Hasta La Gadget!

Chatter of a 7-inch Xbox Surface tablet has reawakened, with sources claiming Microsoft is currently working in the initial hardware planning stages for a gaming-centric slate built on a custom Windows OS. The planned tablet is broadly in line with leaked specifications back in June, so insiders tell The Verge, though whether it runs a custom ARM processor or a new Intel SoC could depend on how well Intel can wow Microsoft. Unlike the first Surface tablet, which attempts a broad range of tasks, the Xbox Surface will be focused on gaming.

That focus will be expanded to accommodate messaging along with “other tablet functions” so it’s claimed, likely to include web browsing on IE10. However, the emphasis will be on gameplay, with the leaks earlier in the year indicating Microsoft would follow a path similar to that of the Wii U with a combined tablet and “base station” console that would work together.

Other specifications listed included a 7-inch 1280 x 720 multitouch display, Bluetooth, WiFi, and a 2.4GHz custom link between the tablet section and the twin-core main console unit. A healthy 5GB of speedy memory was also tipped, along with a custom 28nm AMD GPU paired with its own 1.2GB of GDDR5 RAM, and a 250GB 10,000 rpm HDD. A custom OS built on the Linux kernel – but not Windows 8 or Windows RT – would be running.

According to the leaks, the same hardware development studio responsible for quietly cooking up Surface as we know it today is also at least partially responsible for Xbox Surface. That facility – which Microsoft invited us to tour back in October, and which is shrouded in secrecy – was already tipped to be working on further Microsoft-branded hardware.

CEO Steve Ballmer, in fact, has said on several occasions that Microsoft will “obviously” do more hardware of its own, though declined to specify exactly what that might include. However, with Xbox SmartGlass for second-screen use of tablets (and Windows Phones) with an Xbox console, it comes as little surprise that more gaming-centric efforts are underway to help bolster the appeal of Microsoft’s ecosystem outside of enterprise users.

Xbox Surface will be produced in the same manner as the Surface tablet currently on the market, though the “Xbox 720” – as Microsoft’s next-gen console has been unofficially dubbed – would be outsourced in its production to one or more of the usual OEM partners. However, development on the games slate is also being undertaken at select Xbox facilities at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus, with word that the firm has apparently limited employee access to the Interactive Entertainment Business offices, something tipped to be so that internal testing and games programming can be undertaken.

Microsoft has declined to comment on the rumors.

Xbox Surface 7-inch tablet rumors reappear ahead of Xbox 720 is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The folks that see how inexpensive an item is to produce and feel that the manufacturer should have little to no profit over this cost are certainly not going to enjoy what they’re hearing from IHS iSuppli about Microsoft today, that’s for sure. With a a Bill of Materials (BOM) cost of $271 USD and a $13 USD manufacturing cost, the total cost of the Microsoft Surface RT with minimum 32GB NAND flash memory becomes $248 in all, this placing it well below retail price at $599. IHS iSuppli note that compared to the low-end iPad (that being the iPad 2 in this case), the Surface RT generates a greater profit margin in percentage terms and on a per-unit basis as well.

These same folks did a teardown of the iPad mini recently and found the total cost of manufacturing to be $188 USD. Compared to its $329 retail price (and we’re talking about lowest-end iPad mini models here), that’s $141 USD profit per unit. It should be noted that licensing and software additions are not figured into this price or any other price in this study as conducted by IHS iSuppli. The amount of money the iPad mini costs to manufacture is approximately 43% of its total retail price.

The amount of cash between the cost to manufacture the Microsoft Surface RT and its retail cost is $351, that being 70% of its retail cost – and a whopper of a margin. When you break down the costs that IHS iSuppli found in the Surface RT, you find that it’s the touchscreen display that takes up the major bulk of the cash at $101 USD. This is followed by the mechanical and electro-mechanical bits costing $35 in total and the memory (that being 2GB DDR3L + 32GB eMMc NAND Flash + DRAM) costing $34 USD.

The iPad 3rd gen (16GB) was also torn down by IHS iSuppli back a few months ago (the 4th gen not quite ready for analyzation yet), with a total BOM at $316 with a pricetag at $499 USD. The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (16GB) was also torn down and found to carry a BOM of $260 USD (with that same $499 USD pricetag in stores.) It would appear that Microsoft truly has the margin in all cases – now we’ve got to see if they can keep that price up.

