Nice flex: Lenovo unveils first folding PC
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is to become "a fully-fledged laptop with a foldable display". Its prototype was shown at Lenovo's Accelerate in-house exhibition in Florida. The first representatives of the tech press could already try out the advance sample. Find out what's inside the first laptop with foldable design.
Surprisingly, Lenovo, together with LG, presented the first laptop with a foldable screen. The ThinkPad X1 is still a prototype. However, by 2020 such products could already go into series production. And so the trend presented by Huawei in the Mate X or Samsung in the Galaxy Fold continues.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is supposed to have a 13.3-inch display in the unfolded state, which comes in 4:3 format with 2K resolution. Technically, OLED is used; a technology that has so far been reluctantly used for PCs due to weaknesses such as image retention or decreasing brightness. Apart from that, OLEDs are usually more expensive than LCDs.
Lenovo takes the big advantage out of the display as soon as you fold the 13.3-inch format in the middle. Then the ThinkPad X1 is hardly bigger than a paperback. At less than 900 grams, at least the prototype is about as light, according to The Verge's Hands-on.
There is currently little to say about the rest of the hardware equipment. In any case, it should be a Windows laptop. Corresponding software adaptations or a reader mode for reading e-books in the evening in a half-folded state are also still outstanding.
Especially the OLED screen keyboard still needs some optimization in the operating system. However, it is likely that an external keyboard will be used anyway for writing longer texts. The display is then opened and set up with a stand - possibly integrated in the protective cover.
But Lenovo has already stimulated the imagination as to what new possibilities foldable displays offer the laptop form factor. As both Samsung and Huawei also sell Windows devices, they can be expected to offer corresponding solutions. What applications do you see for the ThinkPad X1 and competing laptops?
