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Foldable phones have been all the rage this year, so we shouldn’t perhaps be surprised that someone would up the ante soon. Lenovo showed off its upcoming foldable PC at its Accelerate conference today. The device will fall under its premium Thinkpad X1 line, and will launch next year.
The device will have a 13.3-inch 2K OLED display made in partnership with LG, and will be powered by an Intel processor. Right now the company showed off just an early prototype, and we don’t know the full spec sheet, yet.
A hands-on by Engadget shows that Lenovo has created a special hinge to fold the display, and the crease is not prominent as foldable phones. That’s pretty impressive.
Basically, Lenovo’s idea is that you can either use the new device as a tablet or fold it like a laptop. In ‘laptop mode’ an on-screen keyboard will appear on the lower half of the screen. This might sound neat, but I won’t be convinced that’s a good option for a work ‘laptop’ until I try it out. Thankfully, you can use a mechanical Bluetooth keyboard and work on an unfolded screen — so it shouldn’t be all bad.
On paper, this sounds like an exciting concept. It’s interesting that Lenovo’s choosing to call this a foldable PC instead of a foldable tablet. I’m truly curious what the specs will be and whether it will actually reach PC-level of power.
Although the foldable PC might sound gimmicky, it does have some compelling use cases: you could hold it like a book and read in your bed, watch videos while cooking without using a stand to prop it up, or take notes with a pen in a meeting. Frankly, I can’t wait to try this out.
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Published May 14, 2019 — 13: 18 UTC