Need to Know
FIRST LOOK
10 22 Jan - 4 Feb 2020
Lenovo ThinkPad X
Fold
bit.ly/thinkLenovo unveiled its new ThinkPad X
Fold at this year’s CES trade show in
Las Vegas. Scheduled to launch later
this year, it’s set to become the
world’s first foldable computer.
The X1 Fold features the same
exceptional build quality as Lenovo’s
traditional ThinkPad line-up: hard-
wearing, no-nonsense and – at its
heart, at least – built for business.
Don’t write it off as a mere gimmick- from what we’ve seen of the Fold,
it’s a solid device that seems to have
ironed out the kinks found in other
bendables. Mind you, with a £2,
price tag, we’d expect little else.
Lenovo states that the device has
been in development for over four
What happened?
The police have called for
a ban of anonymous
pay-as-you-go mobile
phones in a bid to stop
county-lines drug dealers.
The term refers to city
drug dealers who expand
their network into smaller
towns, crossing ‘county
lines’. Using violence to
overthrow local drug
dealers, these gangsters
then force young and
vulnerable people from the
city to act as drug runners
far from home (bit.ly/
county493). Anonymous
mobile phones, known as
‘deal lines’, are essential to
the operation’s success.
In a report by Her Majesty’s
Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC),
which inspects the UK’s police forces,
the organisation suggested that
criminals are easily circumventing
current laws, allowing them to operate
unimpeded using phones that don’t
require or log their identity. The police
liken the situation to banking – if banks
require people to prove their identity to
prevent fraud and money laundering,
why don’t mobile-phone networks?
According to the police inspectorate:
“It is easy for anyone, including drug
Police want to ban pay-as-you-go phones
dealers, to anonymously get a
replacement mobile phone and number
through ‘pay as you go’ services. We
were told of one example where a
county lines network received and
shared a new number within an hour.”
HMIC believes the government must
begin a review of the situation, saying:
“the present arrangements that enable
criminality by allowing the anonymous
acquisition of phones and numbers,
should be re-examined”.How will it affect you?
Assuming you’re a decent, law-abidingWeb User reader – rather
than a dangerous racketeer- and you use a pay-as-you-
go phone, the biggest
impact will be control over
your private information.
One reason why many of us
are resistant to handing
over our personal details to
a network provider is that,
sure as night follows day,
you’ll be bombarded with
marketing emails. The new
rules may also force people
into signing up for mobile-
phone contracts they don’t
really want.
What do we think?
If the ban helps limit the
impact of county-lines drug dealing,
which destroys many lives, then we’re
not averse to identifying ourselves to
our mobile networks. But – and it’s a big
but – bans of this nature often end up
only affecting the ‘good guys’.
Preventing the sale of anonymous
mobile phones won’t stop county-lines
drug dealing and will probably just drive
the perpetrators even further
underground, as criminals move to
encrypted internet-based platforms
such as WhatsApp and Signal – if they
haven’t already. And that could make
catching them even harder.years, which includes more than 20
different variations before it settled on
the X1 Fold’s 4x3 aspect ratio and
13.3in display. The laptop’s
durability is increased by a
distinctive, multi-layered leather
cover that not only protects the
Fold, but also adds a touch of class.
According to the manufacturer, each of
the two OLED screens can display
independently of each other, allowing
users to multi-task with ease.
Running on Windows 10 – as well as
Microsoft’s forthcoming dual-screen OS
Windows 10X, “at a later date for an
enhanced foldable user experience” –
the laptop-cum-tablet features an Intel
Lakefield hybrid processor, 8GB of RAM
and a 1TB solid-state drive in the
premium model. In a nod to the device’s
portability, the Fold also supports a SIM
card and optional 5G connectivity, whileit’s made as versatile as possible with
the inclusion of an Active Pen stylus
and Bluetooth Mini Fold keyboard.
The ThinkPad X1 Fold is due to go
on sale in mid-2020, with prices
starting at £2,500. However, the
Windows 10X operating system won’t
be available until the end of the year,
by which time we hope the device will
have come down in price.