Rumor: New Surface Pro 4 Reveal in Mid-May

Brian P. Rubin -

I’ve been using and loving my Surface Pro 3 for about a year now—but, hot damn, I’m ready for a new jammy up in here. A post on SlashGear from last week cites an anonymous tipster, who claims that Microsoft will be revealing the newest iteration of its Surface Pro line sometime this month—which would put the Surface Pro 4’s debut about a year after the reveal of the Surface Pro 3.

The post offers some details about what the new Surface Pro 4 might offer. Since we’ve known since last October that it’ll be compatible with the Surface Pro 3’s Type Cover and Docking Station, it stands to reason that it’ll sport similar dimensions and resolution specs, if not identical ones. That’s the only way those two accessories will offer the same kind of compatibility.

On top of that, however, the post claims that the Surface Pro 4 will run on a 5th generation Broadwell i-series CPU from Intel, and will also ditch its internal cooling fan. Just how Microsoft plans on keeping heat down isn’t quite clear, though. Apple is trying something similar with the new Macbook, but it’s doing so by relying on the Intel M-series CPUs.

Meanwhile, there’s likely to be a new version of the Surface Pen included in the new Surface Pro 4, mainly because Microsoft recently confirmed that it had, indeed, acquired its stylus partner N-Trig. That was just a rumor back in February, but now that it’s been confirmed, it makes total sense given what we know about Microsoft’s plans for its Edge web browser.

One of the browser’s big features is going to be the ability to use the Surface Pen to annotate web pages. As such, it wouldn’t be a bad move for Microsoft to include the best version of the Surface Pen yet in its new tablet-PC hybrid.

The Surface Pro 3 has been one of my favorite pieces of tech from the last year or so, and it seems to have singlehandedly justified the Surface device line for Microsoft. Hopefully the Surface Pro 4 takes it to the next level, and that we see it before the month is over.

[Source: SlashGear]