Now, That's a Flex! First Look at Lenovo's Rolling Laptop and Phone Screens

pcmag.com:

Lenovo had two surprise products on hand at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona: a laptop and a smartphone each with a rollable display. The basic idea behind them is to create highly portable products that don't skimp on the most important part: the screen real estate. We checked them out on the ground in Spain, and here are our thoughts.

Lenovo stressed that the rollable-display products it showcased are prototypes. Neither of these is a final product or even a product-in-development, and Lenovo did not share any specs or other capabilities of the hardware. The devices on hand were purely to showcase the rolling-screen tech. We were allowed to spend less than 10 minutes with them.

The laptop is a basic 13-inch chassis made from aluminum with a thickness of 17.9mm. When the display is in its normal position, the 2K screen (2,024 by 1,604) measures 12.7 inches across the diagonal with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Lenovo said it's the same display (a flexible OLED) that it used for its folding, all-screen ThinkBook X1 Fold. It looked bright and sharp.

At the press of a physical button on the right side of the deck, two motors drive the display panel upward. The hidden part of the screen unrolls from underneath the keyboard, so the panel's degree of bend is as gentle a curve as possible. It takes close to 10 seconds to extend to maximum height, and you can hear the motors working. When done, the screen stands 15.3 inches high with what Lenovo says is a 8:9 aspect ratio (2,024 by 2,368 pixels), or the same shape as two 16:9 screens standing atop one another.

The added vertical screen space is a natural fit for some creative and productive tasks, such as browsing the web, hammering out a Word document, or filling in lines of code.