Surface Phone



Microsoft ran a Surface Event in New York City recently. Much to the surprise of many people they announced a new phone was coming in 2020. It is called the Surface Duo, not the tempting "Surface Phone" that almost everyone will write about.

Surface is a brand within the Microsoft ecosystem. It primarily targets business users with premium PCs and related hardware. It tends to use new device types. Devices that show how Microsoft believe hardware should be to take forward the ecosystem based on it's Windows operating system. It needs to carefully not be seen to directly compete with it's hardware partners. However, what it can do is stir their partners to make different device types by showcasing new designs under the Surface brand. You won't buy a Surface device as a budget item.

The big surprise for the event was that Microsoft would release a dual screen device running the Android operating system in late 2020. This device would be a phone.

Windowsphones running Windows 10 Mobile will end support in December 2019. Microsoft has decided if it wants to produce a phone then the phone must have the applications people expect. As a result it needs to be Android. There are plenty of good Android devices available so, in the spirit of the Surface mission, it needs to have a new form factor that is not being out out by other manufacturers. Therefore it is a dual screen Surface device running Android.

The new Microsoft. Going with what works.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Powershell Symlink to Onedrive

Image
I have more than one PC. To be precise, and overly pedantic, 3 Windows 10 laptops. All are slightly different and of various ages. One I use with a Windows 10 Insider Build to keep up with the next thing coming down the pipeline. On each, I do a bit of Powershell . Powershell is the latest generation of Windows command line tools. The Linux enthusiast would look down on the Windows command line of whatever generation but Microsoft has always provided command line tools. In the early days MSDOS was a command line OS. It did little but create directories (folders), copy, move or delete files. It ran “command.com” which some said was just a basic file system manager and way of loading programs into memory. It wasn’t difficult to disagree. Developers brought out alternatives to this such as 4DOS , literally “for dos”, by JP Software . They also produced 4NT, which enhance the Windows NT command processor and 4OS2. The latter was for the IBM OS2 Operating System of the late 80s and ea
Read more

Being progressive rather than universal

Image
Microsoft was not short of ambition for its tiled interface and One Windows strategy . Microsoft was doing what no other tech firm had done - uniting mobile to desktop/laptop PCs in one experience. Apple had two OSs available - IOS for phone/tablet and OSX for its desktop/laptop users. They were different and had different interfaces. Google had two OSs - Android for phone/tablet and ChromeOS for its Chromebook devices. Of course, even One Windows doesn't mean exactly the same OS but it does mean components have such similarity that the interface appears the same to users and, with little modification, apps can run on all platforms. Unfortunately, the app platform UWP (Universal Windows Platform) was hobbled from day one. Microsoft had a poor quality application store, ever-changing developer tools and standards and a Store that only worked (on the PC side) for Windows 8 and latterly Windows 10. While people used legacy versions of Windows such as Windows 7 and XP t
Read more

Identity as the new security boundary

 Not so long ago a PC was safe behind a firewall. The idea was that the physical infrastructure of a network would be enough. Anti-virus and anti-malware products sat on PCs to protect users. Then hybrid working came along. Digital nomads who could connect to networks from anywhere. New startups had users connecting to web based applications. People were bringing their own devices, tablets, phones, projectors and so on into the workplace. Security has now started looking at people. Microsoft call this zero-trust. You don’t just trust someone because they can login. You have systems that secure identity itself. There are three steps to identity security.  1.The credentials that give you authorisation. For most people this is an account identity and password. Often the identity is an email address or some public identity. This leaves the account secured by password. The strength and complexity of the password protecting authentication. 2. Authorization is the next step. What you can a
Read more