Microsoft unveiled the new Neo laptop.
Microsoft on Wednesday officially recognized the existence of a two-screened foldable laptop, the Surface Neo.
The product will be ready next holiday season, Panos Panay, Microsoft’s chief product officer, said at an event in New York on Wednesday.
Although Microsoft is arguably most well known for its software like Windows and Office, it’s been making hardware since 1980. In the most recent fiscal year devices produced less than 5% of Microsoft’s total revenue, at $6.1 billion, up about 19% from the same period one year earlier.
Since 2012, Microsoft’s Surface brand — from the little Surface Go to the elaborate Surface Studio desktop — has inspired new types of computers from the likes of Dell, HP and Lenovo. They haven’t become universal hits, though, in the same way that Apple’s iPhone has.
The Surface Neo also has a touchscreen display above the keyboard.
The Surface Neo features a 360-degree hinge, an Intel Lakefield chip and a USB-C port. It will support the use of a stylus and a keyboard that folds over half of one of the displays.
A virtual trackpad can also be displayed. Users can work with a single app across both screens — or a different app on each screen — and they will work in both vertical and horizontal orientations. Apps will automatically rotate on both screens with the device is rotated.
When the specially designed keyboard is placed on one of the screens, the content on that screen is relocated to the other screen, so that work can continue.
The system will run Windows 10X, a new operating system developed for this class of devices.
Rumors about the two-screened device, known by the codename Centaurus, have been circulating since December. In May Microsoft reportedly showed employees a prototype of the product.
Microsoft’s interest in this type of device goes back further, though. In 2017 people started discussing a folding device with the codename Andromeda that was said to be smaller than Centaurus. “After struggling to find a serious use case, and the fact that their previous mobile hardware had absorbed $10 billion …, the device went into the vault, for now,” Brad Sams wrote in his 2018 book “Beneath A Surface.”
Microsoft unveiled the Surface Neo on Wednesday.
In the late 2000s, Microsoft engineers worked on a device with 7-inch dual screens that used the codename Courier, with a unique pen- and touch-oriented interface. The project was shelved in 2010. Its isolation from important products like Office and Windows was a factor in the decision, CNET reported.
The Surface Neo has the same basic form factor of the Courier, but it contains “a very smart keyboard,” Georg Petschnigg, chief innovation officer of WeTransfer and formerly co-founder of Pioneer Studios at Microsoft where he worked on Courier, told CNBC in a message on Wednesday.
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