Next big thing in phones?

[faisalbaba]

I am also waiting that day.
When you guys think Microsoft should release surface phone.i want before 2018

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[techiez]

I am also waiting that day.
When you guys think Microsoft should release surface phone.i want before 2018

Sent from (iOK)

If Surface phone is supposed to be of entirely unseen form factor then it id atleast 3-4 yrs away. Just look at holo lens, consumer version is expected in 2020, thats how surface phone is also gng to be

 

[faisalbaba]

Holo lens is new thing in technology it will take time.i didn't even experience What VR is.but I didn't think surface phone is 3 to 4 yrs away

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[Drael646464]

As someone here pointed out to me today, with windows on arm, PC's always connected telephony abilities will be somewhat standard pretty soon. Being "a phone" will simply be a part of a good portion of mobile windows devices.

At which point calling something a "phone" is even more moot than it is currently.

Given the new surface device will be likely a folding form factor, it will essentially be, as much a convertible tablet as it is a phone.

Basically what I am saying is, I don't think it's going to be called a phone. Ultratablet? Flipbook? IDK, but not a phone. By the time of its release, telephony abilities will be basically standard in anything running windows 10 and small.

It's conceptually I think more of a 'tablet that folds up small into a phone like shape', than a 'phone that folds out into a tablet'. Or maybe its both XD

As for time of release, there are several indicators to suggest they are already working on both the SKU of this win10m sibling OS, and the hardware. Insider leaks, bits within current code. I'm not sure how long such a product takes but I don't think it'll be 4 years.

I'd guess more like 1-2. Then again its complex engineering, and theres the software too - which I am guessing will run win10m style in 'phone mode' and windows on arm, emulation when 'in tablet mode'. Although because it also seems to have a magnetic connector, and is detachable, it quite probably also has some kind of 'dual phone' mode, where you can use it to second screen, or have separate data/apps on each screen.

The are going to need some hardcore UI tweaks.

I'm actually thinking the software could take longer to bake than the hardware XD

It's both a doable and exciting concept though. With the sci-fi flash of fluent design, and the folding qualities similar to a westworld tablet, it's not only a useful, but potentially a very beautiful futuristic design. The kind of splash one really wants to make.

 

[faisalbaba]

We are saying Microsoft will not call surface phone as phone.

Sent from (iOK)

 

[techiez]

Holo lens is new thing in technology it will take time.i didn't even experience What VR is.but I didn't think surface phone is 3 to 4 yrs away

Sent from (iOK)

The reason I say SP is 3-4 yrs away is due to the expectations and talks all around that it will be a foldable form factor, and a durable and usable foldable form factor is definitely years away(as a consumer mass product). Anything less than that cannot be called the next big thing and MS has already hinted that SP will not be the next candybar phone.

 

[faisalbaba]

The reason I say SP is 3-4 yrs away is due to the expectations and talks all around that it will be a foldable form factor, and a durable and usable foldable form factor is definitely years away(as a consumer mass product). Anything less than that cannot be called the next big thing and MS has already hinted that SP will not be the next candybar phone.

I think First generation of surface phone will be without foldable screen

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[Drael646464]

The reason I say SP is 3-4 yrs away is due to the expectations and talks all around that it will be a foldable form factor, and a durable and usable foldable form factor is definitely years away(as a consumer mass product). Anything less than that cannot be called the next big thing and MS has already hinted that SP will not be the next candybar phone.

A laptop is foldable, and durable, and usable. There's one of those already with dual screens.

What design challenges do you forsee?

 

[tgp]

A laptop is foldable, and durable, and usable. There's one of those already with dual screens.

What design challenges do you forsee?

Are you looking for a shrunken laptop? :grin:

 

[Drael646464]

Are you looking for a shrunken laptop? :grin:

Coloured me puzzled by that response.

No, they already exist?

I was talking about a folding tablet. But the tech for that basically already exists, in the form of dual screen based laptops.

If anything its the software of such a device where most of the innovation would happen IMO

Unless one is talking flexible screens, or a creaseless design. In which case the tech already exists for that too, but its too expensive for everyday consumers.

But there's no reason why the first folding tablets couldn't have creases. The westworld show ones do. And people still wow about them. The UI is just divided well across the screens, incorporating the creases.

 

[techiez]

Coloured me puzzled by that response.

No, they already exist?

