- Key Points
- Lenovo unveiled the Lenovo ThinkBook ‘flip’ concept, a laptop with a foldable screen. When fully unfolded the screen is an 18-inch display.
- Lenovo also showed off a solar-powered PC which it says can give the user an extra bit of battery when the device is running low and there may not be access to a charging point.
- Both devices are concepts so are not commercially available.
Lenovo showed a laptop on Monday with a foldable screen and one that could use solar energy to extend its battery life.
These laptops are just concepts, which means they are not commercially available. The world’s largest PC manufacturer, Lenovo, has a history of showing imaginative concepts with some reality, so it is worth noting what the Chinese technology giants are.
For example, Lenovo first showed the idea of a rollable laptop—a laptop where the screen rolls upwards to increase the size of the display. This year, businesses will start selling such laptops.The latest concepts were unveiled at the Mobile World Congress Trade Show in Barcelona.
Foldable laptop screen
The Lenovo Thinkbook ‘Flip’ concept is a laptop with a foldable screen. When fully surfaced, the screen is an 18-inch display. The screen can then be twisted half horizontally to make two screens—one front and one backwards. The entire display can be rotated under the flat, so the laptop turns into a device like a tablet. Displays that fold are not new.
Consumer electronics players like Samsung and Honor have launched smartphones with foldable displays. Huawei also sells a smartphone with a trifold screen. However, laptop screens that bend in this shape are unusual. Lenovo will need to do a lot of work, including improving the durability of the performance, before it can be commercialized.
Solar powered laptop
The Lenovo Yoga Solar PC company’s other concept device is named after the line of Yoga laptops.
The product has solar panels on the back. They are capable of absorbing light.
Even though the PC can still be charged using a standard charger, the idea is that the solar energy can give an additional battery to the user when the device is running low and there is no place to charge it. Lenovo stated that solar panels can also absorb ambient light in a person’s environment to give the user an additional hour of laptop at the end of an eight-hour working day.