Microsoft's Big Surprise Spoiled As Surface 7 Leaks

It's called Surface 7 and it seems ready to take on the mid-range tablet market, Chromebook cloud-based market and bring Qualcomm to the Surface portfolio along with the unconditional Intel and the possible introduction of AMD through the laptop Surface Omar Sohail of WCCFTech reports:

•     In terms of performance, Microsoft Surface 7 is expected to have Qualcomm's ARM-based Snapdragon 8cx under the hood. Although Qualcomm's previous press details revealed that the Snapdragon 8cx was powerful enough to take on Intel's quad-core i5-8250u designed for ultrabooks, recent comparative evaluation results reveal Qualcomm's silicon is even lower than Intel's offer.

•     Fortunately, the benefit of having a Snapdragon 8cx means that the device will probably also offer always active 4G LTE. The report also states that the USB-A and MiniDisplayPort connections will be removed in favor of USB-C, as this will help the device achieve a much thinner design.

Where would this new tablet fit in the Surface family?

It is worth noting that Microsoft has Surface Go in the portfolio, this tablet with Windows 10 has been aimed at business customers, specifically at the point of sale and in factories and warehouses. Assuming Go will continue (and there is no indication that it is a dead end), then there is room for a much more consumer-friendly tablet. That would be surface 7.

Microsoft has been here before. Together with the Surface 3 Pro with Intel technology, the Surface 3, a smaller specification tablet that uses the Intel Atom chipset, was installed. While Surface Pro 3 introduced the new form factor of Surface tablets and it could be said that it was the first of the professional tablets that could replicate the power of a desktop computer or a high-end laptop, the Surface 3 entered the Tablet market dominated by the iPad.

There was a small sweet spot for the Surface 3, the biggest commitment was the Atom chip and the challenges associated with a low power chip, and Microsoft refused to fight for that little place. There was no Surface 4 ... until now.

The information we have about Surface 7 suggests that it will be for Surface Pro 7 what Surface 3 was for Surface Pro 3. It will have a similar style, but it will be smaller and will be aimed at a smaller set of applications.

Five years after Surface 3, Surface 7 will be able to make better use of cloud services (something that Microsoft is especially strong about) and online experiences

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Through the browser. That will overcome the obvious issue of application compatibility if Surface 7 uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset.

I hope Surface 7 is Microsoft's answer for both Apple's iPad and Google’s Chromebook platforms.

As Microsoft is expected to announce the new Surface devices this week in New York, we don't have much time to find out if Surface 7 will be the equivalent of Redmond to "One More Thing."