What you need to know
- Lenovo showed off a rollable concept laptop at Mobile World Congress 2023.
- The laptop features a 12.7-inch display that can expand into a 15.3-inch screen.
- The resulting display has an 8:9 aspect ratio, allowing users to stack two 16:9 windows vertically.
- The laptop is only a concept, though Lenovo told MrMobile that it prefers to "develop concepts that [they] have a hope of selling."
Mobile World Congress 2023 just kicked off, and Lenovo has a concept PC that's turning heads. An unnamed rollable laptop features a display that can expand and retract at the push of a button. Our colleague MrMobile (Michael Fisher) went hands-on with the unique PC.
When resting in normal mode, the concept PC has a 12.7-inch display with a 4:3 aspect ratio and a 2024 x 1604 resolution. That's not a common aspect ratio for a laptop, but the screen looks normal enough when not extended that you wouldn't know it was special at first glance.
Unrolling the laptop forms a 15.3-inch screen with an 8:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 2024 x 2368. That's taller than just about any PC on the market and it creates a display that can split into two 16:9 windows.
Lenovo has experience with new product categories. The company has made two generations of its ThinkPad X1 Fold. The Yoga Book 9i will start shipping in June 2023 as well. That laptop is a different kind of foldable which features two separate displays rather than a single folding screen.
Feedback from ThinkPad X1 Fold users shaped Lenovo's decision in making its rollable concept phone. A tall portrait mode provides more space for long websites, coding, placing windows vertically, and several other scenarios.
MrMobile asked Lenovo if the concept will ship to customers. The company said, "we prefer to develop concepts that we have a hope of selling."
Lenovo also gave those at Mobile World Congress a hands-on look at a rollable phone, lovingly referred to as the "RIZR" by MrMobile in his video. That's not the official name of the mobile phone, but its design is reminiscent of the RIZR from the early days of cell phones.