[via IHS iSuppli]

Microsoft Surface RT teardown shows giant retail profit margin is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Expandable storage is a wonderful thing, but its implementation can sometimes leave something to be desired. Take Windows 8, for instance — its photo, movie and music apps leverage Windows libraries to access users’ media collections, but won’t allow users to include removable storage in the app-accessed party of indexed folders. Sure, you can keep all your media on one device, but half it will need to be accessed in a slightly roundabout way. This simply wasn’t good enough for Toni Fowlie, who wanted all of her media — from both her Surface’s local storage and its microSD card — to appear in the same library. She used an old NTFS feature to trick Windows into thinking her microSD was part of her device’s local storage, and her efforts are worth sharing.

Continue reading A better way to store media on Microsoft Surface RT: SD cards, junction points and the command prompt

Filed under: Tablets, Software, Microsoft

A better way to store media on Microsoft Surface RT: SD cards, junction points and the command prompt originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Nov 2012 07:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome to Tuesday evening everyone. We had so many big posts today that it’s hard to know where to start. Kicking things off, we’re live at Microsoft Build 2012, bringing you the latest on Windows 8, Surface, and Windows Phone 8. We also went hands-on with the Samsung Nexus 10 and the LG Nexus 4 today, so be sure to check those out if you’re thinking about picking up either (or both!) when they launch next month. Today we found out that Disney is buying out LucasFilm and that Star Wars Episode VII is in the works – both of those were major announcements for the millions of Star Wars fans out there.

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer told us that 4 million Windows users have upgraded to Windows 8 since it launched last week, and today the company release the Windows Phone 8 SDK for eager developers. Twitter outed its Windows 8 app a few months ahead of launch, while Microsoft confirmed that apps like PayPal and Dropbox will be hitting the new operating system shortly. Microsoft also responded to complaints about Office 2013 on Surface, so if you’ve got one of the company’s new slates, you might want to hold off on using Office until these problems are fixed.

The fourth generation iPad has been benchmarked, showing a 1.4GHz A6X processor and 1GB of RAM, and one analyst was spotted predicting massive sales for the iPad line up. Apple delayed the roll out of its new iTunes overhaul today, while Google said it will be pushing developers to make extraordinary app experiences for Android tablets. Hurricane Sandy knocked out a number of big sites like Gawker and The Huffington Post over the weekend, and Modern Warfare 4 was outed by one excited voice actor.

Shortly after announcing that Disney had purchased LucasFilm, George Lucas talked about the deal and the future of Star Wars in a new interview, and today the Pentagon clarified that it will still be using BlackBerry phones in addition to iPhone and Android handsets. Grand Theft Auto V has been confirmed for a Spring 2013 release, and we received quarterly reports from both MetroPCS and ASUS today, the latter of which did particularly well in its third quarter.

Before we go, we want to remind you that our reviews for the iPad Mini and the fourth generation iPad went live not too long ago, so check those out if you’re interesting in buying one! That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, enjoy the rest of your night folks!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: October 30, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We can always count on the geeks over at iFixit to buy the latest and greatest gadgets and then tear them up so we can see what they look like on the inside. It’s nice to see someone else open up their gadgets giving us a glimpse at how things are packaged and how repairable the device might be should we ever need to get into it on our own

iFixit used a heat gun, plastic opening tools, a spudger, and a T4 torx screwdriver, a T5 torx, and a set of iFixit Guitar Picks to open the tablet up.

Under its hood, iFixit found the following chips:

• NVIDIA 1.4 GHz Tegra 3 Processor
• Samsung KLMBG4GE4A 32 GB NAND Flash
• Micron 2RE22 D9QBJ 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Texas Instruments TPS659110 power management IC
• Marvell 88W8797-BMP2 wireless MIMO SoC
• Wolfson 8962E low power audio codec
• Cypress Semiconductor CY8C20466A capacitive touchscreen controller

In fact, they found multiple touchscreen controllers – presumably to help detect inputs from the touch cover keyboard as well as the screen. One of the components that’s most likely to fail over time in any gadget is the battery. It appears that while the battery is glued in, it is removable and said to be easier to remove than the battery of the iPad. Though that certainly doesn’t mean that the Surface tablet is easy to repair. iFixit rates the Surface tablet on repairability scale as 4/10 with 10 being the easiest to repair and 1 being the hardest. This is only slightly better than the nearly impossible-to-service iPad series.

I can’t help but wonder each time I see one of these tear downs of a new gadget if they’re able to put it back together so it works again.

[via iFixit]