Announcement on CES: ThinkPad X1 Hybrid - x86 + ARM in one laptop

What is better to use on a business trip? Is the laptop a full-fledged computer with all the usual programs, or is the tablet a compact, lightweight, long-playing, but somewhat limited in functionality? Often, the laptop is more necessary (tablet - it is still not for work, but for entertainment), but not every mobile PC can compare with a tablet in terms of battery life.

In one of the major innovations at the Consumer Electronics Show, Lenovo tried to combine the efficiency of devices on the ARM platform and the power of conventional laptops with Intel processors. ThinkPad X1 Hybrid turned out: a compact 13-inch notebook with a dual-core Intel processor and an additional ARM-based Qualcomm processor. The use of an economical platform and a customized version of Android (called Instant Media Mode) made it possible to double the battery life to quite a “tablet” 10 hours. I am sure that many of you will be interested in such a device not only because of the additional “autonomous” hours, but also because of the possibilities of using the ARM part for some of its own tasks. Under the cut, I tried to collect all the information that is currently known about the X1 Hybrid.


The basis of the hybrid laptop was to take an ultra-compact 13-inch ThinkPad X1 - you can read its review here . “On the part of Intel, you will still have access to a powerful dual-core processor in a company with a 160-gigabyte SSD or 320-gigabyte hard drive. The 13-inch display, protected by Gorilla Glass, is complemented by an excellent, island-style keyboard, with the best quality in the ThinkPad series. A nice bonus is the very decent sound quality from the built-in speakers.
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Now let's talk about the most interesting. On the motherboard is an additional Qualcomm processor with 16 gigabytes of its own flash memory. By pressing the button, the laptop automatically (and in just a couple of seconds) goes into “tablet” mode. Windows and Intel-part at the same time go into sleep mode, and on the ARM platform runs its own shell based on Linux. Its official name is Instant Media Mode, and it is based on Android.


Other photos of the X1 Hybrid can be viewed in this review on Engadget .

The possibilities of this Linux-system are quite modest, but in general they cover all sorts of traveling entertainment: browsing websites, movies, photos, or listening to music. In Windows mode, such a laptop will work up to 5 hours from a standard battery, in ARM mode, battery life is doubled. If you use an additional battery, we get 10 and 20 hours of battery life, respectively.

I will tell you more about the world's first hybrid laptop when test samples get to us. Personally, I am very interested in the possibility of installing a full-fledged Linux distribution, which the dual-core ARM will fully pull. It is known that a laptop will be on sale in the summer, and the cost in the USA will be about 1600 dollars. Not cheap - in fact, for such a price you can buy a good laptop, and it will remain on the tablet. However, the “pioneers” in any new technology have never been cheap. In the near future, we will find out how this technology will take root in the market of “classic” laptops, and whether the processor-companion will appear in other Lenovo models.

In the meantime, I suggest to watch a small commercial: