Lenovo unveils rolling laptop and smartphone displays
Lenovo unveiled a laptop and smartphone — which can extend their displays using the company’s “rolling” technology — at the 2023 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The devices were shown off as an early proof of concept, and the laptop looks no different from the company’s ThinkPad line of notebooks in its 12.7-inch unextended form.
However, the laptop’s display extends to 15.1 inches with the flip of a switch on the right-hand side of the device.
The display’s resolution is 2,024 x 1,604 pixels in its unextended mode and 2,024 x 2,368 pixels when fully extended. The “rolling” process takes a few seconds.
It should be noted that the laptop screen has a small crease where its screen originally bent beneath the keyboard once fully extended.
The screen also has a unique aspect ratio of 8:9 when extended. It’s equivalent to having two 16:9 displays on top of one another.
The rolling action of the Motorola-branded smartphone. Unfortunately, the laptop’s rolling display wasn’t active when I was at the stand.
This could prove useful for users who prefer vertical monitors for their desktop PCs and those who want to stack windows.
While Lenovo doesn’t specify how many rolls the screen will last, it aims for the displays to last 20,000 to 30,000 repetitions.
The smartphone on display is branded as a Motorola device and features a similar rolling mechanism to the laptop.
The Chinese tech giant acquired Motorola in 2014 for $2.91 billion — around R31 billion at the time.
It should be noted that Lenovo is emphasising that the devices are early proof of concept units, and there is no indication of when its laptops and smartphones with rollable screens will be commercially launched.
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