“Bezel-less”, “sleek”, “thinnest”, “world’s first”: these are all incredibly popular terms in the mobile device and PC market. Those who create gadgets have the intention to follow the trend, making their devices thinner, all the while creating the biggest displays possible, and the bezels as limited as possible. Considering all this achievement, somehow the battery inside these devices can be powered so generously, we are getting more hours of screen time than ever. I mean hey, just recently Dell came out with its latest laptop, the Latitude 7285, and dubbed it as the “world’s first wirelessly charging laptop”. Then of course, there's also the XPS 13 9350, which has been talked about as one of the most popular XPS models to date. See what I mean about these innovative trends? They sure are consistent! Now let’s consider another trend, one that has come and gone a couple times because the technology was not quite there yet.

Gadget makers, most recently Lenovo, have been working on a bendable screen concept for a while. Lenovo already surprised us with the wild concept of a bendable laptop during its Lenovo Transform event on June 20th of this year, and now has reinvigorated the idea to make a tablet that folds in half. Shown off at Lenovo’s Tech World conference in San Francisco last week, Folio is the company’s first fully-functional prototype of a flexible LCD screen that can transform a tablet into a smartphone-sized mobile device.

Ready for specs? The Folio features a 7.8-inch touchscreen display, and a 1920 x 1440 pixel count. Inside, you’ll find a CPU of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 breed, powering Android 7.0 Nougat. This doesn’t seem like top specs by any means, but if you could take a look at the hinge on the back of the tablet, and were to manually fold it in half, amazement would follow. While bent in half you’ve got a 5.5-inch smartphone, and the entire interface knows to change into phone mode once it is folded (it’s a relatively seamless transition). It basically adjusts to use just one side of the screen, however the other side remains useful for snapping photos, and other tasks.

For a tech company who has always been one to think outside of the box (consider the oh-so flexible Lenovo Yoga series, or the popular ultimate business ThinkPad laptop line), it’s no wonder so many of today’s evolving technologies are coming from Lenovo before other companies. Everything just takes time, and Folio isn’t trying to be unique in its screen size or processing specs just yet. It’s talent is all surrounded by the transformation it goes through, not to mention the fact that it’s the most successfully bendable screen thus far. Lenovo’s progress especially benefits the tablet market, which has been on the decline in recent years. Lenovo’s intent is to fix that by creating an appealing device, one that can “bridge the gap between smartphones and tablets”. All we have to do is wait for the day Lenovo is primed and ready to bring the device to market. However, the company does not have concrete plans for that yet, as the device is still a bit of a prototype. Does this take away the rousing impression it is creating in the tech world? Not in the slightest.