I was talking about a folding tablet. But the tech for that basically already exists, in the form of dual screen based laptops.

If anything its the software of such a device where most of the innovation would happen IMO

Unless one is talking flexible screens, or a creaseless design. In which case the tech already exists for that too, but its too expensive for everyday consumers.

But there's no reason why the first folding tablets couldn't have creases. The westworld show ones do. And people still wow about them. The UI is just divided well across the screens, incorporating the creases.

Well yes the tech exists but still as I mentioned its years away, Samsung is expert in displays and it first showed a creaseless foldable display prototype in 2011 and still couldn't get a device to consumers utilizing the same, there are supposedly production issues with the prototypes that Samsung is working on. I dont see MS beating Samsung to market with such a phone, though I want it happen.

 

[Drael646464]

Well yes the tech exists but still as I mentioned its years away, Samsung is expert in displays and it first showed a creaseless foldable display prototype in 2011 and still couldn't get a device to consumers utilizing the same, there are supposedly production issues with the prototypes that Samsung is working on. I dont see MS beating Samsung to market with such a phone, though I want it happen.

Creaseless displays use graphene. Graphene is currently very expensive to produce. Samsung and microsofts dual development/co-patent of this creaseless screen tech design (forget the tm name) was as you mentioned demo'd years ago. I believe it was 2013?

Could be 2011 I suppose, but I recall their co-announcement of the scroll proto being 2013, with it running windows 8.
Of course Samsung got the most attention for this co-development and co-announcement, and went on to use it, as the basis for their practically useless curved screen design, which amusing people really liked. So much so, if you search this in youtube now, all you can really find is samsungs half of the announcement (which does show windows 8 on the proto, but no Microsoft portion of the speech)

There have since been a few other companies demoing flexible OLED graphene screens. I don't think it will be a matter of any individual company being wildly 'first to market". A number of companies _can_ make such a thing, but they don't because it makes no economic sense.

Graphene of course has many more scientific applications than screens. I can be used for bullet proofing, circuit boards, battery tech, chemical manuracture, water and other purification, super materials, spaceships, nano-manufacturing. The creation of low cost graphene will be a technological revolution.

But its not here yet. Likely the first, slightly cheaper, creaseless folding/scrolling will be like the first mobile phones - so expensive as to be primarily for high end enterprise and the elite.

I can see a case there for such devices being, like the patent, a co-development between MS and Samsung. It's the sort of product one would want major press on, shared risk/investment, and premium status. Or at least running windows makes more sense than android. Ultra-elite business users won't get much productivity benefit from a folding android tablet, after all, and people are unlikely to spend that kind of money on a slightly more portable Netflix!

It will take that initial high expense product, like the original cell phones, to slowly reduce manufacturing costs, via scale and incremental improvements. It won't be a consumer product any time soon, barring some technological miracle. As such, it seems more logic its in MSFTs ballpark IMO.
Certainly such a device could run DeX, but I think the real product will be running full windows 10, with the arm emu - which is probably what MSFT is cooking up with "Andromeda", a melting point between win10m and win on arm for folding devices.

After all, such an expensive might be justified for running oracle, adobe products, office 365, accounting software, and a full suite of business applications, but snapchat or pokemon go is not really anywhere in the picture.

I guess in a way, for all the hype around AR, it'll probably be similar for awhile - its main benefit to enterprise and other people with big pockets, until production methods can improve it down to consumer scale. For an enterprise user, or in medicine, AR makes a lot of sense - even with a high expense. However we are not seeing any immediate examples of a similar quality consumer product, and given the complexities of projecting light into the eye, FoV, latency and such, I don't think we will for a long time. Maybe something lower grade.

Regardless, creaseless tech is not needed for a folding screen design. You simply need a hinge that creates a relatively low profile crease, and a UI, that is optimized to mostly conceal that crease (the tablets on westworld are a great example - they are all creased designs, but you don't notice because the UI is designed to hide it)

If you look at some pics of the oft-touted future tech, the westworld tablets, you'll see they have creases. They are not some far off graphene tech, merely folding devices that are very thin, and have low profile hinge creases, with a UI design to hide those creases.

It makes a lot of sense to make such a product, from very achievable and inexpensive existing technologies, as a development platform for a folding scaling OS of the future. Plus the OS end, requires a fair bit of development, more that slapping two screens together with a fancy hinge in likelihood. It's an enabling tech - it allows for development of the software of that eventual creaseless design, and later consumer product.

