Microsoft’s Surface mini was killed off at the last minute, says report

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Microsoft’s plans for introducing a smaller version of the Surface were killed off at the last minute, according to a report from Bloomberg. Initial reports claimed that Microsoft was all set to introduce a 8 inch Surface tablet, tailored for note taking. It was definitely in a bid to compete against all the other small tablets, but Satya Nadella, the Chief Executive Officer at Microsoft, and Stephen Elop, heading the Devices and Services group, had apparently decided to kill the “almost-ready” tablet since it purportedly didn’t prove to be different enough to be a hit, in their eyes. That’s obviously a bold position, considering the product was reportedly in the works already.

What Microsoft really announced – Surface Pro 3 with a 12″ screen

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Microsoft’s Surface mini reportedly uses a Qualcomm processor

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Microsoft is all set to unveil the Surface mini, a 8 inch Windows tablet at an event in New York City on the 20th of May. It is just 13 more days until the announcement, and we don’t even know how it looks, but are finally starting to see some bits and pieces of information floating around the internet. Bloomberg’s Dina Bass reports that the Surface Mini will come with a Qualcomm processor, unlike its bigger brothers Surface RT and Surface 2, which run on rival Nvidia’s chips. Nokia was the only other OEM to come out with a ARM based Windows tablet in 2013, which coincidentally ran on the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

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Microsoft to reveal a smaller Surface on May 20th, sends out invites

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Microsoft’s strategic shift into a “Devices and Services” company saw the release of its own hardware range, under the “Surface” moniker, which was previously donned by the touchscreen tables, now called Pixel Sense. The Surface devices were tablets meant to show case Windows at its finest form. The Surface RT and the Surface Pro have seen two iterations already, with the former running on powerful ARM processors, while the latter, running on Ultrabook-grade specifications, meant to give high performance in a portable touchscreen form factor. Suffice to say, both of them have been met only with lukewarm response. With mini tablets gaining a large foothold, even Apple acknowledged the need with its iPad mini, and several OEM partners of Microsoft started releasing their own 8 inch Windows 8.1 tablets, once the OS was ready to support smaller screens. And now, it seems like Microsoft is ready to show the world what it can do with a smaller screen, on May 20th, as the company plans to reveal a new Surface device, at an event in New York city.

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