Lenovo Reveals Rollable Laptop And Smartphone Screens

I can't say when they will be available for sale or why you would want a kit with more moving parts

Lenovo holds its annual Tech World Gabfest, mocking devices with rollable OLED screens that shrink or expand based on application needs....

The company released the following video to show off its rollable. We embed the video and start the moment where we show the rollable phone. The rollable laptop demo starts at 53 seconds.

Youtube videos

Lenovo doesn't explain how the rollable works and the video above doesn't show the back of the foldable smartphone and laptop prototype.

This is important because there is no way to tell if Lenovo is hiding a terrible mess or is on the verge of having a good product. Also note that electronics manufacturers are usually careful to avoid moving parts due to damage. The devices featured in the video move, a lot. Even more so than the screens that have appeared in recent years and have been criticized for the need for large hinges and the accumulation of dust and dirt in the folds.

Luca Rossi, president of Lenovo Smart Devices Group, said that content will increase as the screen expands and contracts, and that it will be very useful for ... various things. However, his comments point out that rollable serves to provide different products for sale to Lenovo to increase productivity. He cites Lenovo's earlier form factor base - with products like convertible laptops and PCs that fold up with 360-degree hinges - as the ingenuity that propelled the Chinese company to the top of PC sales.

Not to mention, the foldable kit may not get Lenovo there - analysts rate foldable phones years away from the mainstream.

While we're waiting for a rollable device, Lenovo last month offered another screen extension option - an app called Freestyle that lets PCs use the Lenovo tablet as a second screen or as touch input.

Apple and Samsung already offer this feature, surpassing Lenovo's 8.7% market share with 31% and 18% market share, respectively. Improving the performance of its tablet could help Lenovo catch up a bit, or maybe give it a chance to put things together.

The event featured a number of other new launches, such as Lenovo's recently updated range of data center kits and ambitions to offer a variety of VR devices, such as: Get Front Mounted Monitor which was introduced last month, for example.

New company The company announced it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with VMware to introduce a hyperconverged infrastructure at the network edge and create a lab focused on building edge native applications and modernizing network infrastructure. It's an industry term for enabling the use of servers and converged storage in places like 5G cells, with everything defined by software, rather than relying on older, less flexible architectures. ®