Microsoft Surface event October 2, chance of dual-screen 'Centaurus' reveal

Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay has taken to Twitter to reveal that its 2019 Surface Event will be held on October 2. According to The Verge, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella is expected to join Panay on stage for the presentation hinting that there could be something special revealed. Nadella was absent from the even last year which largely focused on mild hardware specification boosts.

This time around there are expected to be at least a couple of firsts for Microsoft’s Surface product line. This includes a Surface powered by an AMD chipset as well as a Surface powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx ARM-based chipset. While Intel will continue to power most of the Surface line up, it does suggest that it is well and truly feeling the heat from both Team Red and UK-based ARM. While the Qualcomm chipset will probably end up in a Surface Pro tablet hybrid, the arrival of Intel’s 10nm Ice Lake will also find a home in the Surface Pro which should finally end the CPU throttling issues plaguing the Surface Pro 6 line.

What a lot of pundits are hoping we will also see is the rumored dual-screen Windows Lite-powered ‘Centaurus.’ The new Windows Lite is thought to be a more streamlined version of Windows 10 S that similarly only runs Windows UWP apps found on the Windows Store. If we don’t see a regular Surface device with the Snapdragon 8cx in it, we will likely see it at the heart of ‘Centaurus.’ We know for certain that the new Snapdragon 8cx-powered Samsung Galaxy Book S will be good for up to 23 hours of battery life. Going with that chipset for a dual-screen device running a light-weight OS would be an ideal combination.