Yeah, I think whatever they end up releasing will be totally different from the Neo.
Yeah same thinness will not happen anytime soon, eg compare difference between Duo 2 (11mm) and Fold 4 (14.2-15.8mm) though Fold does sport an outer screen which takes additional space and the camera is more build-in.
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My aging 75 year old eyes finally started screaming at me while traveling and using my Surface Go 2. The screen was just not big enough. I used that excuse to purchase (early Black Friday sale @ lenovo.com) a ThinkPad X1 Fold (Gen 1) with keyboard & stylus for under $1000. My anticipated use case will be to use this device only when traveling. It folds up thicker, just a bit smaller and heavier than my Surface Go 2, but the unfolded screen is perfectly sized for me!
It arrived on Friday. After upograding to Win11 (to get the windowing “snap” functionality), I’m getting my personal preview of what the Neo “can” be for me! AND, I love what I see! The smaller NEO size when folded but the larger screen (albiet heavier and thicker with what I’m experiencing in the X1 fold) would be perfect for me. I’m sure the X1 Fold is not for everyone–especially those with high performance needs–but it’s going to work for me!
One more thing, being retired I try to stay away from high-priced bleeding-edge tech. My advice to others has always been, “For the best bang for the buck buy tech that is 6 months to a year old.” That’s what I just did with my X1 Fold and saved over 70% compared to when it was released.
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Maybe Lenovo will release a Lenovo clone (seems like it would be liarger and have speakers in the hinge like their Yoga 9). Lenovo might be making the Surface Neo that Microsoft won’t (source evleaks) : Surface (reddit.com)
Definitely something I would personally consider buying.
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At this point my money would go towards a modernized 11" Surface Pro (GO4 Pro) - 11" high res screen; 16gb ram, up to 1tb removable SSD; 5g; removable keyboard with slim pen 2 slot. I have given up on the Neo idea, especially the awkwardness of a magnetized keyboard and pen hanging off the back of the device.
See how I just recast my WinPad argument…
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“…and an AMOLED display” someone whined like a broken record.
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I thought I was already stretching it at 16gb/1tb…
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Shoot for the moon so that you get something in low Earth orbit at least.
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Personally, I’d rather have a miniLED like in the iPad Pro 12.9 or the Macbook Pro 14/16. As much as the contrast ratio of OLED is nice for things like watching video, they still have a way to go in things like color accuracy, drift and linearity, not to mention peak brightness
Though take that with the caveat that I’m EXTREMELY picky when it comes to displays generally and few meet my expectations.
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Oh I’d take it, but I tried to keep my someone’s whine short, plus I haven’t seen any recent rumors about miniLED being available at smaller display sizes.
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I think you will see smaller sizes as soon as q3 2023. The main issue is shrinking the individual LEDs while maintaining brightness and lack of spectrum shift which at least a couple of the OEMs of miniLED claim to have solved
OLEDs biggest challenge is that to hit the brightness of LCD in say a 27 inch size, it would burst in to flames in a few minutes
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Backtracking here a bit, and @Desertlap may have answered this earlier in the thread, but why not WOA on the original Surface Neo design? They’d have 5g and should be able to offer up a max of 16gb/1TB…
Pair that with next year’s Surface Duo 3 on Android, and wouldn’t that be a pretty sweet dynamic duo?
Well the Neo was designed with Intel Lakefield which was supposed to be Intel’s answer to ARM. But of course Lakefield turned out to be one of Intel’s biggest missteps.
The one system that actually made it out the door, a short lived variant of the Galaxy Book which also had an ARM version was significantly outperformed by the ARM version across the board. It was so bad in fact that even with the ARM version running in x86 emulation, it still beat the Lakefield system by about 40% generally.
Not to mention, the thermal throttling issues which is likely why Samsung quickly killed it.
We’ve heard rumors since before the release of the original Duo that MS was considering switching it to WOA but was also considering Android at the same time. Though obviously they seem to have decided just to kill it off generally instead.
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I have a hard time believing MS is intentionally blowing it so badly on WOA.
My gut tells me there is some old language in the early Wintel contracts/cross licensing/whatever that is making MS hesitant to go all in on an ARM NEO or even more than the X skus.
But, maybe I’m the suspicious type.
Eh?
I thought it was Qualcomm to blame as they took Microsoft for a ride and locked WOA into Qualcomm SoCs (well, Microsoft share some of blame as I assume they didn’t take WOA seriously and therefore accepted the terms).
The Surface RT had a Tegra 3 SoC, while the Nokia 2520 had a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800. The former would not have been allowed if your suspicions were true.
The Qualcomm deal has its quirks too, but Windows dominance on PCs tracks Intels. I believe over the years Intel has applied pressure to keep MS from straying too far off the reservation in the PC space.
There 's long been a conspiracy theory floating around in the supply chain that WOA was/is a negotiation lever by MS towards Intel.
WOA became a real thing in the run up to Intel’s 7th gen Core I chips, when allegedly MS was hearing from some of it’s OEMs of the virtually nil performance gains over gen 6 coupled with a significant increase in thermal management complexity.
And then you add in that originally the Pro X was intended to be the next gen Surface Pro period and was intended to be an Intel based device, but thermal management and performance issues made MS go to a plan B.
Lastly add in MS long common (though not so much very recently) practice of acquiring small software companies that made potential competitors to some mainstream Windows apps and MS threatening to release those products as their own as leverage to get what they wanted to those mainstream companies.
Of course, these are all rumors and speculation, but they feel like they have more than just a ring of truth to them.
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Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am stuck in the middle with you
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How apropos. 
My understanding as well. Imagine having so much excess cash that your best plan for shareholder return is skullduggery.
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