Lenovo teases solar-powered and foldable screen laptops in latest concept

Lenovo on Monday showed off a laptop with a foldable screen and one that can get extra battery life from solar power.

These laptops are just concepts, meaning they are not commercially available. Lenovo, the world’s biggest PC maker, has a history of showing off imaginative concepts with some becoming reality, so it’s worth keeping an eye on what the Chinese technology giant is up to.

For example, Lenovo previously showed off the idea of a rollable laptop — one where the screen rolls upwards to increase the size of the display. The company will begin selling such a laptop this year.

The latest concepts were unveiled at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona.

The Lenovo ThinkBook ‘flip’ concept is a laptop with a foldable screen. When fully unfolded, the screen is an 18-inch display.

The screen can then be folded in half horizontally to create two screens — one on the front and one on the back.

The entire display can be folded down flat so the laptop turns into a tablet-like device.

Foldable displays are not new. Consumer electronics players like Samsung and Honor have launched smartphones with foldable displays. Huawei even sells a smartphone with a trifold screen.

But foldable screens of this size and on laptops are uncommon.

There’s plenty more work Lenovo will likely need to do before this can be commercialized including improving the durability of the display.

The Lenovo Yoga Solar PC is the company’s other concept device named after its line of Yoga laptops.

The product has solar panels on the back. These are able to absorb light.

While the PC still works with a traditional charger, the idea is that the solar power can give the user an extra bit of battery when the device is running low and there may not be access to a charging point.

Lenovo said that the solar panels can absorb even ambient light in a person’s surroundings to give a user an extra hour of laptop use at the end of an eight-hour work day.