Intel of all companies showcased a memorable product at Computex 2019 and that’s the Twin River dual screen laptop. It’s ambitious, new and seems to be straight out of Lenovo’s playbook. Held in Taipei, Computex hosted quite a few innovative products, that challenge the definition of a PC.
Right now a PC is hard to define, since a smartphone has basically become a PC, not to mention tablets. Lenovo Yoga Book tried the dual screen laptop thing years ago, back in 2016, but without too much success. The Yoga Book C930 came last year with a 2 in 1 design and a combo of E Ink display and standard screen.
Intel already had an interesting prototype called Tiger Rapids, a dual screen computer, which was showcased in late 2018. Intel Twin River is a whole different beast has not only the dual screen format, but also a new material. This time fabric is the key, not metal or plastic. HP already played with the status quo, by using leather or wood.
Twin River may also be one last attempt to stop Qualcomm from also taking over laptops, or AMD becoming bigger in this area. We also learned from the source that Intel Twin River is a laptop size model and there will be a smaller tablet sized version, called Copper Harbor. They both seem to have started off as tablets and ended as laptops.
The lack of a keyboard may hurt purists, but in the long run you can gain extra functionality and basically use two tablets instead of one. Intel has now made it possible for laptops to boot in 10 seconds and also reduced power consumption. Windows 10 is also a bit of a problem, since it’s not exactly designed with this format in mind.
It all comes down to the user experience, typing ease and battery life in the end. Microsoft’s own availability to experiment with dual display devices, like the revived Courier we saw recently shows us that Intel is on to something.
