At a press event in New York on the 23rd of
September, giant software company, Microsoft unveiled two tablets which are the
smaller Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2. Microsoft has previously been supplying
software to manufacturers but is now involved in making devices to house the
software it rolls out.
Surface 2 is the successor of the Surface RT
that was released in Microsoft’s earlier foray into mobile devices market.
Surface RT didn’t enjoy the success Microsoft would have wanted and it never
really competed with devices like Apple iPads and Samsung Galaxy tabs.
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| Surface 2. Image: Microsoft |
Analysts branded it a failure due to the high
expectations it failed to lift up to. Microsoft has come with a lighter version
and some other improved specs. It is thinner and faster with a 2GB RAM. It
comes with an improved Tegra 4 processor, a screen resolution of 1920 × 1080
compared to 1366 × 768 of the previous version.
It comes with a 10.6-inch screen and battery
capacity has been bumped up to power the device for 10 hours of active use.
It comes with a rear camera of 5 megapixels and
front of 3.5 megapixels. It comes with Bluetooth version 4.0. It presently has
a Wi-Fi only model but it is expected that an LTE version will be released in
2014.
It also comes with a USB 3.0 port, 200GB
additional SkyDrive storage for two years. It also comes with Microsoft Office
2013 RT (including outlook) and 1 year unlimited free voice call to over 60
countries on Skype.
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| Surface Pro 2. Image: Microsoft |
The Surface 2 will cost $449 for the 32GB
version and $549 for the 64GB version when it comes to the market.
The Surface Pro 2 comes with an improved 4th
generation Haswell Intel Core i5 processor with a speed of 1.6GHz. It has 4GB
of RAM although there are 8GB versions. It has a docking station which adds 3
USB 2 ports, one USB 2 port, a mini Display port and an Ethernet port.
As expected, it will come with a Windows 8.1
operating system.
It has a storage option of 64GB, 128GB, 256GB,
or 512GB. Microsoft has also claimed that there is an improvement of about 75%
in the battery life. It also includes covers one if which is the Power Cover
which can extend the battery life by 2.5 times.
The 64GB version will cost $899 while the 128GB
version will cost $999. The Touch Cover will cost $119 while the Type Cover
will go for $129.
It is expected that the devices will be
available to consumers by the 22nd of October this year while pre order starts
from the 24th of September. We hope the new products from Microsoft will be
able to compete with the strong devices.
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Microsoft is back again with two tablets