Dubai:
Microsoft on late Tuesday unveiled its new devices — Lumia 950 and 950 XL smartphones, Surafce Pro 4, Microsoft Surface Book and an upgraded wearable band.
One thing is clear, the US company is moving deeper into the hardware business to take on Apple and Google.
Microsoft’s Windows chief Terry Myerson said that its Windows 10 OS is running on 110 million devices now, one billion commands have been sent to the virtual assistant Cortana, early adopters have already loaded 650 billion web pages in its web browser Microsoft Edge.
The company strategy is to bring Windows 10 on to one billion devices by 2017.
Myerson said that there are eight million business PCs running on Windows 10 and the number is very likely to be increased, as more enterprises discover the benefits of the new operating system.
Facebook has said its new apps for Windows 10 are coming for Instagram, Facebook and Facebook Messenger.
Myerson said that the company will be upgrading all of its Xbox One systems to Windows 10, which means backward compatibility [Xbox 360 games can play on Xbox One].
The company is also introducing limited-edition console — Halo5 console — with 1 terabyte of storage and will retail for $499 (Dh1,832).
“Xbox One is going to bring some serious fun this holiday,” Myerson said.
Talking about the Surface Book, Panos Panay, who leads the development of all Windows premium devices, said that the Surface Book is twice as fast as the MacBook Pro while the Surface Pro 4 is 50 per cent faster than the MacBook Air.
“We want to put Windows in your pocket and these phones really do start to act like a PC,” he said.
The first device to take the stage was Microsoft’s HoloLens virtual reality headset, which is priced at $3,000 and is available in the first quarter of next year for developers.
950 and 950 XL Lumia
• 950 is a 5.2-inch OLED handset (2560 x 1440 pixels resolution) powered by six-core processor, while 950XL is a 5.7-inch OLED device with an eight-core processor.
• Both handsets have 20MP rear camera with a dedicated button.
• Triple LED RGB (red, blue and green) flash with optical image stabilisation.
• 4K recording support.
• 3G of RAM and 32GB internal storage capacity and expandable up to 2TB.
• USB Type-C connector as in Apple.
• The Glance screen helps people check up on e-mails, missed calls, see date, time and schedule just by glancing at the phone rather than unlocking the device.
• The phones can act as a PC via Windows 10’s Continuum feature called Microsoft Display Dock. The dock will feature HDMI, DisplayPort and USB ports.
• Windows Hello feature for unlocking a device using a fingerprint of face.
• It will be available in November.
• 950 model is priced at $549 and the 950 XL at $649.
Surface Pro 4
• The 12.3-inch device is thinner and lighter than Surface Pro 3.
• PixelSense touch screen technology.
• Thinnest cover screen featuring Gorilla Glass 4, which is just 0.4mm thick.
• The new Pen has an eraser like a pencil and has 1,024 pressure levels and magnetically attaches to the tablet.
• It has 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.
• The new docking keyboard has four USB 3.0 and two 4K DisplayPort connectors and Ethernet.
• It is priced at $999 and will retail on October 26th.
Surface Book
• The 13.5-inch convertible laptop with 267 pixels per inch density has the same PixelSense touch screen technology found on the Surface Pro 4.
• Precision glass trackpad.
• NVIDIA GeForce GPU.
• GDDR5 memory.
• 12 hour battery life.
• The screen detaches from the base as a standalone tablet.
• Works with Surface Pen.
• The base of the book has a dedicated GPU apart from the Skylake integrated GPU on the tablet.
• The dynamic “fulcrum hinge” bends at multiple points and flips up to 360 degrees.
• It has two USB 3.0 ports and full-size SD card slot.
• It is priced at $1,499 and will retail on October 26.
Band 2
• The curved screen has new Gorilla Glass 3 OLED display
• It works with iOS, Android or Windows Phone to display call, messages, email and app notifications
• The new band has 11 sensors, including to measure VO2 max, a barometer to track elevation apart from built-in GPS, sleep tracking, heart rate, calorie counting and notifications.
• More virtual assistant Cortana integration.
• It wirelessly sync with Microsoft Health app and also many third-party apps like MyFitnessPal, Strava, LoseIt, MapMyRun and more.
• It will also have apps
• 48 hour battery life.
• The $249 band is available now for preorder and will arrive in stores on October 30.