People might object to the idea of a crease all they like, but it's doubtful anyone much will be willing to pony up the many thousands an all graphene screen would cost.

Even if MSFT or whomever was working on a scrolling or creaseless design - it still wouldn't be for consumers.

The small proto, that Samsung demo'd in 2011/13/whenever cost several tens of thousands of dollars. 50,000? 40,000? Something in that ballpark.

Mass manufacture would reduce that very little, and the cost of graphene production hasn't really changed, despite one person starting to build a plant for it.

Even if they created a folding screen tech where only the hinge part was graphene based, or they significantly reduced the cost of graphene - it would likely costs many thousands at the RRP, probably 5+ thousand. Somewhere in the realm of a cheap car.

That's not the sort of money consumers will spend for portable entertainment devices, generally speaking.

Actually I don't think such tech is that far off either. Probably 3-5 years. But when it comes it will still cost A LOT. This is not the new iPhone. Its the new 80s mobile phone/90s palmpilot long before it will slowly morph into the new iPhone.

The other element to consider is the fact that CPUs, circuits and batteries can all be built theoretically into transparent graphene substrates. So the ultimate evolution is probably something more like "computer paper", created by nano-manufacturing processes. But that's an even longer journey.

 

[Charis Ntouroutlis]

Originally posted by Drael646464

Originally Posted by techiez
Well yes the tech exists but still as I mentioned its years away, Samsung is expert in displays and it first showed a creaseless foldable display prototype in 2011 and still couldn't get a device to consumers utilizing the same, there are supposedly production issues with the prototypes that Samsung is working on. I dont see MS beating Samsung to market with such a phone, though I want it happen.

Creaseless displays use graphene. Graphene is currently very expensive to produce. Samsung and microsofts dual development/co-patent of this creaseless screen tech design (forget the tm name) was as you mentioned demo'd years ago. I believe it was 2013?

Could be 2011 I suppose, but I recall their co-announcement of the scroll proto being 2013, with it running windows 8.
Of course Samsung got the most attention for this co-development and co-announcement, and went on to use it, as the basis for their practically useless curved screen design, which amusing people really liked. So much so, if you search this in youtube now, all you can really find is samsungs half of the announcement (which does show windows 8 on the proto, but no Microsoft portion of the speech)

There have since been a few other companies demoing flexible OLED graphene screens. I don't think it will be a matter of any individual company being wildly 'first to market". A number of companies _can_ make such a thing, but they don't because it makes no economic sense.

Graphene of course has many more scientific applications than screens. I can be used for bullet proofing, circuit boards, battery tech, chemical manuracture, water and other purification, super materials, spaceships, nano-manufacturing. The creation of low cost graphene will be a technological revolution.

But its not here yet. Likely the first, slightly cheaper, creaseless folding/scrolling will be like the first mobile phones - so expensive as to be primarily for high end enterprise and the elite.

I can see a case there for such devices being, like the patent, a co-development between MS and Samsung. It's the sort of product one would want major press on, shared risk/investment, and premium status. Or at least running windows makes more sense than android. Ultra-elite business users won't get much productivity benefit from a folding android tablet, after all, and people are unlikely to spend that kind of money on a slightly more portable Netflix!

It will take that initial high expense product, like the original cell phones, to slowly reduce manufacturing costs, via scale and incremental improvements. It won't be a consumer product any time soon, barring some technological miracle. As such, it seems more logic its in MSFTs ballpark IMO.
Certainly such a device could run DeX, but I think the real product will be running full windows 10, with the arm emu - which is probably what MSFT is cooking up with "Andromeda", a melting point between win10m and win on arm for folding devices.

After all, such an expensive might be justified for running oracle, adobe products, office 365, accounting software, and a full suite of business applications, but snapchat or pokemon go is not really anywhere in the picture.

I guess in a way, for all the hype around AR, it'll probably be similar for awhile - its main benefit to enterprise and other people with big pockets, until production methods can improve it down to consumer scale. For an enterprise user, or in medicine, AR makes a lot of sense - even with a high expense. However we are not seeing any immediate examples of a similar quality consumer product, and given the complexities of projecting light into the eye, FoV, latency and such, I don't think we will for a long time. Maybe something lower grade.

