Lenovo's first foldable, the ThinkPad X1 Fold, felt very much like an early product. But it seems that the company isn't giving up on it, and may be making some changes.
On Tuesday, Lenovo posted a teaser video on its ThinkPad Twitter and YouTube accounts entitled 'What will we unfold next' that unambiguously implies that a new ThinkPad X1 Fold is incoming. The new machine seems to feature a large foldable AMOLED monitor, but with thinner bezels. The video also shows a new version of the detachable keyboard TrackPoint nub this time around. The machine will likely switch to Intel's hybrid 12th Generation Core 'Alder Lake' processor, though we can only wonder which exact chips it is going to use.
In addition to its foldable design courtesy of foldable AMOLED screen with rather thin bezels, the key improvement of the new ThinkPad X1 Fold will be its platform. Intel's Lakefield CPUs barely provided enough performance for business users, but Alder Lake will certainly address this issue.
Meanwhile, Lenovo's video clearly depicts Intel's Evo and vPro logotypes in the end of the sequence, so expect the new notebook to comply with Intel's requirements for Evo-badged machines as far as responsiveness and performance are concerned. Furthermore, vPro implies on business/corporate focus of the system, so expect it to support all the latest security and management features that Intel has to offer.
Among the key questions about Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Fold Gen 2 (or whatever Lenovo calls it) hybrid notebook is of course when it is set to become available and how much the manufacturer plans to charge for it. Given the fact that companies do not tend to pre-announce new products months before launch, we would expect the new foldable laptop from Lenovo to arrive sooner rather than later, perhaps, so sometime in August or September. As for the price, that part is hard to guess considering the fact that Lenovo will likely offer more CPU, memory, and storage options with its ThinkPad X1 Fold Gen 2 than with its previous-generation model.
