Microsoft's Panos Panay Calls Pocketable Surface Device 'My Baby'
In an interview with The Verge, Panay said that there needs to be a market for such a device, and that Microsoft is working on the feasibility of bringing it to production. “It’s absolutely my baby,” said Panay. “We will invent and we will create when products are right. We can’t bring new categories into the world and not be a place where customers need it.”
The key issue seems to be in the fact that a person would carry around both their smartphone and Andromeda (or whatever "Surface" name gets attached to the finished product). Customers might not be receptive to that reality considering how much we can accomplish these days with just a smartphone. A dual-screen Surface device, while incredibly cool, would likely be a compromised device that could fall in between the cracks between a smartphone and a traditional 2-in-1 convertible.
laptop mode & gaming mode pic.twitter.com/VRD8Z9wKgD
— David Breyer (@D_Breyer) June 30, 2018
Even though the pocketable Surface is definitely his baby, Panay didn't want to commit to acknowledging that it will see the light of day. He would only state, “I think there’s a lot of new form factors that are coming in the future."
While Andromeda's future may be uncertain at this point, the Surface brand is still going strong. Yesterday, the company announced the Surface Laptop 2 and Surface Pro 6, which are powered by 8th generation Intel Core processors. Also announced was the Surface Studio 2, which makes use of older Kaby Lake processors and is now available with up to a 2TB SSD.
