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Microsoft hardware event: news from the Surface Pro 4 and Lumia 950 XL event

Microsoft's event is over, and it was a whopper. Three new Lumia phones, the Surface Pro 4, the Microsoft Band 2, and — surprise — the Microsoft Surface Book laptop. Catch up with all the news from the event right here.

  • Oct 7, 2015

    Vlad Savov

    Microsoft shows that backwards compatibility is forward thinking

    We've already talked about the triumph that was Microsoft's launch event yesterday, but I want to touch on one of the subtler aspects of it that might have gone unnoticed: the relationship between the new Surface Pro 4 and the incumbent Surface Pro 3. Yes, there actually is one, and it extends far beyond insubstantial talk of design continuity. The new Surface Pro has a larger display than the old one, but that's achieved with thinner bezels, leaving the tablet itself compatible with all the old accessories. Being the same physical size also makes all of the SP4's upgraded new accessories compatible with the SP3.

    This might sound entirely logical and not all that much of a big deal, but it's been remarkably rare to see in real-world consumer electronics. Take Asus as the example not to follow. The Taiwanese company has been one of the most aggressive proponents of hybrid devices, whether they be smartphones that slot into tablet docks or tablets with attachable keyboards that morph into laptops. But every time Asus has introduced a new PadFone or Transformer Book or Pad, all the parts have changed. Cross-compatibility between generations? Zero. Time between generations? Mere months.

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  • Oct 7, 2015

    Vlad Savov

    Microsoft's epic hardware event in quotes

    It was, by a wide margin, Microsoft's most exciting and intriguing event in years. Hell, the entire tech industry hasn't generated this much hype and anticipation in a long time. Microsoft's hardware event on October 6th, 2015 will go down in history as one of the best examples of how to turn cold hard technology into warm and relatable objects of desire. In less than two hours. The software company showed off its hardware chops while pursuing the grand overarching goal of the ultimate "magical experience" — which can result only when software and hardware work together in harmony.

    For the sake of posterity, historicity, and just good old-fashioned fun, I've compiled the standout quotes from Microsoft's presentation yesterday. They mostly star the inimitable and distinctly quotable Panos Panay, who is in charge of running Microsoft's Lumia, Surface, and hype-generating divisions. Hit the comments below to share your favorite aphorism or proclamation from the event.

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  • Oct 6, 2015

    Ross Miller and Thomas Ricker

    Microsoft's Panos Panay is pumped about everything (2012–present)

    The creator of the Surface, Panos Panay, is pumped. About what, you may ask? Everything, we say. More specifically, you may request? Alright, fine, we relent. What follows is a small sample of things Panos Panay has been pumped about over the last three years:

    Reactions to the first Surface? Pumped*

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  • Adi Robertson

    Oct 6, 2015

    Adi Robertson

    Watch Microsoft's glorious, misleading HoloLens robot battle

    Be cautious about trusting Microsoft's on-stage HoloLens demos. While the company has released videos that capture the augmented reality experience reasonably well, its events invariably show off whole rooms full of holograms — which is actually one of the the headset's weaker areas. So it's better to think of Project X-Ray, which Microsoft publicly unveiled today, as a vision of what augmented reality could look like. Robo-scorpions! They will burst from your walls! And you have to shoot them! With a wearable holographic vortex gun!

    I played a version of Project X-Ray at E3 earlier this year, and although I have serious doubts about HoloLens' field of view, I love the idea behind the game. I'm sure I'd eventually get tired of shooting things on my own boring walls, and I wouldn't buy an entire headset to play even an expanded version. But it would be an excellent complement to the rest of the catalog, a game that's both casual and intense. I mean, imagine killing time with this in the doctor's office:

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  • Oct 6, 2015

    Vlad Savov

    Microsoft has warmed my cold cynical heart with hot new hardware

    The very concept of a Microsoft hardware event still feels weird to me. Software constitutes half of Microsoft's name and most of its DNA, and yet today we were treated to a 110-minute presentation showing off Microsoft's hardware-engineering acumen. And the whole thing was so breathlessly exciting that it felt more like 110 seconds. The most inspiring, intriguing, and frankly irresistible new hardware today is coming from Microsoft.

    Read next: The Surface Book review and Surface Pro 4 review.

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  • This is how Surface Book's crazy hinge works

    Read next: The Surface Book review.

