Lenovo previews “world’s first foldable PC”

First Samsung brings us the foldable phone. Now Lenovo is bringing us the first foldable PC.

With the problems associated with foldable phones, can you imagine the issues you will have with a foldable PC. I don’t know about you but I will skip this technology for several generations until the bugs get worked out and the community determines its viability.

Here is what Lenovo has to say about it:

At Lenovo’s own Accelerate event in Orlando, the company unveiled a prototype machine that makes Samsung’s folding phone look like a kids’ toy. This foldable PC can act like a small-screen laptop, big-screen desktop, book-format tablet or stylus-operated sketchbook.

As yet nameless, but due to join the ThinkPad X1 family when it makes a commercial debut, the foldable PC is about the size of two 13-inch laptop screens stuck together, with a seamless flexible OLED touchscreen spanning one entire side and offering a 2K resolution display.

It will run Windows, and folks who’ve seen it up close are saying it runs a 4:3 aspect ratio when folded out, with an alleged all-day battery and USB-C ports on the sides. It’ll ship with its own stylus, and obviously be nice to use in bed or on the sofa like a tablet.

But it’s designed to be a fully fledged PC as well. You can pop a touchscreen keyboard up on the bottom of the screen and use it as a laptop, which will probably be awful for any extended period of time. But you can also pair it with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and either sit it there in laptop format, or flatten it right out and stick it on its little stand to turn it into a small desktop machine. Naturally, it’ll support multi-monitor setups as well.

Clearly, this is a hugely flexible machine in every sense of the word, but without getting our hands on it it’s hard to say whether that ends up being a huge advantage or a confusing jumble of capabilities that don’t mesh together. Pricing, availability and a spec sheet won’t be available until 2020, by which time there may well be several other companies competing in the same space. But hey, you saw this one first, I guess.

Check out a very short video below. Or honestly, don’t. You’ll learn very little and you won’t ever get those 30 seconds back.