everybody norm from tested here and we got a special preview for you today
Oh recently I was able to meet with Lenovo who's working on a
next-generation computer a laptop they don't even know
what to call it but it's the first of ice I've seen at the size that has a
foldable display yeah foldable displays are gonna become a thing and we've
already seen them on phones like the Samsung Galaxy fold but also I bet in
the next year or two a lot of laptop or tablet type devices will also have
foldable display so I went over to meet with Lenovo and chat it with Mike from
their team to learn about this new product let's go take a look all right
everyone I'm here with Michael from Lenovo on the ThinkPad team and super
excited because there's our first chance to look at this laptop tablet how many
mission what to call it do you guys even have a name for it yet
well it's the world's first foldable PC it's a think pad it's part of the x1
family we don't have a name for it I know well let's talk about its design
maybe we'll come up with a name as as we get through this but immediately it in
this currency right now it's it's folded and we can see it has a big folding
display so I imagine the design of this product originated around now give
wanting to create a computer with this type of display yes tell me about the
display first who makes it in and what are its dimensions and specs okay so
it's a 13.3 inch OLED display it's made by LG display it's 2k and resolution
it's a 13.3 as I mentioned in screen size in the the two displays is
basically in nine point six six inch and obviously it folds and what's
interesting to me is that it is a four by three aspect ratio yes it's not
traditional was your laptops or all 69 and I imagine that's because when you
fold it then you get something that's more usable yes you can use it in
basically any orientation so you know in this orientation you get a nice big 13.3
you can also use it in this this is orientation
again his daughter a user were it's not sort of letterboxed so you get a lot of
content as you can see from this image there's even room at the bottom for more
content so very very useful in you know productivity and that kind of thing I
see this running Windows it's like a think pad in x86 system so my goal in
terms of what's inside it's running Intel's an equivalent to what you'd find
out like a pink pad it will be running in until CPU and obviously being the x1
it will have a compute power that you know you can do all your daily normal
activities on it obviously if you want to run massive spreadsheets CAD work
this is not a device for that right we have we have a full line of other
products to do that so the idea of this machine is of course it's very compact
it's very small it closes up it's very portable so you know very bad area
efficient and you can get most of what you need to do done on this machine you
know I do want to get back to the screen but in terms of being a laptop you're
designing it presumably like a laptop of a top half enough and a bottom half is
how you think of where the components are distributed in the battery as well
yes so the weight is on the bottom right here so that you can actually use it
like this in this mode if you're stuck on a bus or something like that you can
whip it out and do some email or stropping a media that kind of thing and
that's what the battery yeah that's where the battery would be chipset would
be on the lighter type - yeah right and that's about a footprint about nine
point seven inch little more than that with include the bezel yeah about a nine
point six inch yeah yeah bottom top half and bottom half so and then of course
the hinge that marries those we've seen a lot of floral displays out in the
market right now on smartphones some but not perform as well others what's the
what considerations have to do time to make this work as a something that's
gonna be folded over again and something that'll be usable completely flat and
also at any angle well we've been working on this for quite a long time
and one of the key components is the hinge and as you know we're very good at
hinges right with with all our other Yoga Pollock so yeah things like that
but getting the right trajectory of the hinge so that you don't put any stresses
on the screen is very important so that when you do bend it you know there is no
I freaking out there is no stress on it on the screen so that when it is open
you can see that basically there's no crease in the middle right so when it
falls it doesn't do a fall in the Reese there's a little bit of a radius mmm
right now that's intentional that's intentional yes so that you don't you
know that it'll last for a long long time and it won't introduce any creasing
or like you've seen on some other products is that something that's on the
recommendation of your display partner and the testing they've done on display
or something that you you guys have thought about and puttin in and yeah I
mean we've we've worked in conjunction with LG Display on this product so it's
a full partnership with those guys yeah well the top also the form factor right
there's a little bit of a bezel the different ways you use obviously right
now you have your traditional tablet use case running Windows of course
touch screen windows yes there's no keyboard attached so input wise you have
touch and the pen yes I know there will be a physical keyboard available with it
which I can show you in a minute but yes it's its touch very obvious touch you
know you can use it in this mode with the on-screen keyboard when it appears
you can quickly take the pen out with the two windows you can take notes on
the bottom while you're watching a video or something like that on the top half
or in a meeting that kind of thing how does Windows see this device when
you fold it does it see it as one display or does it see it as two
displays where if you maximize the window it's always one display one
display so you would stretch your window to the top half or if you wanted to go
around the curve getting the stretch would be on that yes again yes you know
and we've again it's a will be a windows-based system
we've been working with Microsoft to create an experience that you know you'd
expect with the device like this next goes into the on-screen keyboard and all
the ways it recognizes what orientation you guys like you said of experience
with the yoga in terms of recognizing that is that is that one of the places
where this started with with the yoga you realizing that people wanted to use
their laptops in different ways as media display devices and this goes kind of
beyond that I think I think you know there's a there's a room for a device
like this in that it becomes so small that I want to take it places I wouldn't
necessarily take a traditional laptop because they are larger this obviously
is very very small it's like a size of a folio right so something that people are
very very used to used to in a form factor but it's something small that
goes to something big right and this is place well I would take this to places I
may not necessarily take my laptop so for instant lunch right I could take it
to lunch and then do other like check up on social media or do some shopping that
kind of thing and it's better the you obviously get a better experience with a
bigger screen than you may with it with a cell phone right mm-hm
and also you know where's it you know I don't need to be holding the phone all
the time right I can look at stuff I can eat and I can do more things because it