Regardless, creaseless tech is not needed for a folding screen design. You simply need a hinge that creates a relatively low profile crease, and a UI, that is optimized to mostly conceal that crease (the tablets on westworld are a great example - they are all creased designs, but you don't notice because the UI is designed to hide it)

If you look at some pics of the oft-touted future tech, the westworld tablets, you'll see they have creases. They are not some far off graphene tech, merely folding devices that are very thin, and have low profile hinge creases, with a UI design to hide those creases.

It makes a lot of sense to make such a product, from very achievable and inexpensive existing technologies, as a development platform for a folding scaling OS of the future. Plus the OS end, requires a fair bit of development, more that slapping two screens together with a fancy hinge in likelihood. It's an enabling tech - it allows for development of the software of that eventual creaseless design, and later consumer product.

People might object to the idea of a crease all they like, but it's doubtful anyone much will be willing to pony up the many thousands an all graphene screen would cost.

Even if MSFT or whomever was working on a scrolling or creaseless design - it still wouldn't be for consumers.

The small proto, that Samsung demo'd in 2011/13/whenever cost several tens of thousands of dollars. 50,000? 40,000? Something in that ballpark.

Mass manufacture would reduce that very little, and the cost of graphene production hasn't really changed, despite one person starting to build a plant for it.

Even if they created a folding screen tech where only the hinge part was graphene based, or they significantly reduced the cost of graphene - it would likely costs many thousands at the RRP, probably 5+ thousand. Somewhere in the realm of a cheap car.

That's not the sort of money consumers will spend for portable entertainment devices, generally speaking.

Actually I don't think such tech is that far off either. Probably 3-5 years. But when it comes it will still cost A LOT. This is not the new iPhone. Its the new 80s mobile phone/90s palmpilot long before it will slowly morph into the new iPhone.

The other element to consider is the fact that CPUs, circuits and batteries can all be built theoretically into transparent graphene substrates. So the ultimate evolution is probably something more like "computer paper", created by nano-manufacturing processes. But that's an even longer journey.

Out of topic!
You really need to open a blog. You remind me of Jason Ward here!

 

[Drael646464]

Out of topic!
You really need to open a blog. You remind me of Jason Ward here!

Topic: "The next big thing in phones".

I do take slight offence being compared to Jason ward. I think what I wrote just there is a little bit more grounded in business and science XD I'm no expert, but I do follow those things a bit more closely IMO than ward, who veers a bit more towards the imagine whats possible type of thinking, that also has its own place.

I'd be happy to be a paid blog writer though. I've done that type of work in the past. Its hard work sometimes coming up with good material like a machine, but its also fun.

 

[techiez]

Creaseless displays use graphene. Graphene is currently very expensive to produce. Samsung and microsofts dual development/co-patent of this creaseless screen tech design (forget the tm name) was as you mentioned demo'd years ago. I believe it was 2013?

Could be 2011 I suppose, but I recall their co-announcement of the scroll proto being 2013, with it running windows 8.
Of course Samsung got the most attention for this co-development and co-announcement, and went on to use it, as the basis for their practically useless curved screen design, which amusing people really liked. So much so, if you search this in youtube now, all you can really find is samsungs half of the announcement (which does show windows 8 on the proto, but no Microsoft portion of the speech)

There have since been a few other companies demoing flexible OLED graphene screens. I don't think it will be a matter of any individual company being wildly 'first to market". A number of companies _can_ make such a thing, but they don't because it makes no economic sense.

Graphene of course has many more scientific applications than screens. I can be used for bullet proofing, circuit boards, battery tech, chemical manuracture, water and other purification, super materials, spaceships, nano-manufacturing. The creation of low cost graphene will be a technological revolution.

But its not here yet. Likely the first, slightly cheaper, creaseless folding/scrolling will be like the first mobile phones - so expensive as to be primarily for high end enterprise and the elite.

I can see a case there for such devices being, like the patent, a co-development between MS and Samsung. It's the sort of product one would want major press on, shared risk/investment, and premium status. Or at least running windows makes more sense than android. Ultra-elite business users won't get much productivity benefit from a folding android tablet, after all, and people are unlikely to spend that kind of money on a slightly more portable Netflix!

It will take that initial high expense product, like the original cell phones, to slowly reduce manufacturing costs, via scale and incremental improvements. It won't be a consumer product any time soon, barring some technological miracle. As such, it seems more logic its in MSFTs ballpark IMO.
Certainly such a device could run DeX, but I think the real product will be running full windows 10, with the arm emu - which is probably what MSFT is cooking up with "Andromeda", a melting point between win10m and win on arm for folding devices.

