Lenovo showed us its twisted laptop concept – and it's quite the head turner
At IFA 2024 in Berlin, Lenovo showed off its new Auto Twist laptop concept, and yes - it’s pretty weird
💻 Lenovo has unveiled a concept laptop that twists
🤩 It uses a motor and special software to follow your face on video calls
🗣️ You can open the lid with your voice
📦 There's no word on whether this will come to market
Lenovo is showing off a new concept laptop at IFA, and it’s one of the craziest we’ve seen all year.
Called the Auto Twist, it’s a new take on the familiar clamshell laptop design, but - as the name suggests - with a serious twist. It isn’t as visually striking or futuristic as the company’s ThinkBook Transparent laptop was from earlier this year, but on the other hand, it seems far more practical.
The Auto Twist looks like an ordinary laptop until you look at it closely. Between the display and keyboard deck is a motorized rotating hinge. It can swivel the display from side to side or open and close. You can command the laptop to do everything using just your voice.
I can see it revolutionizing video calls. On traditional laptops, you'll drop out of the frame when you walk to the side of your webcam. But with the swiveling display and tracking technology, Lenovo’s Auto Twist is able to follow your head as it moves left and right. It's reminiscent of Apple’s Center Stage on iPadOS and macOS, except it uses physical hardware instead of fancy software.
Lenovo Auto Twist laptop can also capture panoramas by swiveling the display, which is a fun use of the technology. And because there's a motor built into the hinge, the Auto Twist can open its lid all by itself - no prying required. Of course, Lenovo had to make it extra interesting by incorporating voice commands with the feature, allowing you to say “Hey Twist, open the lid” to open it up. You can open your laptop manually much quicker than with your voice, but it's fun nonetheless.
Another clever perk of the Auto Twist involves security. When you walk away from the laptop, the lid can automatically close so no one peeps at what you’re working on. There were also voice commands for things like “laptop mode” and “tablet mode” which would cause the screen to either swivel down for handheld media consumption or spring back up and assume a laptop position. Using the camera and other sensors, it could even alert you when it thought your posture was bad, which is pretty neat.
The Auto Twist was otherwise unremarkable. It seems like any other Lenovo laptop from the past few years, dark gray finish and all. The specs are an unlisted mystery, but it ran Windows 11 with plenty of custom software to make the whole twisting thing work.
Will this functionality ever come to market? Who's to say? Lenovo didn't promise whether the Auto Twist or something similar would ship, but that’s not shutting down the possibility either. Today’s twisting concept could be tomorrow’s twisting reality, and it may inspire other manufacturers to follow suit.
If there's one thing for certain, the Auto Twist at IFA this year was a treat to toy with.