Sunday, 18 May 2014



Microsoft is all set to host its first Surface event after Satya Nadella took the reins at the company. Nadella, who is responsible for building and running the company’s computing platforms, developer tools and cloud services, will now have to prove his mettle in the hardware space. The company is said to working on a series of tablets for the event. Let’s take a quick look at what to expect at the Microsoft event on May 20.

Surface mini
We could see the company launch the much-anticipated Surface mini tablet, to take on the likes of the iPad Mini and Nexus 7 tablets. Previous reports suggest the Surface mini will come with Windows RT out of the box and will be powered by an ARM chipset.

Another report points out that the Surface mini is expected to come with a Qualcomm processor rather than an Nvidia chipset. Setting it apart from the mini tablet competition will be a supposedly very accurate and high quality stylus for note-taking and OneNote integration. It is expected to be made available in late June alongside a click-in cover with a multi-position kickstand.

Microsoft may price the Surface mini closer to the iPad mini’s price of $399 for the base model. We expect the price to be around $350 as Microsoft will want to compete with Android tablets as well, which usually fall in this price range too.


Surface Pro and other tablets
Microsoft is also rumoured to launch an Intel-powered “Pro” variant of the Surface mini. Besides the Surface mini, Microsoft is also expected to announce other tablets in the Surface range, powered by low-voltage Intel processors.

So far, reports have been pointing out at a new Intel-based Surface that will be powered by Haswell-class processors. We may possibly see several variants of the tablet. A recent leak also suggested the name Surface Pro 3. The leak detailed a Windows 8.1 update that “adds support to the Surface Pro 3 camera.”

We have also heard about the ultra high-res display on the Surface Pro 3. It could get a 2K or QHD resolution screen, which will take on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab S and other high-resolution Windows tablets in the market. That will also be close to the display on the iPad Air.

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