It was just a matter of time before seeing a foldable screen on a laptop and it is not surprising to see Lenovo doing it first.
At the MWC 2025, the laptop giant and the owner of Motorola showed another in a long line of interesting concepts. Last year, we saw a transparent screen on a laptop and now it folds – and it has a more practical sense.
The Thinkbook Flip AI PC concept essentially takes on the type of screen we are used to seeing some foldable phones outwards, such as the Huawei Mate XS and Honor V Purse, makes it much larger and the joint to a laptop chassis.
Lenovo calls it the “first folding notebook outside the industry” and the fairly simple idea is that there are many different ways to use the screen. It is potentially a new form of the 2 -in 1 convertible laptop.
Chris Martin / Foundry
You can use the Thinkbook Flip in the tablet, reading, Cotel modes, sharing and vertical, with all the different positions that you can place the screen. In traditional laptop mode, it is a 13 -inch screen that can be unfolded at 18.1 inches.
I like the idea of tablet mode to look at the contents in small situations as on a train table, and the display curve when it is folded can be used as its own band – a bit like the touchbar on old MacBooks or the edge of the Samsung Galaxy note.
The flexible OLED screen seems fairly good with specifications such as 120 Hz refreshment rate and a brightness of 400 nit. It is also sensitive to touch.
Overall, I like the idea, but there is clearly the work to be done before this laptop is ready to be shipped to voluntary buyers.
The software is Janky and met many errors and seeds while I was at the Lenovo stand by taking a look.
I also worry a lot about the sustainability of the device in its current form. The exterior display is exposed when you “close” the laptop as you would for a normal model, there is a huge bulge along the fold when the screen is in vertical mode, and it overturns too easily.
However, that is why devices like this are proofs of concepts and I applaud Lenovo again for having tried things.
Whether the Thinkbook Flip arrives on the market or not, and how much it will be, but it is certainly one of the most memorable devices that I saw at the MWC 2025.
