Microsoft’s latest fall hardware event teased a myriad of devices, all with public release dates ranging from mid-October 2019 to sometime in late 2020, with arguably, the most intriguing devices following the former release schedule.
Despite their holiday 2020 projected release dates, Microsoft’s dual 9-inch Duo and dual 5-inch Neo mobile devices are popping up in the wild this year.
During Microsoft Ignite 2019, several company executives and keynote speakers have been freely demoing use case scenarios of Microsoft’s various enterprised focused development tools and software on both devices, on stage.
Most notably, was a session discussing the upcoming platform updates to Microsoft 365 where Sharepoint and Visio executive Jared Spataro popped open his Surface Neo to showcase how the company is integrating Microsoft 365 with its future hardware initiatives.
Surface Neo uses the thinnest LCD screens ever produced. Surface Duo got a mention at the Microsoft 365 #MSIgnite keynote too but no demo. pic.twitter.com/8NYzXOm1at
— Ginny Caughey (@gcaughey) November 4, 2019
Spataro wasn’t the only Microsoft employee to be wielding a future device from the company as two other executives on the conference floor were also helping CEO Satay Nadella express the business vision of Microsoft 365 and tightly integrated hardware.
Surface Neo and Surface Duo get some screen time here at the #MSIgnite Vision Keynote during the Microsoft 365 segment. cc @panos_panay pic.twitter.com/Hinxlb3uEb
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) November 4, 2019
With the Surface Duo slated to be running Android, it’ll be interesting to see how much of Microsoft 365’s special sauce makes it to that device in the future.
Either way, it should be encouraging to see the company’s new foldable devices in the wild this early out from its proposed release date, allowing real-world usage to help iron out further potential bugs, hardware glitches or other potentially show-stopping issues.
