Further evidence has emerged that Microsoft is set to use their Surface brand name in an effort to flog a premium smartphone.
Described by one observer as a “Pig with lipstick”
approach, all past attempts by Microsoft to carve out a major share of the
smartphone market have failed.
The Surface branded Windows 10 based smartphone, is set to
be released in the second half of 2016. Several big brands have refused
Microsoft’s approaches to manufacture a smartphone running the Windows 10 OS
due to a lack of demand by both business and consumers.
The new Lumia Windows 10 smartphones from Microsoft were
recently reviewed by the Australian, the headline read ‘Microsoft misses mark
with Lumia 950 and 950 XL smartphones”
They went on to say that ” Windows 10 being only a few
months old, there simply aren’t many universal apps to choose from and the app
gap that plagued previous iterations of Windows Phones remains. Performance was
also far from smooth and random app crashes mean that Continuum – the 950 and
the XL’s defining feature – isn’t quite ready for prolonged productivity
sessions”.
The move to a Surface branded smartphone appears to be an
attempted to move away from the Lumia that is more associated with dud smartphones
than a product that actually has consumer appeal,
In the past Lumia smartphones have neither sold well nor
been critically acclaimed.
A phone bearing the Surface name has been put through
benchmark tests, one report says.
The new Surface is said to run on an Intel chipset, Windows
10 and classic Win32 apps as well, turning the phone into a Windows
minicomputer.
Observers claim the the new smartphone,might be timed with the release of Windows 10
Redstone update, which is said to let apps transfer presence from phone to PC.
Users working on an email or browsing the web on a phone,
for example, would be able to switch to their PC to continue working on the
email or continue their browsing from where they left off.
Users would also be
able to make phone calls from a PC through their phone.