Double-negative tweet could be Microsoft Surface Phone hint Microsoft may have just confirmed a Surface Phone via a cryptic tweet. Laura Janet Baker appeared to confirm the long-rumoured flagship via a double negative. It could be the end of the silly season; judge for yourself. Rumours abound that Microsoft will kill off production of its current Lumia range by the end of the year. …
Surely for a double negative to be an emphasis, rather than a positive, a comma or full stop, perhaps even a semi colon, would be required between the negatives? I cannot think of an example where this would not be the case, but am happy to be shown one.
I'm not not not not unexcited about the prospect of this phone though...
Indeed in some languages (French and Russian immediately spring to mind) double negatives are required in some places. Jamais je ne utilise un téléphone portable Windows, for example.
Microsoft has a love for the most banal brand names it can come up with (Windows, Word, Outlook) so Surface meets all the requirements except that of giving a clue what the product actually does. Perhaps if Microsoft was based in Hoxton instead of Redmond we would have the Microsoft Blower, or perhaps the Microsoft Dog. I offer these in a spirit of friendly international co-operation as either is better than Surface Phone.
Edit - I note the Lumia 950 is a similar spec to and selling for the same price as an LG G4. Which, given the size of the LG/Android ecosystem versus that of Microsoft means it is still overpriced.
I think the 'Phone' in 'Surface Phone' does a pretty good job of giving a hint of what the device does. And, even if it's just the 'Microsoft Surface', which would be doubtful, because that's already a product, it's still not awful compared to the Samsung Galaxy or the Google Nexus or the Sony Xperia.
With 1% market share there's no point bothering.
Windows mobile (or whatever it's called this week) is used by either of two types of people .... IT geeks or stupid people who got talked in to buying one at Carphone Warehouse.
Seriously, the platform is as good as dead because it's been dicked with so many times with no backward compatibility.
MS as a company have no strategy whatsoever.
You can get a decent Android handset for just over £100 so there really is just no point going there at all.
Really? No backward compatibility?
Do you have one? I do (obviously).
One of the first apps I installed, a fitness app was written for WP7.5 Mango, I had a Lumia 800 (still do, still works).
The developer made a fine app but it is either no longer developed or they are having a large hiatus.
However, since I prefer it to all the others (there are many of them), I still use it.
It still runs, just much faster than before.
Crappy Silverlight Skype can still run (but there is no need to run it now thank the stars).
Running a WP8 app renders all the menus as before, as well as 'popups' etc. This suggests that the libraries either have a WP8 compatibility mode or (more likely) the WP8 libraries are simply present as well as the WP10 libraries.
I am sure that *some* WP7 or even WP8 apps no longer work but they probably have issues caused by using unsupported features.
If you are discussing not running stuff before WP7.5, then fine, but they never ran on WP7.5 either so it is a bit of a straw man.
MS as a company have no strategy whatsoever.
IMHO, you are very wrong.
No 1 is to get every biz hooked on Office 365/cloud. Then they can hike their prices at will even if the end users are using a non MS OS.
No 2 is to price everything on a per core basis
No 3 is to ??????? er .... perhaps ... no ....
Ok so their mobile plans are well, a bit crap.
They are advertising the hell out of the Surface with their 'Can't do that on a Mac' ads. This means they ain't gonna kill it tomorrow.
There is room for a phone but really what would a surface phone do that other devices on the market can't already do very well.
So is there a market for a surface phone outside those who already use winphones?
If there is a market then how big is it?
There is no way in hell that they will even sell as many Surface Phones in a year that Apple will sell this month alone.
So why bother?
Bit of a shame really. The market could do with a strong 3rd party to keep Android and Apple on their toes.
I think it is true that MSFT is going to start jacking the prices of O365. They hate the fact that they had to bring Office to the browser. The Chocolate Factory started (and still is, slowly) to eat their lunch with Google Apps for Work though, so they had to do it. Companies will find themselves suddenly paying $58 per u/m for O365 through all of the bolt ons.... I still think Google Apps, slowly, wins this cloud apps market though. In the US, Google Apps dominates K-12 schools and the universities... Chromebooks are taking over K-12 too. Everybody and their cousin uses Gmail... and, probably most importantly, Google is going to continue practically giving it away at $5 per u/m. Google has also decided to keep developing new product and adding it to the $5 per month bundle instead of doing the MSFT thing of O365 E1, E3, E5... eventually E25 for additional cost. Demographics are destiny, and Google has the demographics... and they just sell their comparable products for a fraction of the cost.
