- Foldable phones had a pretty rough 2019.
The Galaxy Fold was a bust on launch,
and pretty much everything else got delayed.
But at CES 2020,
we're seeing foldable PCs actually have a bit of a moment.
We've already seen enough to make us think
that maybe 2020 is the year of the foldable PC.
(pleasant music)
I think the most important example is Intel's
Horseshoe Bend concept.
Now, Intel doesn't sell PCs itself.
But it often makes reference designs
to try to help define categories,
like Ultrabooks or two in ones.
This Horseshoe Bend device
has a 17-inch foldable OLED display.
And Intel says its new Tiger Lake processor
lets it be just 7 millimeters thick,
and still get solid battery life.
You can open it out to a full 17-inch display,
or fold it like a normal-sized laptop
with touchscreen keys on the bottom.
It is just a concept,
but the fact that intel is making it at all
suggests that it expects its partners
to produce similar devices, because,
that's what this Intel chip is designed for.
(chilled electronic music)
Major PC companies are also presenting their own concepts.
Dell has two, one called the Concept Ori,
and another called the Concept Duet.
Ori means fold in Japanese,
so that's the one with the legit folding OLED screen.
It's 13 inches, so it's like having a big tablet
or a tiny laptop.
The Duet, as you might have guessed,
just has two separate screens with a hinge in the middle.
Dell didn't say anything about specs
other than the screen resolution,
so don't expect any devices like this
to go on sale any time soon.
In terms of actual shipping devices,
there's really only one, it's Lenovo's Thinkpad X1 Fold.
It's similar to Dell's Concept Ori in size, and design.
It has 13-inch screen, and it can be folded the same way.
There's a magnetic keyboard
that clips onto the bottom half of the screen
when you fold it.
And that also fills in the gap
in the hinge when it's closed.
The design is pretty nice,
with a leather cover
that slides along the back when you fold it,
and, it's not just a concept,
Lenovo says it'll actually go on sale
in the middle of the year.
We even have basic specs, there's an Intel processor,
eight gigabytes of RAM, and up to a terabyte of storage.
Prices start at $2,499 though,
so don't expect devices like this
to be affordable for a while.
(twinkling electronic music)
All of these devices
might not actually be all that usable either,
they're all running regular Windows 10,
which just really isn't designed for this kind of screen.
The manufacturers have to add customization
so you can do things like,
pin different apps to different areas of the screen,
and not everything works in every orientation,
and it's all just a little bit awkward.
Intel and Lenovo both told me
they'd work on Windows 10X devices later,
which is Microsoft's upcoming version of Windows,
aimed at folding and dual screens like the Surface Neo.
But there's no word on when that'll actually arrive.
Until then, these are gonna be super early adopter products.
They'll cost a lot, and probably be pretty janky.
But hey, isn't that what CES is all about?
Everything at this show is impractical,
until it isn't a few years later.
And, with giants like Intel, Dell and Lenovo on board,
it feels likely that foldable PCs
will be commonplace soon enough.
(electronic pulse) But hey, I've been wondering,
if you actually had one of these foldable PCs,
how would you use it, which direction would you hold it in?
(Camera operator laughs) I would wear it like a hat.
Like a...
(both laugh)