Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

HP is also secretly working on a 17-inch foldable laptop

Caleb Clark
By

With foldable phones becoming more popular, the foldable laptop market is starting to grow as well. HP  has joined the effort and is reportedly working on a massive 17-inch laptop with a foldable OLED display, according to South Korean publication, The Elec.

Clamshell laptops technically already fold closed, but a foldable device refers to the display itself. So a foldable laptop would have its display folded in half, with the bottom half being used as a software keyboard or with a physical keyboard slid over the top of it.

Related Videos

The big challenge facing foldable laptops is what material to make the display out of. Smartphones have settled on using ultrathin glass, and that’s thanks largely to the Samsung foldable lineup like the Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip. There is no consensus on what display material is best for laptops, though. Compared to the foldable smartphone market (which is still very small), there are next to no foldable laptops available.

Related

As Notebookcheck points, out, The Elec report takes hints in the supply chain to give a glimpse of what is being used. LG and SK IE Technology appear to be providing HP with 10,000 flexible OLED displays made from a thin polyimide film. That’s the same material that was used in the original Galaxy Z Fold.

The first foldable laptop was the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold. While that computer had a beautiful display, it was a bit too cramped and uncomfortable to be viable for most people. A few other foldable laptops have been announced since then, like the Asus Zenbook 17 Fold and Samsung Flex Note. Both of these devices learned from the mistakes of the ThinkPad X1 Fold and have 17-inch displays that are more or less equal to a 13-inch display when folded in half.

HP’s unannounced laptop seems to be taking a similar approach with its 17-inch display that folds down into an 11-inch one, and now we know what material it will use. The display will also have a 4K resolution and a touchscreen with stylus support. That could make it a great option for artists and creatives.

The foldable laptop market is small at the moment, but if manufacturers crack the code on it, it could quickly grow to take on the tablet and 2-in-1 markets.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
This gorgeous, all-wood keyboard must be seen to be believed
hacoa ki board wireless wooden keyboard is a made of wood

The feeling of wood under your fingers is more comforting than plastic or metal, and there's no reason technology can't use this renewable resource. Hacoa has done just that with its new keyboard, the Full Ki-Board Wireless. It features wooden trim and keycaps made of solid wood with natural grain.

Ki is the Japanese word for spirit or energy, and Hacoa notes that the Ki-Board "adds warmth to inorganic personal computers." Underneath, the keyboard houses a 1,000mAh battery, Bluetooth 5.0, and a 2.4GHz transmitter (a matching USB receiver is included), so you can connect it to your computer, tablet, or phone without disturbing the lovely appearance with wires.

Read more
Dell’s first Windows 11 ARM laptop is priced like a Chromebook
A woman using a Dell Inspiron 14 laptop.

Dell just launched a new Inspiron 14 laptop with a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, and it's priced like a Chromebook, costing only $500. The advantage of using a Qualcomm chip is the long battery life, and Dell claims the Inspiron 14 can last for 16 hours on a single charge.

The budget laptop includes a respectable 8GB of memory and 256GB of SSD storage, which should be sufficient for productivity and browsing. A 14-inch antiglare screen has an LED backlight and offers 1080p resolution.

Read more
The most common Chromebook problems and how to fix them
A person working on a Toshiba Chromebook.

Chromebooks are great alternatives to MacBooks and Windows 10 laptops, but they aren’t perfect. Any laptop computer is bound to have issues, and some of the most common problems faced by Chromebook users can feel difficult or even impossible to solve on their own. 

From issues with updates to internet connectivity, troubleshooting common Chromebook problems doesn’t have to ruin your day. Read on to discover easy fixes for the most frequent issues Chromebook users face. 
The Diagnostics app

Read more