Lenovo patents “rollable” displays for next-gen notebooks

Ultrawide and curved displays have become really popular in the monitor world, and it seems like we might see them in laptops soon too, according to a patent from Lenovo. Until now, laptops have mostly stuck to the traditional flat panel design that matches the chassis dimensions. But that could change in the future, as a Lenovo patent discovered by Pigtou suggests.

We’ve seen plenty of curved and ultrawide gaming monitors in the desktop market. But the whole display industry is going through a revolution with new rollable and bendable panels that are being introduced for smartphones first.

The idea of an ultrawide monitor isn’t new. It was tried and tested with Razer’s Project Valerie, which had two extra displays built in and offered a great ultrawide viewing experience. However, that product never became a reality. It’s also worth noting that Lenovo is working on a new and revolutionary PC laptop design with a transparent panel that uses OLED technology.

Regarding the Lenovo patent, it seems like Lenovo’s Ultrawide rollable display will let users customize the display to their liking. The laptop display will have fixed and movable sections, with the fixed section being the screen in the middle that matches the chassis dimensions, and the movable section being two panels on the sides of the screen that use foldable technology. These two sections will provide a wider viewing experience than what’s currently possible on laptops.

You can check out the full patent here, and it seems like there will be a gear under the movable section that will either extend or retract the foldable display. The whole locking and extension mechanism is explained in the patent, and it looks like the same technology will also be used to offer the first curved displays on notebooks. This technology is still just a patent, so it’ll be a while before we see it in action, but we might get a sneak peek from Lenovo during the MWC 2024 event.