On Surface, yes, there is no way that MSFT is dropping Surface, the PC/tablet. It is doing well.... You wonder if they will eventually regret it though. They were supposed to be selling Surface against Apple in Apple's markets (i.e. Apple's formerly dominant tablet market and Apple's dominant $1,000 + Macbook market). Now they are promoting the Surface as a PC replacement to businesses and trying to sell as many as they can. That has to really upset HP, Lenovo, Dell, Acer, etc. MSFT is now just another competitor. MSFT no doubt realized this but thought there was nothing the OEMs could do about it.... Enter Chromebook. Chromebook is still much smaller than Windows in PC, but it a growing rapidly and the Android apps are a game changer. I think those OEMs will, and kind of already are, going to push Google products over Windows as aggressively as possible. Why wouldn't they? The alternative is to sit around and watch MSFT take down their accounts.
Down in the streets, Windows Phone is the laughing stock of a brand. It is just a name-change. Next, you will see the return of the Surface RT strike back, providing them with new hope, for a change.
Their chin is in the water, trying whatever they can do to stay afloat... Windows Phone didn't stick, maybe Surface Phone will.... and I am sure it will stick, to the floor.
As for the magnetic Surface Phone, collecting your friends lost iPhone headsets, why be so unambitious? Just make the electromagnet a little stronger, turn it on, and suck them out of everyone on your tube carriage's ears, just as the doors open - then make a run for it.
If they could add an EMP device that disables all rival phones, then they'd really be cooking on gas.
It is kind of funny that MSFT keeps using Photoshop as *the reason* people need to keep buying Windows. I wonder if they forgot that Adobe is not exactly on the best of terms with MSFT. Apparently Google and Adobe are working together to bring Photoshop to a full cloud version. Why they need Google's help to do this, I'm sure I don't know... must be some sort of Chromebook integration magic.
And is still available for the Mac (all sorts of Mac graphics stuff in the Adobe creative cloud suite)
Not sure exactly what functionality it has compared to Windows version (I'm not the one who does graphics stuff, but enough bells & whistles meets the needs of the person who uses it (& that's graphics for work purposes not hobby stuff))
Good point, it would be possible to use one of those tablet chips for phones.... I think it is a solution in search of a problem though. I have never been doing something with my phone and said "this is pretty good, but I'm really missing those W32 apps." The larger problem for Windows Phone will still be that the modern app developers are not going to support it.
A 6W Intel part in a phone ... nope. In a phone form factor you get 2-3W out of the main SoC; much more than that the chip will either melt or throttle horribly. So you might get that chip running at half frequency, but it's going to be pretty unimpressive from a performance point of view ...
So really more a very small x86 Tablet than a phone.
Nokia changed from x86 to ARM on their "Communicator" smartphone in what, 2001 or 2002?
I guess if you REALLY need x86 compatibility in your pocket? But really is ANY x86 Windows application going to be usable on a small screen, like Adobe Photoshop, Sage, Market leading UK Payroll, SAP, or... (I struggle to think of anything else important on Windows that doesn't have a Linux or ARM or MacOS equivalent).
Yes, maybe a tablet that is small but the big difference is that it won't be a tablet where a phone stack was bolted on, like the venerable N900 was.
Since Windows 10 has the same code base for a phone, tablet and PC, I assume a Windows 10 tablet using an Atom say may happily have a SIM, for data and calls, just as a Windows 10 phone can run apps full screen, at least UWP ones.
So, a Surface phone is a small tablet, a phablet I believe they call them. So what? that is what a Samsung Note is, the only difference is that Android scaled up to a tablet format and Windows 10 scaled down to a tablet and phone format.
Of course, the surface phone could then have Windows Ink, Hello and all that other stuff for 'free' since it is just a scaled down PC in fact.
Still, if it doesn't transpire, the HP offering has promise if Lumias disappear, as long as the camera on any future device matches the quality that my Lumia does now at least.
It seems unlikely to me that MS will not produce flagship phones since they produce flagship tablets. If not, I really hope someone does, Sony with luck since they have very good cameras and waterproofing and they languish in Android for whatever reason (Marketing presumably).
