I for myself can't help and realize that everybody just freaks out and drools about the name "Surface".
Why is that?
Think about the naming of the Surface and Surface Pro.
Why is the Surface a Surface and the Surface Pro a Surface Pro?
The Surface
Pro has
Profressional Specs - It's not about the Size - it's about the power the thing packs.
So to reflect everybody's wish with a Surface Phone / Surface Phone Pro:
It won't work. You cant name a larger version of a phone "pro" to be similar to Surface and Surface pro.
Nobody will get why the bigger phone is "pro" and the same sized tablet with more punch is "pro".
Remember:
Keep it simple!
Don't just think the next Flagship. You need to keep in mind that you have to stick with the name for a long time.
Surface Phone pro 12 sounds stupid.
You can not just slap a badge on it and then increase the number it has.
Microsoft Lumia is fine for phones.
If you think Microsoft should stick to Surface:
What was the original Surface? It was a Desk!
Why should MS not stick to Xbox?
Xbox is "gaming" - that is the exact reason why MS changes the name of Music to "Groove" - it was confusing and not sticking in the heads of the people!
You aren't expecting to name the Microsoft Band "Microsoft Surface Band" in the future, do you?
Every "Brand" name stands for itself (Except the Surface HUB wich is a bit awkward but I can unserstand the name comes from the old "PixelSense" (Maybe they should've used some name like that to identify it's purpose

)
Surface is Tablet (powerful)
Lumia is Phone (Brand is recognizable form Nokia times)
Xbox is console / Gaming
Onexyz is a Product (Cloud solutions / Everywhere - OneDrive - OneNote etc.)
The real gripe and "hate" the Lumia name creates is the real crap numbering.
I got my Lumia 920 as it was new and got a 1020 a year after that. Now I look at the website for phones like 640, 640 XL, 640 LTE, 535, 630, 635 - it's absolut wank.
The numbering was at the beginning: Small number equals small phone and / or power.
Big number meant flagship.
The two-digit number was to seperate from the 710 / 810 which were the Windows phone 7 phones - so that is fine.
Take a german car manufacturer BMW for example:
You have numbers 1 - 7 for the LINE and the numbers after that for the type of engine in your car.
MS should completely axe through the numbering and build them from ground up.
Use 3 numbers for your phones
First number: Phone Series
Second Number: Phone Generation
So you get for example:
Microsoft Lumia 100
- Entry level Phone with "regular" specs for everybody who just wants to call some people and check Whatsapp once a day
Microsoft Lumia 200
- Business phone with good battery life and some specific specs like Dual SIM so you know it's a business phone.
Microsoft Lumia 300
- Flagship phone with superb specs to fulfil everybody's wet dream of a High-End phone with excellent specs and metal casing or even something like Titan (just exaggerating here to let everybody know that Flagship means top end)
(Let's stick to three because MS wants to release 3 Devices a year)
Now we go on 4 years into the future.
Then we could have something like:
Microsoft Lumia 130
Microsoft Lumia 220
Microsoft Lumia 330
You can see I said Lumia 220 - Maybe MS decided that the Lumia 210 was so good and everybody was happy with it, that they did not needed to refresh the business series after a year again - who knows.
As you can see, you can stil clearly differentiate between the numbers and everybody knows that Series 3 is Top end and when people see you have a 330, you have a top phone which just came out today.
IF some phone like the 1020 enters the ring again as a "Feature phone" or a "camera phone" then you could go up again with the 1.000 numbering system to clearly show that it is different from all three phones and as soon as you see a four digit number, you know it's exotic and something completely different with some sort of specialty to it.
And IF everybody hates the XL Tag (I myself am not a big fan of it, too) you could just use the last remaining digit.
Keep the "xx5" series as an alias for XL - and explain everybody your numbering scheme!
Example:
Microsoft Lumia 220 and Microsoft Lumia 225
You see the 225 and you know it's the bigger phone (specs usually don't differentiate too much except for battery and MAYBE a slightly more powerful processor to fire up the bigger screen).
Complete Microsoft Portfolio:
Microsoft Surface
- Microsoft Surface 4
Regular Surface with normal Specs that everybody can use
- Microsoft Surface 4 Pro
High-End Surface with top notch specs which is used for powerful computing
- Microsoft Surface 4 Mini
The old "RT" style concept - lightweight Tablet and best specs for mobile surfing and browsing (Something like a Dell Venue 8 Pro) which is basically used for surfing the web, watching youtube and stuff like that - But with the same Windows 10 everything has.
Microsoft Xbox
- Microsoft Xbox 360
Legacy Console which is going to get retired soon.
- Microsoft Xbox One
Powerful Next-Generation console which packs a punch and that can show you pretty gaming worlds.
- Microsoft Xbox Mobile
Handheld device for Xbox streaming (?) Something like the Wii U Tablet is - You fire it up and enjoy your Xbox one games streamed to this device.
Microsoft Lumia
- Microsoft Lumia 100
Regular Phone for everybody. Price range around 100€ / $
- Microsoft Lumia 110
Second generation - better processor and camera - Same price range (Tech-refresh)
- Microsoft Lumia 115
Same phone, Same new camera, bigger battery and display
- Microsoft Lumia 200
Business phone with good Battery life and nice performance
- Microsoft Lumia 205
Same Business phone but with bigger display and battery to serve the mobile computing better (Continuum included)
- Microsoft Lumia 300
Basically the "Talkman". Flagship-device packed with Continuum and all sorts of stuff.
- Microsoft Lumia 305
Specs of the "Cityman" - Talkman with bigger display and battery. Flagship-device packed with Continuum and all sorts of stuff.
Microsoft Band 2
Wearable wrist-strap (you know it)
Just stick to one set of numbers and only increase them when you refresh your Production cycle.
NO ONE cares to read up on the differences between a 632, 630 and 635. it's just bogus because all the phones come out in different times and higher number does not mean it's newer. No possible way to identify that.
Microsoft MUST explain the customer their naming convention.
Like BMW / Audi does with the 1 2 3 scheme - You select the category you want to go into and explain in one or two sentences, what the category is made up of. THEN you select your phone generation inside that category and choose "regular (0)" or "big (5). That's it.
Regards,