Mark Davison is at Lenovo Accelerate in Orlando – Lenovo says it has ushered in a new era of personalised computing with the announcement today of the world’s first foldable PC – the ThinkPad X1.
Three years in the making, Luis Hernandez, VP of Commercial Product Solution Development, IDG at Lenovo, says the ThinkPad X1 will be available in 2020 and will target the most mobile of users within the PC spectrum.
“It has taken us three years to create the technologies and innovation inherent in the world’s first foldable PC,” Hernandez says. “It is a full-function PC and it’s ready to go when you need it. The beauty of the X1 is that it adapts to you – whether you’re reading the news in the morning or a book before you go to bed; or whether you need the full productivity of a PC with a keyboard and Office 365 for email, PowerPoint or spreadsheets; and when you want to watch a movie or television.
“It allows you to do as many things as you wish around the 24-hour period of your life,” he adds. “It is a revolution in mobility, that’s what this device is all about.
“The beauty of the X1 is that it is not just hardware and software running, but it is an always on, connected device.”
Hernandez says that when the X1 is launched next year, the company is “shooting for all-day battery life”, that the operating system will be Windows, and that it will be launched on a “future intel-based platform”.
Asked whether the company had been spurred on by the recent launch of foldable phones by Samsung and Huawei to announce the foldable PC, Hernandez was straight to the point: “We’ve been working for the past three years with our partners to make sure we develop and align these technologies,” he says.
He also reassured the gathered press that he didn’t foresee problems such as Samsung had with the hinges on its foldable phone.
“Our engineers will look – and continue to look – at different scenarios on how the device will be used,” he explains. “We will make sure it passes all the tests that allows us to have the reliability that the ThinkPad family is renowned for.
“We will have deeper standards for these tests and we will make sure that we exceed these,” Hernandez says.
Officially announcing the ThinkPad X1 to more than 2 000 delegates at this year’s Transform at Accelerate, Christian Teismann, senior VP and GM of the Enterprise Business Segment for PCs and Smart Devices at Lenovo, again reiterated that its development wasn’t a case of following phone manufacturers in the foldable arena.
“Two years ago, at the first Transform at Accelerate, I finished my presentation with a vision of a new category of PC – foldable,” Teismann says. “The feedback we got was overwhelming, and since then we have been determined as a team to drive, develop and make this technology work.
“Today, our vision has become reality,” Teismann says. “Our newest innovation and part of our flagship family.
“This is the only device you will need in future to be productive all day long,” he adds. “This is the new category of PC that we are introducing today.
“I am confident that the ThinkPad X1 is the new era of personalised computing,” Teismann says.