Daily Authority: New Surface devices incoming

We got an official launch date for Windows 11 earlier this week, but Microsoft has something else in store that is happening even earlier.

A fully digital event will take place on September 22nd at 11 a.m. ET (save the date here), and while the company hasn’t specifically stated what it’s intended for, it’s not hard to guess.

• The media invitation says they’ll be talking about “Devices and Windows 11,” and since it’s Microsoft, it means new Surface devices.
• The invitation image (shown above) shows a new Surface Pro following the business-centric Surface Pro 7 that was released earlier this year.
• The company also has a tip to launch a new product in the Surface Book range, but this time with one major difference.
• if Patents prove to be correct, it’ll ditch the detachable screen design for a new clamshell mechanism, and it might even ditch the Surface Book branding.

But what we’re really looking forward to is the Surface Duo 2.

• Last years Surface duo Smartphone was certainly ambitious, but deeply flawed.
• Microsoft’s vision of a two-screen folding device was a unique take on the future of mobile devices, but when it was released the software was flawed and borderline useless.
• Essentially, it was a prototype pretending to be a consumer product, priced at nearly $ 1,400.
• Although we haven’t heard anything about the new device that fixes these shortcomings, a leaked image a few months ago shows at least one improved external camera module.
• The original Surface Duo didn’t have an external camera at all. The idea was to open up the screen and use the internal selfie camera, but the results were mediocre at best.
• The real question, however, is whether Microsoft can fix the software and find compelling use cases for the dual-screen design.
• Specifications and prices to compete with real consumer folding devices like this Galaxy Z-fold 3 and Z flip 3 wouldn’t hurt either.

Today marks the anniversary of the first public release of Google Chrome on September 2nd, 2008. Admittedly, it was still in beta and limited to Windows devices. A stable version for Windows, OS X and Linux would not be available until May 2010.

Despite the support of Google, Chrome barely managed to achieve a market share of 1% until well into 2009. today more than 60% of the world use Chrome, with the only notable competition coming from Apple’s Safari.

And who led the development of this new web browser? A relatively new employee named Sundar Pichai.

Tristan will be back at the helm tomorrow with the latest tech news.

Nick Fernandez, editor