I have about two years with this phone before I have to worry about it though.
The x86 compatibility would be for Continuum. It is a phone that runs phone apps, but when you plug it into a monitor and provide it a keyboard and mouse/trackpad (I guess the phone could be the mouse or trackpad in a pinch) then it lets you run them just like your Windows PC.
I could see that being very appealing for road warrior types who don't want to drag around a laptop if they can help it, and can arrange to have a monitor and keyboard/mouse available to them at their destination.
SAP, Sage, etc (not Photoshop,yet, but soon) are all available through a browser and on a phone too. There isn't a software house on the planet who doesn't have as priorities numbers 1 and 2 to move everything to the cloud (browser) and go mobile first. It will take care of itself, and largely already has.
Yep, x86 compatibility will make continuum useful. Also it's good to know you can run desktop programs on the phone if you really need to. With the n900 I used Linux desktop programs to get paperwork in for important contracts while traveling without a notebook. Very rewarding experience.
I don't think Intel wants to be in this game though, certainly not just for Windows phone (even if they get every Windows phone... 0.7% of the market and falling at this point). They have an old x86 Atom chip for tablets which might be serviceable for a phone, but I think this will eventually drop it because no one is using those Atom chips for anything. Tablets run ARM, or, if you consider Surface to be a tablet (I think it is more of a PC), they use full i Core chips... either way, not Atom. The Chrome OS PCs use Celeron or m Series or i Series chips, not Atom. Intel is pulling out of the mobile chip market. MSFT could pay Intel, I'm sure, to make an x86 mobile chip, but do they really want to lose another couple of billion on top of the maybe $15 billion they have already lost of phones... just hoping that people really care about being able to access a couple of legacy W32 apps on their phones. It is really a fools errand at this point because all of the ISVs are moving (95 + % already have moved) to cloud/browser architectures and mobile apps (on Android at iOS). By the time MSFT gets this going, people will be able to receive the last few remaining desktop apps on mobile or through the browser.... I think they are cutting their losses on the mobile experiment and closing it down (certainly shutting Lumia down).
Microsoft can use the same CPU used in Surface, underclocked/undervolted via a special SKU if necessary. They'd prefer Intel had continued the mobile line, obviously, but they weren't keeping up their end of the bargain, and Intel was utterly incompetent in their efforts in trying to get x86 into Android mobile devices - their usual PC market arm twisting techniques just didn't work there, and bribery only worked so long as the bribes kept coming.
I'm sure the Surface Phone will be a great bit of kit, but they haven't got an OS to run on it. Windows 10 is still a Mistress beta (you pay to be punished), ObjectiveC/LLVM/emulation is not ready in Visual Studio, CyanogenMod is probably not ready, and the old Lumia Denim OS doesn't run snapchat.
At my office I support about 120 Lenovo desktops and laptops and 38 surface pro 3's. The time I spend supporting Lenovo hardware is negligible whereas the surfaces are constantly failing. Each unit has been replaced at least once due to bad batteries, failed internal USB hubs, overheating or just because someone had a deadline. Bringing that kind of innovation to a phone make the note 7s issues seem reasonable.
Who has to deliver applications on mobile devices, I can categorically state no one's buying them in corporate world so we'll never port anything to them. Even the analysts (Gartner, Forrester, etc. etc.) don't rate them nor do their devices show up in Akamai's "State of the Internet" reports as a device with even 1%.
MSFT should just throw in the proverbial towel!
...that something called Surface Phone will sell any better than something called Lumia. Microsoft couldn't even sell any phones when they were built by what was once the best known phone manufacturer on the planet.
And unfortunately the only impact the "can't do this with a Mac" campaign has had is to make the person in it unemployable. Look how well Clean Bandit did from their brief and awful association with the Redmond parasites.
I assume some clever accountant in Microsoft has worked out that it's cheaper to waste billions chasing and failing to catch 0.0001% of the mobile phone market than pay US and European corporation tax.
I'm looking forward to the Surface Phone. It might be good, it might be shit, but it'll be trying something different, and that is to be applauded in the currently fairly stagnant market.
I have reasonably high hopes for Continuum, as someone who travels a lot and works on lots of different sites, but again, it might work, it might not. That's how innovation works, surely?
GJC
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