Microsoft has been making software for smartphones for over a decade, but the company started selling its own smartphone hardware after acquiring Nokia’s phone business. While Microsoft’s phones don’t have the Nokia name on them anymore, they do still use the Lumia brand name that originated with Nokia.

But according to WMPoweruser, Microsoft may be planning to launch a phone that’s part of the Surface family of products. Up until now, the Surface name has been used exclusively for Microsoft’s tablets.

Surface 3 (rear)
Surface 3 tablet (rear)

So what would make the Surface Mobile different from a Microsoft Lumia phone? Well, it’s rumored to have some pretty impressive specs including a high-resolution display, plenty of memory and storage, and high-quality cameras.

But I think the main thing that would make the phone qualify as a Surface product rather than a Lumia device would be the pen. It’s said to come with a Surface Pen that would support pressure-sensitive input for writing or drawing. This would make the phone a Windows alternative to Samsung’s Galaxy Note devices.

The phone is reportedly code-named “Project Juggernaut Alpha,” and other features are said to include a 5.5 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass 4, an Intel Atom x3 SoFIA processor, up to 4GB of RAM, up to 128GB of storage, a microSDXC card slot, a USB Type-C connector, wireless charging supports, a 21MP PureView Zeiss 6-lens camera, and an 8MP Zeiss wide-angle front-facing camera.

The phone’s said to have a metal case and it’ll ship with Windows 10 Mobile software in late 2015 or early 2016… you know, if it’s real.

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18 replies on “Rumor: Microsoft building a Surface Mobile smartphone”

  1. If this is real, then it wouldn’t use Atom x3. It would use Intel’s upcoming Broxton.

    According to this roadmap, from an earlier Liliputing article, Broxton will come sometime in Q1 2016. Hopefully we get more details of their current Atom roadmap from IDF15 (San Francisco).

  2. The Surface Phone along with the Surface Mini has been rumored and talked about so many times and still Nothing. I wish it would happen on both accounts, but until them this is still the little boy crying WOLF!

  3. I question this very hard and paint a better fitting picture with this inadequate rumour. Guys below I believe its a business enterprise phone not ordinary consumer top of the line like Lumia flagship, this is a enterprise flagship phone targeted for the specific audience and market. I believe with Z3580 intel not x3 soFIA (its not high performance for that neither high end premium hardware chip and does not make sense for 4GB RAM resources) because you need powerful specs for a 2K screen and so called the ability of continuum desktop UI experience /win32 programs beamed to your TV/computer monitor on a phone, 4 GB RAM come on, this shouts premium, so its a premium enterprise hardware stuff and software features for the business catered market. Get it right journalists. Remember Microsoft re-established their mobile efforts, to premium devices, enterprise devices and value devices. Plus we don’t know about the special feature of win32 programs on Windows 10 Mobile or full windows 10 on a phone, lets wait and see about that. The camera is bugging me, because how can it have a large MP camera, while its focusing on enterprise, normally enterprise users do not take just pictures like consumer users, hmmm, interesting, maybe it can be used for productive stuff with camera??? The surface brand is interesting because it can fit enterprise phone more so than Lumia brand image to customers, but has some doubts because Lumia is the core phone brand and Surface is a brand for Microsoft tablet line under Microsoft family of devices, lets wait and see about the official outcome from Microsoft on all of this. Because I doubt its a budget/low mid range device that is using a high end brand “Surface” on top of it, the brand is famous for high end tablets with a reasonable high value, this rumour does not add up. again I say lets wait and see.

    1. A Z3580 would be interesting, but I think they would stretch for an Atom X7 or X5 instead. I say that because I “Think” Microsoft wants a Windows “Desktop mode” meaning you could connect your phone to a monitor and basically have a fully functional windows X86 PC. In order to obtain that, you would need an X86 CPU along with a GPU that has Windows drivers. The PowerVR chip in Moorefield doesn’t have Windows drivers too my knowledge. This is why you see Moorefield in Android devices only, and Windows devices have BayTrail with the Intel 7th Gen GPU.

  4. I wish they’d hurry up with these damn things. I’d love a Windows Phone 10 flagship but they haven’t even begun to speak about them. Meanwhile the Moto X Pure comes out in 2 weeks and I’m trying to think of a reason not to get one.

    1. If you want a flagship phone, look at the Lumia 950 and 950 XL. They are certainly going to be the spotlight phone for microsoft during the Windows 10 Mobile launch.

  5. still no surface mini… that’s what I really want, an 8″ surface

  6. I’d have to agree with @@F2F Tech:disqus and @@realjjj:disqus on the processor here. Why not just go with a proven Intel SoC like the Z3580 that’s in the ZenFone 2? It’s 64-bit x86, supports all of the specs mentioned in the rumour, and has been proven to be competitive with top tier ARM SoC competitors (not necessarily better than the latest Exynos or the SD810/808, but it posts similar benchmark scores to be in the conversation at least)

    If the processor in question were a Z3580 or successor to that, I’d find the whole rumour a lot more credible (and interesting). The rest of it sounds pretty flagshipy.

    1. Um, some x3s will come with LTE modems. Maybe the site has some of the leaked details wrong, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a Surface phone in the near future.

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