Even though there’s been little motion from Microsoft in the area of Surface products, it’s the leaks that are keeping interest alive. Today Evan Blass posted some renders and specs for a canned Surface Mini device, that we’ve actually heard of before. Let’s see what the project was all about.
Microsoft planned to release this machine all the way back in 2014 and then cancelled it at the last minute. It could have been a special little machine, if priced right, but it may have also fought devices like the Nokia N1 maybe. Codenamed “Iris”, this product was a 7.5 incher with an atypical 1440 x 1080 pixel resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio.
It worked with the Surface Pen and offered 5 point multitouch. The Surface Mini was truly meant as a handheld and not as one of those massive Surface Pro models. It still kept the kickstand, with 3 angles and all. Weighing around 13 ounces, this slate would have come in black, red and blue and featured a capacitive Windows button. The design is very Kobo-like, so to say, very e-reader-ish.
It also feels a bit like a Lumia product. It ran the dead Windows RT 8.1 and also had Office 2013 in the mix. The device relied on a Qualcomm CPU and came with 1 or 2 GB of RAM and 32 or 64 GB of storage. Windows RT was probably the reason why the project ended and also the fact that there was a Snapdragon 800 CPU on board instead of an Intel Atom didn’t help.
Maybe there’s room for a resurrection one Windows on ARM finds stronger CPUs.
