Laptops: Intel wants 2022 to be the year of the foldable screen

Intel would like laptops to begin their transformation into the era of foldable devices, like what we know on smartphones.

After the smartphone that unfolds into a tablet, that we discovered with the Galaxy Z Fold, here comes the era of tablets that unfold into portable PCs? This is what Intel hopes at CES 2022 where the firm unveiled the characteristics of the typical foldable PC. It is a matter of announcing the specifications that Intel has drawn up with its partners who will use its chips in their first foldable screen devices. According to the firm, the first PCs of this type will be marketed this year.

We are talking here, in all cases, of a machine taking the form of a laptop PC, but where the area dedicated to the keyboard and the touchpad usually would actually be the second part of a folding screen. According to Intel, this should allow the creation of new design, new postures: a tablet mode, a newspaper mode, a “Nintendo DS” mode where the lower screen is used for interaction for the upper screen.

The machines will notably integrate the characteristics of the new Intel Evo platform, with the brand’s 12th generation Intel Core processors.

What about Windows?

If Intel can try to ensure the technological platform that will be integrated into this new type of machine with its partners, the brand does not really have control over the software. Microsoft is responsible for optimizing Windows for the use of a foldable device. The system must in particular be capable of managing the display of applications on the two screens, the different postures, or the possibility of covering the screen with a keyboard sometimes supplied with the machine.

Introducing the Surface Neo, Microsoft had announced a future filled with laptops with two screens, or foldable screens, but the pandemic has changed the company’s plans. Windows 10X, the dedicated system, was put aside in favor of Windows 11 and the Surface Neo was never released.

It is difficult to know for the moment if the folding laptop PC will remain a dream of Intel or if the company will succeed in creating a new trend in the PC market.

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