A smartphone to celebrate the longevity of ThinkPad, the history-making line of business-oriented laptops. The ThinkPhone presented by Lenovo at Ces 2023 in Las Vegas is a tribute to the intuition of IBM, which announced the line in 1992 with the ThinkPad 700C, designed by Richard Sapper and engineered in Japan at Yamato Labs. With the acquisition of the American company’s PC division in 2005, Lenovo continued the development by producing limited editions of the notebook.

A different smartphone

For the 30th anniversary of the ThinkPad, Lenovo worked hand-in-hand with Motorola to develop the ThinkPhone, a smartphone unlike anything else on the market. Designed in the name of productivity and security, it is a device aimed at business users and therefore packed with applications to facilitate mobile working. To get an idea of the distance from the usual flagship smartphones, it is enough to know that in the announcement, Lenovo reserves only the last two lines for the camera, a priority element for all manufacturers that here instead takes second place.

Designed to integrate with ThinkPad notebooks, so much so that the included 68W TurboPower charger can also power the laptop, the smartphone stands out for its security solutions. Adding to Lenovo’s signature ThinkShield platform are Moto Secure and Moto KeySafe. The former is an application that acts as a hub for privacy-related elements, the latter a processor that protects the most sensitive data in the smartphone (isolates passwords and encryption keys, storing them in a tamper-resistant environment that protects the data from the inside).

From an enterprise perspective, IT administrators can remotely configure Moto Secure features on ThinkPhones, from lock screen settings to network alerts to pin layout deletion, but also manage the entire smartphone fleet and activate them for the end user with Zero Touch and device management solutions such as Moto OEMConfig and Moto Device Manager.

Lenovo and Motorola have also put security at the top of their preferences. In addition to the military-grade Mil Std 810H certification, the ThinkPhone is designed in aramid fibre, which has greater strength than steel. The Gorilla Glass Victus protective glass and the aluminium body promise to withstand shocks and drops of up to 1.25 metres. The smartphone is not afraid of dust and water, as the IP68 certification suggests.

The ability to combine the advantages of smartphones and notebooks is one of the ThinkPhone’s productivity secrets. Looking at the device, the customisable red side button, a hallmark of ThinkPad notebooks, immediately stands out. Here, it allows instant access to the most useful apps or the integration of mobile and PC experiences.

The device boosts productivity

With Think 2 Think connectivity powered by Ready For, a range of features can be exploited according to their respective needs. One is the Wi-Fi connection of PC and phone that detects each other’s proximity through Instant Connect; another is the instant transfer between the two devices of texts, photos, scanned documents and videos via Unified Clipboard. A similar concept underpins Unified Notifications, which is useful for reading notifications and launching the corresponding app from smartphone to PC. At the same time, Advanced Webcam allows the ThinkPhone’s webcam to be used for video calls, gaining power and AI-based functionality.

As with the ThinkPad, the ThinkPhone relies on the collaboration between Motorola and Microsoft to provide users with various solutions that make work easier. In addition to the pre-installed Microsoft 365, Outlook and Teams mobile applications, the two companies also aim to add push-to-talk functionality via the ThinkPhone’s red button that will allow users to communicate instantly with the Microsoft Teams Walkie Talkie app.

On the hardware side, the ThinkPhone features a 6.6-inch FHD+ display with 144 Hz refresh rate and HDR10+, is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 mobile platform, Android 13 operating system, 5G connectivity and Wi-Fi 6E. The 5000 mAh battery should provide a battery life of more than two days. There is a 50+13 MP dual camera on the back side and an on the front side a 32MP lens. The smartphone is 8.26 millimetres thick and weighs 188.5 grams. It integrates two Dolby Atmos speakers and two microphones.

Available in Carbon Black colour, the ThinkPhone is expected to hit the market in the coming weeks with models with 8/12 GB LPDDR5 RAM and 256/512 GB storage. There is no certainty yet on pricing, although it seems that the 8+256 GB version will cost €999. However, Lenovo will likely offer several purchase options to companies interested in taking a number of ThinkPhones.