A foldable future: how Microsoft hopes to define a new category of hardware with Surface Neo and Duo ZDNet’s Larry Dignan and TechRepublic’s Bill Detwiler Explain Why Surface Neo, Windows Based, and Surface Duo, Based on Android, Are Only An Overview of Dual-Fold Foldable Devices That Will Redefining the Laptop, Tablet, and Tablet Market and phones.
Technology companies are hoping the future will bend, but not pessimistically. Instead, they think the next big thing will be devices with foldable screens, somewhere between a tablet and a smartphone.
These devices can have folding screens (like the Samsung Galaxy Fold) or fold out (like the Huawei Mate X), or they can use sophisticated hinges that connect two displays (like Microsoft’s future Surface Neo and Duo devices) .
ZDNet, Matthew Miller, explains that his experience of the Samsung Fold suggests that a future with a single device could be closer to reality. A device that gives you enough screen to be productive in mobile mode, but can also connect to a larger screen and keyboard for an office or home office experience, could be an attractive option, reducing need to use a laptop to work properly. Something like the larger Surface Neo could even offer the same productivity boost as on two screens on the desktop, but on the go.
There is this idea: the laptop is too big, too heavy and too dull to be the device that we should use. Computer sales are certainly declining in the long run, despite the erratic rise, as today, as businesses hurry to replace older devices still running Windows 7.
Already seen, yet?
We have been here before, of course. Devices such as the smartphone, the netbook and the tablet have all been announced as devices that would finally crush the PC. Other candidates are hiding around the corner – we may all be creating virtual reality spreadsheets in a few years or organizing augmented reality meetings.
Still, I think the PC still has life. On the one hand, nothing ever really disappears in technology: it simply finds a niche, even if it’s smaller than it’s peak. Even in constant decline, hundreds of thousands of computers are still sold each year.
More importantly, the PC has been very successful in fleeing the fiasco in recent years.
The laptops in the size and weight of the paving slabs, so heavy that they look like being the anchor of a ship in your backpack, have now been replaced by elegant models that occupy hardly more space than a magazine. I often had to check that my laptop was in my bag because it did not feel heavy enough on my shoulder. More