After all, such an expensive might be justified for running oracle, adobe products, office 365, accounting software, and a full suite of business applications, but snapchat or pokemon go is not really anywhere in the picture.

I guess in a way, for all the hype around AR, it'll probably be similar for awhile - its main benefit to enterprise and other people with big pockets, until production methods can improve it down to consumer scale. For an enterprise user, or in medicine, AR makes a lot of sense - even with a high expense. However we are not seeing any immediate examples of a similar quality consumer product, and given the complexities of projecting light into the eye, FoV, latency and such, I don't think we will for a long time. Maybe something lower grade.

Regardless, creaseless tech is not needed for a folding screen design. You simply need a hinge that creates a relatively low profile crease, and a UI, that is optimized to mostly conceal that crease (the tablets on westworld are a great example - they are all creased designs, but you don't notice because the UI is designed to hide it)

If you look at some pics of the oft-touted future tech, the westworld tablets, you'll see they have creases. They are not some far off graphene tech, merely folding devices that are very thin, and have low profile hinge creases, with a UI design to hide those creases.

It makes a lot of sense to make such a product, from very achievable and inexpensive existing technologies, as a development platform for a folding scaling OS of the future. Plus the OS end, requires a fair bit of development, more that slapping two screens together with a fancy hinge in likelihood. It's an enabling tech - it allows for development of the software of that eventual creaseless design, and later consumer product.

People might object to the idea of a crease all they like, but it's doubtful anyone much will be willing to pony up the many thousands an all graphene screen would cost.

Even if MSFT or whomever was working on a scrolling or creaseless design - it still wouldn't be for consumers.

The small proto, that Samsung demo'd in 2011/13/whenever cost several tens of thousands of dollars. 50,000? 40,000? Something in that ballpark.

Mass manufacture would reduce that very little, and the cost of graphene production hasn't really changed, despite one person starting to build a plant for it.

Even if they created a folding screen tech where only the hinge part was graphene based, or they significantly reduced the cost of graphene - it would likely costs many thousands at the RRP, probably 5+ thousand. Somewhere in the realm of a cheap car.

That's not the sort of money consumers will spend for portable entertainment devices, generally speaking.

Actually I don't think such tech is that far off either. Probably 3-5 years. But when it comes it will still cost A LOT. This is not the new iPhone. Its the new 80s mobile phone/90s palmpilot long before it will slowly morph into the new iPhone.

The other element to consider is the fact that CPUs, circuits and batteries can all be built theoretically into transparent graphene substrates. So the ultimate evolution is probably something more like "computer paper", created by nano-manufacturing processes. But that's an even longer journey.

I agree to what you say and that why I believe the kind of device ppl imagine as a to-be surface phone is years away(for mass market consumption)

 

[Drael646464]

I agree to what you say and that why I believe the kind of device ppl imagine as a to-be surface phone is years away(for mass market consumption)

"The full monty", yeah, it probably is, the folding screen tech, with full windows on the opened screen. I think we'll see "early versions" before then, but they might not be exactly what people have in mind when they imagine the surface phone, as you say.

 

[mattiasnyc]

The reason I say SP is 3-4 yrs away is due to the expectations and talks all around that it will be a foldable form factor, and a durable and usable foldable form factor is definitely years away(as a consumer mass product). Anything less than that cannot be called the next big thing and MS has already hinted that SP will not be the next candybar phone.

I completely disagree that a prerequisite to viewing a device as the next big thing is that it has a foldable form factor.

To me a small device that runs full windows (well) and accepts i/o devices wirelessly and contains LTE connectivity is really the next big thing. It would be an absolutely fantastic device.

 

[techiez]

I completely disagree that a prerequisite to viewing a device as the next big thing is that it has a foldable form factor.

To me a small device that runs full windows (well) and accepts i/o devices wirelessly and contains LTE connectivity is really the next big thing. It would be an absolutely fantastic device.

thats what surface mini was but was cancelled by ms

 

[mattiasnyc]

thats what surface mini was but was cancelled by ms

Not as far as I can see. Windows RT + not "small".

 

[mtf1380]

Lenovo introduces foldable phone prototype: Lenovo Folio is a foldable tablet that becomes a phone with two screens: VIDEO - Business Insider

Runs on Android