Surface Pro 7+ Discussion Thread (January 2021)

Some other stuff that either doesn't work at all or is as buggy as can be.

In the folded outward position eg. with displays on both side like the duo. Either both displays remain active. including touch which is problematic for the "bottom display" since you aren't looking at what you are touching, or if you try to sleep or lock the bottom display in that orientation. all kinds of weird things happen dependent on the apps.

You might have the apps that were displaying on the bottom, at best all the sudden "pile on top" of the ones in the active display, or you may get a blue screen, or it just might not return at all without a restart.

And orientation/placement becomes problematic too. I.E. when you are in book mode with two displays side by side, left to right and then switch to holding it horizontally with one display on top and the other on bottom. again unpredictable results dependent on how you switched orientation. At best the screens may be reversed where what should be top is bottom and vice versa, or one accepts touch and one doesn't or windows blue screens again.

Like I said, in retrospect, it makes what the duo team accomplished, all the more impressive.

 

Right click the desktop, display settings, select the right monitor and move it UP a little. Now, when you snap the window you drag it to the part of the monitor that is ABOVE monitor 1. You've just created an area that stops when dragging or using the mouse. Easy. Done.

(I know that you all know this)

"Cool story Bro!"

 

So one last jaunt down the detour of the reality of integrated dual screen devices with Windows ,and again appreciation for what the Duo engineers thought through and accomplished.

As some of the more technical reviews of the Duo noted, it may have the best palm rejection/detection of any current smart phone.

I was working with our touch/pen expert yesterday and she was showing me some of the details of the hardware/software stack around touch and pen support.

For instance, at rate over 5x that of say a Samsung s20, the phone uses the accelerometers and gyroscopes to determine and update how the device is being held, including things like screen orientation eg. the two displays left and right or top and bottom, and if the displays are fully open/partially/folded completely and lastly "tilt" eg. to what degree they are vertical versus horizontal. and even if say the left side is higher than the right

Additionally, there is some smart AI level stuff going on as well. So for instance when you are holding it in book fashion with the two displays oriented vertically left to right, the two displays respond differently dependent on the motion of your finger/pen.

For instance if you are moving vertically (up and down on one display) the software/hardware on the other display goes more in to false touch rejection mode. OTOH if you are moving horizontally the other screen "wakes up and is ready to catch" the input as you potentially cross screens. One way you can see that specifically is the gesture to make an app use both screens by dragging it to the middle of the hinge.

So bring it back to regular Windows 10, none of that software/hardware is there and thus would have to be built to work like it does on the Duo. And I suspect that the legacy of Windows which is still laptop/desktop, relatively fixed positionally makes that, along with supporting things like multiple hardware vendors and associated non trivial detail aspects like the DPI of each screen for instance, makes this multiple magnitudes more complex.

Thus why I suspect, the Neo was originally presented as a Windows X device, where they could in essence, start from scratch.

So related to all the above both the Samsung Fold on Android, and the Lenovo Fold on Windows have similarly complex hardware/software stacks relative to the more general purpose devices though I'd argue Samsung is miles ahead of Lenovo at this point in time.

Ok end of detour and back to our actual topic

 

Actually, I prefer the detour myself...

 

Missed this one yesterday:

Microsoft is going to start selling removable SSDs for the Surface Pro 7+ - Neowin

(Courtesy of NeoWin site)