also stands on its own says we're using a for Intel chipset
Osumi with a lot of the same IO that's for small laptops can talk about or the
inputs you're gonna get and outputs so that'll have to us PC divided interfaces
on it so that allow you to dock and you can dock in you know this this mode
right here or if I'm in this mode again you'd be out of dock on the lower left
as well hmm so we've accounted for that and the
charges over that same port as well yes charges yeah an x-men ability in terms
of microSD or no there's no expandability you know this is what we
always on always connected device so it will support
you know W an so access to the cloud will always be there so you know cloud
storage obviously will have plenty of storage as well but you know you can
augment that with cloud storage as well you know this is just a prototype but
presumably you have all your design decisions of reading done you know what
chipset to reuse you know your is gonna be you know the screen size when you
went about designing versus it that was wait was that a cap to the weight and
also in terms of the heat that you wanted to get from this as well
yeah weight was very important that we were trying to reach a weight but it
didn't really seem too heavy right we wanted to be very mobile and of course
if you get to a certain weight then it's gonna be too heavy we haven't finalized
the weight on that we're still working a fit through a few things any park
rangers well we've definitely under two pounds I think is our goal but again
with you know we still have a some development to go on okay the active
cooling of course if you're writing a full yes sir yeah very well how closest
is then to being done it's something that you guys are showing off this year
you know when will portable screen computers become a thing the launch
window is basically the first half of next year we haven't finalized when were
actually going to launch it or it will be available but first half is the
target yeah I know you guys don't have a name yet and maybe the obvious theme is
something with a fold but it's not something you're s-sir considering so
really curious out there what people think it should be called but this is a
yeah well took suggestions yeah thank you so much Michael okay thanks okay so
there are many more questions about this product that we just don't know yet
first of all it's been working on it for about three years in partnership with LG
who's making that display and they really wanted to reinforce that it was
LG has their display partner because the different type of photo OLED that's on
the Samsung phone doesn't have that removal film layer that people saw in
the galaxy folds that then made them not really usable also a big difference
between this device and before phones we've seen is
it doesn't fold completely flat there's a little bit of a curve or radius at the
end so it's less pressure on that hinge the hinge itself is also interesting all
that I've always been known to make some pretty good hinges on their thing passer
at Lenovo a yoga laptops which I've liked in the past and the hinge here
while we couldn't get a direct camera look at it they're calling it a torque
hinge and for my use with it it held pretty rigid and about every angle so
flat that we could we could get it to doesn't go past flat the display doesn't
fold backwards but from closed to open any one of those angles it held pretty
sturdily now display itself when it's flat it read as a seamless display look
good it's OLED it's bright the viewing angles are ok not the best I've seen
from other OLED panels but what's interesting is when you fold it it does
start looking a little weird it's really tripping my brain says don't fold it
don't fold it you don't want to do this and yet you can I'm folding it in half
and when I'm folding it and looking right down the center right between
where the fold is the image quality the light quality and the panel quality in
the center and the edges are slightly different it's a continuous image but
the quality of image is slightly different I don't know if it's because
it's different viewing angles obviously from down here and off to the sides but
it's darker on the sides and brighter in the center and you can see I tried
putting a pen and drawing between and as I'm folding it it's purely a seamless
device on the inside we also don't know exactly what they're really running they
did confirm Intel x86 probably a next-gen unannounced Intel processor on
the mobile site and cell has h-series you series Y series definitely not H
series so the difference between the u series and the y series my gut says it's
gonna probably be a Y series device but I'd love to be proven wrong but doesn't
mean probably slower core fewer cores and slower clock speeds mike said that
this is not gonna be a heavy workhorse but it'd be more for like cons consuming
and the demos they had with reading with video viewing Illustrated that as well 2
inputs with USB C and no expand abilities so don't know how much you're
gonna be able to put in this device it will be one of
those always-on connected devices so expect to use crowds or cloud storage
and then finally usability is there's a world need a foldable laptop tablet
computer like this and I think there's a case to be made for this all right I
carry a I pad Pro which I love to travel with because it's compact but there are
places I wouldn't take it I wouldn't take it necessarily out for lunch
because even though it's thin and light it is a big footprint the footprint here
when it's fold in half at nine point six nine point seven inches it's pretty
small that's really easy to throw in a backpack and it unfolded at thirteen
point three inches that's actually a really nice canvas or you know for web
browsing for sketching and drawing using their their pen it really will go down
to how the software will take advantage of it now they couldn't say it runs
exactly Windows 10 although it is x86 so there's a lot of time between now in the
first half of next year who knows what version of Windows might be out that
this could run on but it's gonna run full applications and I'm excited for
that opportunity as well they didn't say whether it would have a kickstand or not
but they did say that it would be able to be used propped up so whether that's
with a dock I think it would make a lot of sense for this to have a kickstand
but I think pen input touch input and then probably keyboard input as a third
use case where this will probably make the most sense for a device like this
there's a so much unknown about this it didn't weigh too much they're aiming for
under two pounds I think if it's in that one and a half pound one point six pound
range that could be pretty compelling but it is our first glimpse at a product
in this category we've been used to tablets for 10 years now and laptops for
far longer than that and we've had lots of promises for a device to kind of
bridge the two and a really compact form factor
remember back in 2009 there were rumors that Microsoft was gonna make a device
called the courier that was basically you know a laptop look with two screens
well this has the potential to fulfill the promise of the courier except
actually being one screen I wouldn't be surprised if in the next two years three
years we're gonna see a lot of laptops tablets whatever you want to call them
convertibles that use photo below LEDs screens and will more on that when those
actually come out thanks for watching we'll see you next time