    Microsoft pretty thoroughly wowed us this morning with its introduction of the Surface Book, a new laptop that can transform into a typical Surface tablet. There's a lot to be impressed with on the new device, but perhaps the most interesting hardware feature — both visually and functionally — is the Surface Book's hinge. It looks weird. And it also looks kind of awesome.

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  • Oct 6, 2015

    Adi Robertson and Bryan Bishop

    The 10 most important things from Microsoft's Lumia event

    Microsoft is still relatively fresh off the launch of Windows 10, which — as presenter and Windows team head Terry Myerson pointed out — happened less than three months ago. Now, the company is getting ready to release its smartphone variant, Windows 10 Mobile. And while the operating system isn’t out yet, we just got our first look at the phones that will run it: Microsoft’s two flagship Lumias, along with one budget option.

    But the most interesting parts of the presentation weren’t about phones. One was a fast-paced shooter played on the HoloLens augmented reality headset — to be clear, it was fairly misleading about the HoloLens’ limited field of view, but that doesn’t make it less cool to watch. The other was Microsoft’s announcement that after years of touting the Surface tablet as a laptop replacement, it’s now outright making Surface convertible laptops. We haven’t seen Microsoft’s presenters look this excited about Windows hardware for years.

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  • Chris Welch

    Oct 6, 2015

    Chris Welch

    The new Microsoft Band is sleeker and more capable than the original

    The second-generation Microsoft Band promises to be both more fashionable and more useful than the original model. Priced at $249, Microsoft has redesigned its fitness-focused wearable with a curved display (protected by Gorilla Glass 3) and stainless steel fasteners. It now tracks more information — like elevation when you're climbing stairs and advanced health metrics the first Band wasn't capable of. Microsoft is also putting a big focus on tracking your golf game.

    Read next: The Microsoft Band 2 review.

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  • T.C. Sottek

    Oct 6, 2015

    T.C. Sottek

    Microsoft just gave the best 'one more thing' product surprise in years

    Microsoft just surprised everyone by introducing the Surface Book: the company's vision of the ultimate laptop. It's crazy! It's like they went from making the Surface tablet, to making a laptop, and then back to making a Surface tablet again — but somehow it looks like it works.

    Read next: The Surface Book review.

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  • Chris Welch

    Oct 6, 2015

    Chris Welch

    This is Microsoft's new Surface Pro 4: better in nearly every way

    Today Microsoft announced the Surface Pro 4, and we're getting our first look at it here at the company's big product event. Last year, Surface chief Panos Panay said that Microsoft had hit the right formula to make the Surface Pro a viable laptop replacement. This time, the new Surface is all about refinement and polish. It's thinner, lighter, and faster thanks to Intel's latest chips. The screen is larger (now 12.3 inches), yet the device hasn't gotten any wider. And it showcases an incredibly sharp, pixel-dense resolution, just as Panos Panay boasted on stage. Microsoft says the Surface Pro 4 is 50 percent faster than Apple's MacBook Air and far speedier than its predecessor.

    Read next: The Surface Pro 4 review.

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  • Dieter Bohn

    Oct 6, 2015

    Dieter Bohn

    Lumia 950 and 950 XL hands-on: Windows Phone is back

    Microsoft is rebooting Windows Phone again. After years in purgatory and a Nokia acquisition that didn't exactly lead to anything major, we now have two Lumia phones that are trying it all again: the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL. Both were oft-leaked devices — so much so that we came into this event already knowing the big points. They're running a version of Windows 10, which Microsoft is betting will help jump-start their third-party app ecosystems. They have the same basic specs we've seen on a lot of phones lately: Qualcomm Snapdragon processors of varying strength depending on the phone size, plenty of RAM, 32GB of storage, USB Type-C, and your choice of two pretty large screens. Hell, Microsoft even says that they're liquid cooled, which is crazy.

    But since this is actually an all-new phone platform (that, admittedly, looks really similar to Windows Phone 8 before it), digging into the internal specs is a little beside the point. You never know what those internals mean on a whole new OS until you try it — so we tried it. The result: Windows Phone is just as snappy and fluid as it was before. Even though it has something like the full power of Windows behind it (so much so that you can actually hook up a full-sized monitor and use it as a mini computer), it still feels like the stripped-down and fast UI we've seen before.

