So techctober started with the Microsoft surface event that happens annually every year right about this time and it brought huge number of big surprising announcements.
In its entirety the event announced close to 10 new products including a pleasant surprise called the surface duo phone that rocks android.
Other important announcements of the Microsoft Surface event include Windows 10 x, the Surface Neo, Surface Pro X, Surface Pro 7 and the Surface Laptop 3.
Don’t worry I am going to create a separate video for each of these devices.
But in this post let me just quickly wrap up the entire Microsoft event to bring you up to speed.
Microsoft Surface Duo : The Microsoft Surface Event Surprise
Surface Duo was a surprise announcement at the Micrsoft surface event.
Microsoft Surface Duo is an Android powered fold-able tablet cum phone.
It looks very similar to the upcoming Surface Neo.
But is relatively smaller, has phone functionality and is capable of running Android which means it has access to the Google Play Store.
The Surface Duo has two 5.6 inch displays that are held together by a 360 degree hinge.
The very reason why people are looking forward to this device is because of its cross functionality between Windows and Android that we have never seen before.
The two screens can run two different apps at the same time.
The Duo can be turned into landscape mode which allows for the second display to be used as a keyboard or a separate screen for a different app or a game controller.
From what I have seen the Android on the Duo seems stripped down to bare-bone functionalities.
This is done probably for increased performance and dual screen hardware and software compatibility.
This is very similar to what will be happening with Windows 10 x which we will be seeing in the larger surface neo.
Windows 10X
I have already talked about Windows 10X in great details in this post here.
But just so you are up to speed Windows 10X is a skinned down version of Windows 10 designed specifically for fold-able PCs.
What we know for sure is that the Windows 10X will power the surface neo.
Read all about Windows 10X in this post here.
Microsoft Surface Event’s King : Surface Neo
The biggest surprise of the Microsoft surface event was the New Surface Neo.
Surface Neo is a multi screen device that features two 9 inch displays connected together with the help of a 360 degree hinge.
Just to make things clear the folding dimension of the surface neo is not similar to Samsung Galaxy fold where the screen itself gets folded.
It is a device that gets folded from between with the help of a 360 degree hardware hinge.
Microsoft says that the product is in the final stage of development and will be released in the holiday season of 2020.
Microsoft has engineer day special keyboard for Neo that can rest on the top of the display.
And as soon as you place the keyboard on the top of the display the space that is not covered by the keyboard called “wonder bar” is revealed.
The wonder bar is very similar to touch bar and has sufficient space for using either emojis when replying to messages or opening apps besides each other.
Surface Pro X
The Surface Pro X is a 13 inch 2 in 1 device that takes the basic essence of Surface Tablet and incorporates new bells and whistles to it.
The device is rocking that tablet form factor but is thinner (7.3 mm), has thinner bezels, is ARM based and has accessories custom made just for it.
The device has 2 USB Type C’s, runs Windows 10 and the type cover has a special engineered spot for the surface pen.
It will be powered by Microsoft’s custom SQ1 chipset that they developed in partnership with Qualcomm.
An arm based chipset that is capable of LTE connectivity. It also has an Adreno 685 GPU with dedicated performance blocks of neural processing to take some work load off the main processor.
As far as performance is considered, Microsoft says that this device will be three times more powerful in terms of performance per watt what than the Microsoft Surface Pro 6.
From outside the Surface Pro X looks very similar to the regular Surface Pro, but Microsoft has added new rounded edges for Surface Pro X.
This is in slight contrast to the regular surface pro’s that feature more angular surface design.
They have also made a custom keyboard designed keyboard for it.
One of the cool features about Microsoft Surface Pro X is the special place that is there on the keyboard in which you can keep the stylus of your device.
Once placed on the “pencil pouch” the stylish starts getting charged.
The whole design aspect of keeping the stylus the way it is kept in the keyboard is receiving a lot of appreciation.
And for all the good reasons of course.
Microsoft Surface Earbuds
One of the most special attraction of the Microsoft Surface event was the introduction of a set of truly wireless headphones with up to 24 hours of battery life.
The ear buds a feature what Microsoft calls omnisonic sound and a directional dual array microphone.
They feature all the standard headphone control such a skipping songs by tapping on the sides but in addition to that they also have a tight Microsoft Office integration.
That means in a presentation you will be able to slide your slides with a tap.
Microsoft Surface Pro 7
The latest edition of Microsoft tablet cum laptop is kinda like a refreshed version of Surface Pro 6.
It includes the USB-C for charging which is a big step up from the proprietary surface connector that the company has been using in its previous surface computers.
The Surface Pro 7 features 10th Generation Intel Processor and are available for pre-order right now with the base model costing 749$.
Microsoft is promising a battery life of 10 hours with this device which is actually less than the Surface Pro 6.
But it comes with fast charging now and you can get up to 80% now with just over half an hour of charging.
It’s still got the 12 inch, 3:2 display and the same magnesium body.
The base model comes with 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM, but you can customize the Surface Pro 7 to include up to 1TB of storage and 16GB of RAM.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop 3
This is also one of the most interesting launches that I have been looking forward to.
The newest iteration of surface laptops will be available in 13 and 15 inch model.
They will have Intel’s 10th generation quad core Ice Lake Processors with Iris plus graphics.
It has a USB type C and a USB Type-A Port, although it would be good if we had more input port, but that’s fine.
I have to say as far as hardware design is concerned Microsoft is on point with the slim, sleek and clean design in these devices.
There is no speaker grill in these laptops, the speakers are literally beneath the keyboard to make things seem as clean as possible.
The devices feature a 3:2 aspect ratio and it is a very interesting shift that we will be seeing getting adopted among creators.
And as per Microsoft this product will be 3 times faster than Apple current gen MacBook Air.
But that is not the most interesting aspect about this laptop.
In a previous TechTonics video we discussed how there were rumors that Microsoft may shift to AMD to power some of it’s devices.
And it seems it’s true.
Because Microsoft is partnering with AMD to include its new Ryzen processors in its 15 inch surface laptop 3.
Microsoft declared that this processor brings fastest graphics performance in any laptop in this class.
The surface laptops have reduced the key travel to 1.3 mm as compared with 1.5 mm in surface laptop 2.
But it has a 20% larger track pad with Windows Precision drivers of course.
Microsoft is promising somewhere around 12 hours battery life.
I am taking this promise with a grain of salt because that is probably a metric arrived on by working the laptop at not so power hungry app usage and brightnes turned down.
The 13 inch version will start at 999$ and the 15 inch AMD chip version will start at 1199$.
Alright guys, so that was it as far as the new introductions that happened on Microsoft Surface Event.
Keep an eye out because I am soon coming up with follow up posts discussing each of these devices separately.
Stay tuned for that by subscribing everywhere.
Namaskaram :).
