Lenovo reveals rollable laptop and smartphone screens
- Reference: 1666155577
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/10/19/lenovo_rollable_laptop_smartphone_concept/
- Source link:
The company emitted the video below to show off its rollables. We've embedded and set the vid to start at the moment the rollable phone is demoed. The rollable laptop demo starts at the 53 second mark.
[1]Youtube Video
[2]
Lenovo has offered no explanation of how the rollables work, and the video above does not show the rear of the prototype rollable smartphone and laptop.
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That matters, because there's no way of telling whether Lenovo is hiding a horrible mess back there, or is close to having a viable product. Note, also, that electronics manufacturers are usually keen to avoid using moving parts because they break. The devices on display in the vids move – a lot. More than the foldable screens that have appeared in recent years and attracted criticism for requiring bulky hinges and gathering dust and grime on creases.
Luca Rossi, president of Lenovo's Intelligent Devices Group, said content will scale as screens expand and contract, and opined this will be very useful indeed for … stuff. But his remarks suggested rollables are as much about giving Lenovo a differentiated product to sell as they are about improving productivity. He cited Lenovo's past form factor footling – with products like convertible laptops with 360-degree hinges and foldable PCs – as the kind of cleverness that propelled the Chinese company to the [5]top of the PC sales charts .
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Just don't mention that foldable kit probably didn't help Lenovo get there – analysts rate foldable smartphones as [7]years away from the mainstream .
While you wait for rollable devices, Lenovo last month offered another way to extend screens: an app called Freestyle that allows PCs to use Lenovo tablets as a second screen, or for touch input.
Apple and Samsung already offer that functionality and – at respective 31 and 18 percent shares of the market – dwarf Lenovo’s 8.7 slice of the pie. Making its tablets more capable may help Lenovo to catch up a little, or perhaps offer some bundling opportunities.
[8]Lenovo’s folding portable ThinkPad grows to 16.3in, adds keyboard
[9]Clouds lift Lenovo ISG to third consecutive profit
[10]Lenovo updates ThinkPad mobile workstations with AMD variants
[11]Lenovo issues firmware updates after UEFI vulnerabilities disclosed
The event featured a few other re-hashes, such as Lenovo's [12]recently refreshed range of datacenter kit and ambition to offer diverse VR devices such as the [13]face-mounted monitor revealed last month.
One fresh initiative the company revealed is that it and VMware have signed a memorandum of understanding to build a lab focussed on enabling hyperconverged infrastructure to run at the network edge, and to create "edge native" applications and infrastructure modernisation. That's industry jargon for making it possible to use converged servers and storage in places like 5G cells, preferably to run apps based on Kubernetes, with everything software-defined rather than reliant on older and less flexible tightly coupled architectures. ®
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[1] https://youtu.be/kDB08h73rjs?t=28
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y0-KvaL03C7V3grKRJ3adwAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y0-KvaL03C7V3grKRJ3adwAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y0-KvaL03C7V3grKRJ3adwAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/10/pc_shipments_decline/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y0-KvaL03C7V3grKRJ3adwAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/04/idc_folding_smartphones_market_share/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/01/lenovo_thinkpad_x1_fold_portable/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/10/lenovo_q1_23/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/09/lenovo_shows_new_thinkpad_mobile/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/14/lenovo_uefi_vuln/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/23/lenovo_thinksystem_units/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/02/lenovo_wearable_display/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Who buys these things?
I don't get it either. It's neat, it's cutting edge R&D, but then so a supersonic car, and I don't need one of those either. I'm a consumer of their products, I have a Moto phone and a Lenovo tablet, but at no point have I wished for them to fold, or to have some complex gears. I dig Steampunk, but cogwheels in my phone? Both were pretty inexpensive devices, and offered something I was struggling to find unless I was willing to pay flagship prices, the phone is a Moto G Pro Stylus, and and the M8 Tablet has a SIM slot. Manufacturers need to offer us things that are useful (like the Lenovo Freestyle App, if only it worked on my device), casting, sharing, extra screens, using mobiles as scratchpads and pointing devices, and while we can do all that, it needs to get slicker.
".... it and VMware have signed a memorandum of understanding to build a lab focussed on enabling hyperconverged infrastructure to run at the network edge, and to create "edge native" applications and infrastructure modernisation."
BINGO!
I have a Samsung Z Flip phone, and actually quite like it. Sure it's a bit of a gimmick, but I partly bought it because I want more R&D done in the area.
So I applaud this type of development and thinking. Is it more than a gimmick? Maybe not for now, but it does require solving issues and problems, and will potentially lead to better stuff down the line.
It also creates more competition for this stuff, which again will hopefully further the development.
Would I buy these particular things? Well no. But that's more because I still haven't forgiven, nor trust, Lenovo after the Superfish issue. A screen that tucks itself away is cool, even if it currently comes with impractical drawbacks.
Can I interest you in these magic beans?
Who buys these things?
All these foldable tech phones are expensive, fragile and lumpy gimmicks. The Samsung Z fold phones being a case in point - 2x as thick as a regular phone with a greater propensity to break due to the scratchy screen and difficulty of protecting the device. Yeah I guess it's great you have a (small) tablet if you need one, but the rest of the time it's a brick with a crappy outside screen.
What purpose is this Lenovo phone / laptop demo even serving a roller / slide mechanism? If it were a general production device (instead of a mockup) it would need to be a thicker case, bulge or wedge shape to accommodate the roller just so the screen can grow an inch or two. Not to mention the likelihood that grit, dust, makeup, would get behind the screen and into the roller mechanism ultimately destroying it. I wonder how many people would pay a premium for that.