If you’ve been reading my weekly Surface news roundups, you probably know I’ve been avoiding including Surface Phone rumors even though they’ve been dominating the tech news feeds lately.
I’m avoiding the rumors simply because I don’t think such rumors are “news”. That said, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t potentially interesting to you – so, I decided to compromise. Instead of including the Surface Phone topics in my weekly news post, I made this rumors post where I’ll list off the things I’ve heard or read so far.
OK, so here we go…
Surface Phone Rumors: The Good
The Surface Phone is rumored to be quite a “beast”. In fact, it *might* come with a processor from the same family that powers the Surface 3 (although less powerful). It will, reportedly, also offer a good amount of RAM and a nice size internal hard drive. Here’s the rundown of the rumored technical specifications…
Surface Phone Rumored Specifications/Features
- Intel Atom x3 processor.
- 4GB to 8GB of RAM.
- Inclusion of a Surface Pen (of some kind).
- 5.5-inch Quad HD AMOLED display with a 1440 by 2560 resolution.
- A 41MP PureView rear camera.
- Up to 500 GB of internal storage.
- USB Type-C connectivity (probably also for charging a la the Surface 3).
- Liquid cooling technology.
- The ability to connect to a docking station for use as a desktop PC.
Sounds pretty sweet, right? I mean, it almost sounds like a full-blown netbook, if it wasn’t for the screen-size, right?
Surface Phone Rumors: The Bad
Unfortunately, the news isn’t all good. With the specs above it probably won’t surprise you to know the Surface Phone will likely have a premium price tag. However, it is said that the price will be somewhere between $1000 and $1200 USD!!!!
Frankly, if accurate, I don’t see this price point working out well for Microsoft. Regardless of how awesome the Surface Phone might end up being. If it is priced at $650 USD then sure, it sounds like an awesome deal. But I don’t think too many people will fork out as much as $1200 for what is still fundamentally just a large phone.
Let’s face it, you can get a 2GB Surface 3 ($500 when not on sale), type cover ($130), and a Lumina 950 ($650) for a total cost of $1280 which makes the two devices only slightly more expensive than the Surface Phone’s rumored upper price point!!!
When the Surface 3 or Lumina is on sale (like the Surface 3 is as I write this), their total cost would be less than a single Surface Phone, even including the Type Cover.
On top of the price point rumors, I have a serious concern over battery life based on these specifications. The powerful processor and big screen will probably chew through battery pretty quickly. Unfortunately, none of the rumors (so far) have hinted at how good of a battery life the Surface Phone will offer. I guess we’ll see when the Surface Phone comes out.
Currently, the news media are hinting at an October 2016 release date. If that’s true, we can reasonably expect to get an official announcement sometime this summer.
Tim
