Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang has revealed his company’s involvement in the development of a second Microsoft Surface RT tablet device.
Speaking to CNET, Huang said Nvidia was ‘working really hard’ on the tablet, which Microsoft is hoping to be a bigger success than the original Surface RT. The Surface RT launched towards the end of 2012 and while hotly anticipated as Microsoft’s debut tablet device it was met with largely negative reviews and poor sales.
Huang said a contributing factor to the Surface RT’s poor reception was the lack of Outlook when it was released, which he described as ‘the killer app for Windows’.
‘Now we’re going to bring it with the second-generation Surface. We’re working really hard on it and we hip that it’s going to be a big success,’ he added.
In our view, while the lack of Outlook certainly didn’t help, there were many more serious problems which hopefully Microsoft and Nvidia are addressing this time round if they want the successor Surface RT model to gain any traction.
Performance was a bit squiffy despite using Nvidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core chip. The clockspeed was a relatively low 1.3GHz and while it had 2GB of RAM it was only single-channel.
A more robust RAM setup and perhaps Nvidia’s brand new Tegra 4 chip could work wonders, but may also drive the device price up. Originally the Surface RT launched at £399 for the 32GB base model with no keyboard cover, going up to £479 with the Touch Cover or £599 for the 64GB variant. The Touch Cover was also available separately for £99 while the more solid Type Cover cost £109.
Subsequently, following the poor sales, Microsoft slashed the price of the base model to £280 and has since begun bundling in the Type Cover with the Surface RT as standard.
Huang didn’t reveal any further details and much of the Surface RT 2’s spec and design features remain a mystery. A follow-up model has been rumoured for a while now and some sources suggest it may be a smaller device. Could the Surface RT 2 be the 7-inch device Microsoft is rumoured to be working on?
by pbriden via Featured Articles
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