Online retailer starts pre-orders for the Surface Pro 2017 LTE edition before it is officially annouced

Panos Panay, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft Devices, is giving a Surface keynote talk at Microsoft’s upcoming ‘Future Decoded’ conference in London on the 31st of October and 1st of November. Among the announcements we expect him to make is one for the previously promised LTE version of the Surface Pro 2017, and to fill in the details on this product which we know very little about.

However, an online retailer based in the United Kingdom has listed two variants of the Surface Pro 2017 LTE for pre-order. The first is a woefully underspecced (for 2017) model with a Kaby Lake i5 U-series, 4 GB RAM, 128 GB [NVMe] SSD, 12.3-inch PixelSense display, and Windows 10 Professional. This base model is listed for GB£944 (US$1271) excluding tax. The higher specced model is equipped with a Kaby Lake i5 U-series, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB [NVMe] SSD, 12.3-inch PixelSense display, and Windows 10 Professional. It is listed for GB£1169 (US$1574) excluding tax. The specs listed are identical to already existing mid-range Surface Pro 2017 models, so the CPU is likely to be the i5-7300U.

We think this is probably a genuine accidental listing made before the product NDA has lifted. But we can't be certain due to the text in the product information field which claims “…you'll get amazing apps built specifically for Windows 8” and “…with a 16:9 widescreen, ClearType full HD display with 1080p resolution” and “Available with 64GB or 128GB storage.” This information matches the operating system, aspect ratio, screen resolution, and storage options of the 2013 Surface Pro 2, meaning that the text was likely a sloppy copy and paste from a much older source rather than up-to-date Microsoft retail material.

Finally, the page also says that pre-orders will be delivered in December 2017, indicating when the official release date might be for the currently-unannounced Surface Pro 2017 LTE.

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