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  • Microsoft announces Surface Book laptop with 13.5-inch display starting at $1,499

    Microsoft is changing up the Surface line today with the introduction of a Surface laptop called the Surface Book. It's the first laptop ever built by Microsoft. But it's a lot more than a laptop. The screen is actually fully removable so that it can be used as a tablet. If you put the screen back on, you can also choose to flip it all the way around and use it like a convertible, with the keyboard propping it up.

    The Surface Book includes a 13.5-inch display with a pixel density of 267PPI. That display is optically bonded to the glass, which means it should look good. Microsoft says the Surface Book is housed in a machined magnesium body — basically, it's a silver metal laptop, but it manages to look far different than a MacBook, despite its similarities in name. Perhaps the standout design element here is the Surface Book's hinge. Microsoft calls it a "dynamic fulcrum." From the side, it appears to almost flex as it bends. It leaves a slightly awkward gap when the Surface Book is fully closed, but it also elevates the display at an angle when the screen is flipped around for use as a tablet. A button on the side releases the display, which detaches from the top of the hinge.

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  • Chris Ziegler

    Oct 6, 2015

    Chris Ziegler

    Surface Pro 4's accessories include lighter, thinner Type Cover and upgraded dock

    Read next: The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 review.

    At Microsoft's blockbuster event in New York today, the company pulled the wraps off its latest tablet — the Surface Pro 4 — along with a host of accessories for it. Chief among those are the new Type Cover and docking station, both of which are backward compatible with the Surface Pro 3.

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  • Micah Singleton

    Oct 6, 2015

    Micah Singleton

    Microsoft shows off new Surface Pen for the Surface Pro 4

    During its hardware event today, Microsoft unveiled its new Surface Pro 4 and showed off it's new Surface Pen, which it claims is the best stylus to date, going up against the Apple Pencil. While it looks very similar to the Surface Pro 3 Pen, the new Surface Pen has been substantially improved over its predecessor.

    Read next: The Surface Pro 4 review.

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  • Oct 6, 2015

    Vlad Savov

    Microsoft Surface Pro 4 announced with new Surface Pen, starts at $899

    Read next: The Surface Pro 4 review.

    This year, Microsoft's Surface Pro has been flattered by the introduction of similar devices like Apple's iPad Pro and Google's Pixel C, but today the original tablet-laptop hybrid gets its own update. The Surface Pro 4 is now official, and it's thinner, lighter, and more powerful, while also having a larger display than its predecessor. Intel's Skylake processors and Microsoft's own Windows 10 are at the heart of the Surface Pro 4.

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  • Nick Statt

    Oct 6, 2015

    Nick Statt

    Microsoft's new Lumia 550 announced at $139

    Microsoft is staying in the budget phone market with the new Lumia 550, announced today at a press event in New York City. The 5-inch device is meant to replace the Lumia 640 and Lumia 640 XL as Microsoft's budget phone for developing countries, as well as cost-conscious consumers in the US and Europe.

    The 550 will be familiar to anyone who spotted leaker Evan Blass' tweets from last week showing fresh renderings of the device, or the images leaked on Facebook the week before indicating the device's specs. The device will come with a quad-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 210 and 5-megapixel camera, starting at 8GB of storage for $139 this December in European markets. Microsoft plans to expand availability in 2016.

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  • Ross Miller

    Oct 6, 2015

    Ross Miller

    Microsoft’s new Display Dock transforms your Windows 10 mobile into a PC

    So how does Continuum look? A lot like Windows 10 PC, in fact, but the taskbar is slightly tweaked and there's a signal bar at the top along with battery and time information. Microsoft showed off the Windows Hello beta run from a new Lumia — that is to say, it's not the full PC experience, but it's PC-esque and runs universal Windows 10 apps.

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  • Oct 6, 2015

    Tom Warren and Jacob Kastrenakes

    Microsoft Lumia 950 XL with 5.7-inch display and liquid cooling announced for $649

    It’s hard to believe it’s been almost two years since Nokia first introduced its giant Lumia 1520 Windows Phone. At 6 inches, it was the largest Windows Phone at the time and one of the biggest phones on the market. While bigger phones are becoming more common, Microsoft is stepping back slightly from the huge 6-inch footprint today as the company reveals its new Lumia 950XL with a 5.7-inch display.

