning that you can start the day by folding the laptop up like a book to check on your social media accounts, before folding and unfolding it in a myriad of different ways to suit whatever you’re trying to do.
This is mostly possible due to LG Display’s folding screen tech, but it will look weird to anyone who prefers their laptops to contain keyboards, because there doesn’t appear to be one here, although you can poke and prod the screen with your fingers a pen.
If you do want a keyboard, there’s a ‘productivity mode’ that will turn it into something approximate to a regular laptop, albeit with a digital keyboard.
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It’s a fairly attractive proposition in a lot of cases. It’s reported to weigh around two pounds, and its appearance in the ThinkPad X1 family, which Lenovo has previously held up as a premium brand, should guarantee that there’s some serious grunt behind the scenes, even if the exact specs haven’t yet been released.
It’s been a tough time for foldable tech recently, with the Samsung Galaxy Fold being delayed after several review units sent to journalists failed. However, with a long run-up ahead of launch and some promising early signs, here’s hoping Lenovo’s effort hits the mark.