Lenovo's Bendable Yoga-Style Laptop Revealed: 5 Features Including Voice-Control, Stylus

Lenovo might not be toe-to-toe with major smartphone brands such Google, Apple and Samsung, but it has maintained a hold over the PC market. At its Transform event in New York on Tuesday, the company revealed a new kind of laptop — a bendable one, which can be folded and rolled up.

The PC is nowhere near launch, in fact, Lenovo didn’t even show off a concept — what it showed off was a slide showcasing the product. It showed a curved display merging into a keyboard. The concept seems innovative and might pique many PC users’ curiosity.

Read: Foldable iPhone? LG to Supply Apple, Google And Microsoft With Bendable Displays

Flexible PCs could be more convenient to use than traditional laptops and for that reason alone it is worth exploring what the company calls “The future of personalized computing.”

The new laptop concept comes with many new features, including:

Voice-input: The device will work with voice command instead of a traditional track pad. Voice commands on smartphones, despite being highly developed in the form of voice assistants such as the Google Assistants and Siri are not considered the primary way of input. However, Lenovo is working on changing that.

From what we know about voice command usage, it would be tardy to use a PC, navigate a browser using voice commands. But Lenovo says that the concept could be executed through “advanced materials” and “new screen technologies.”

Stylus: The foldable device will come with a stylus. Lenovo seems to have picked up the feature from professional tablets such as the Surface Pro and iPad Pro, this would require a stylus which can be used on a display and a sensitive display. Such display have been made for tablets and even phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Note, but one for a laptop is something new that Lenovo is offering.

Flexibility: This is the part that makes Lenovo’s announcement special — a foldable, rollable PC is something that hasn’t been attempted before and not without reason — there are many working parts of a PC including a large battery and mostly a fan-based cooling system that will be difficult to put into this kind of a form factor, even if you have a PC-size flexible display.

AI: You will not only be able to issue commands to the voice-controlled PC, but even get response to your queries.

“This is more than just design or look and feel…it’s how you can speak to it… or how its speaks to you,” the company’s presentation stated.

While the company did not explicitly state it, it did indicate that such a PC could have an AI-based voice assistant, which would talk back to the user.

Always-on display: The company also said that the device would be “always connected” and “always listening”, indicating an always-on display on the lines of Samsung’s S-series devices.

Here is a video of the presentation showcasing the product.

Read: Samsung Patents Shatter-Proof OLED Display For Bendable Smartphones

Lenovo has just introduced the concept, but hasn’t put a launch cycle on it or even indicated that it is in the works for a future release. But it has indicated that making such a product would be possible using “advanced materials.”

We might still be years away from seeing a full functioning bendable PC, but work on the technology has already begun, if Lenovo’s presentation is any indication.