    It's a bigger version of the Lumia 950, so the two devices have a lot of things in common. That includes what Microsoft calls "tablet-class liquid cooling" to allow these phones to handle more powerful chips, which, at the very least, sounds awesome. The phone has a 20-megapixel camera on the back, and beside it is what Microsoft calls a "Triple LED RGB natural flash" — basically, Microsoft claims, it's what'll let you take well-lit pictures where people look normal. The camera has optical image stabilization, and it can shoot in 4K, too. Photography enthusiasts will also be happy to know that it has a dedicated camera button on the side.

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  • Tom Warren

    Oct 6, 2015

    Tom Warren

    Microsoft's Lumia 950 is the new flagship Windows phone

    After weeks of leaks, Microsoft is officially unveiling the Lumia 950 today. It has been 18 months since the last flagship Windows phone was announced, and the new Lumia 950 is here to help launch Windows 10 Mobile. The Lumia 950 will be available starting November for $549.

    Microsoft has opted for a 5.2-inch WQHD (1440 x 2560) OLED display on the Lumia 950, coupled with 3GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 808 processor. That makes it one of the more powerful Windows phones we've seen to date, and the first to make use of Qualcomm's latest processors.

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  • Sean O'Kane

    Oct 6, 2015

    Sean O'Kane

    Uber, Subway, and more apps are coming to the new Microsoft Band

    The new version of the Microsoft Band isn't going to just look nicer and work better than its predecessor, it will also be compatible with a whole new suite of apps. Everything from Uber, to Runkeeper, to Men's Fitness, to Starbucks and Subway, will all be available when the new wearable launches on October 30th. Microsoft made the announcement today at its event in New York City.

    Read next: The Microsoft Band 2 review.

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  • Lauren Goode

    Oct 6, 2015

    Lauren Goode

    Microsoft's new activity tracker is the $249 Microsoft Band

    A new Surface and new Lumia smartphones might be what everyone was waiting to hear about at today's Microsoft event, but the company made it clear it's still chugging along in another area: wearables.

    Read next: The Microsoft Band 2 review.

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  • Adi Robertson

    Oct 6, 2015

    Adi Robertson

    Microsoft now taking applications for $3,000 HoloLens development kits

    Microsoft has just announced that it will make HoloLens development kits available in the first quarter of 2016. The kits will cost $3,000, and Microsoft is taking applications for them starting today. Exact specs for the kits are still nebulous, but they'll supposedly be "fully untethered," capable of being used without physical cords or a remote PC connection — like the units we tested earlier this year.

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  • Tom Warren

    Oct 6, 2015

    Tom Warren

    Facebook is making Windows 10 apps for Messenger and Instagram

    Microsoft's big goal with Windows 10 is to encourage developers to create universal apps that run across PCs, tablets, and phones. The software giant now has a big ally: Facebook. At Microsoft's Windows 10 devices event in New York this morning, the company revealed that Facebook is creating Windows 10 apps for Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook. "Facebook is all in on Windows 10," according to a quote attributed to Mark Zuckerberg.

    An official Facebook app for Windows 10 isn't a huge surprise given the Windows 8 version, but an updated Instagram app is long overdue. Instagram launched on Windows Phone nearly two years ago, and it has barely been updated ever since. Even to this day it still lacks video upload, and most Windows Phone owners simply use third-party Instagram alternatives as a result. An updated Instagram app for Windows is encouraging, but Microsoft still has many hurdles to conquer to offer a truly compelling platform with a host of third-party apps.

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  • Sean O'Kane

    Oct 6, 2015

    Sean O'Kane

    Microsoft says there are 110 million devices with Windows 10

    Windows 10 has been installed on more than 110 million devices since it was released on July 29th. That sounds like pretty good progress considering that Microsoft said it hoped to reach 1 billion devices "within two to three years" at the company's developer conference in April.

    On top of that, Microsoft's Terry Myerson said that 650 billion web pages have been viewed on Edge, the company's newest browser, and users have streamed 120 years of gameplay from Xbox systems to Windows 10 devices.

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  • Ross Miller

    Oct 6, 2015

    Ross Miller

    Microsoft calls out Tim Cook ahead of Surface Pro 4 announcement

    In April 2012, Apple CEO Tim Cook offered this opinion of tablet–laptop hybrids: "You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not gonna be pleasing to the user."

    More than three years later, Microsoft's Surface lineup has continued to be a flagship device and a symbol of its goals for Windows. Just hours before its new Surface Pro / Lumia event, Microsoft's head of Windows and devices Terry Myerson tweeted this callback:

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