But what if the Surface Phone isn’t foldable?

Fortuitously after my Medium article about whether Microsoft could be making a foldable Surface Phone patents emerged for seemingly such a device. This might make it appear that I know things about Microsoft’s plans but I don’t, honest.

Those patents might have shifted our expectations for the Surface Phone. What if its not foldable, will we be disappointed?

Even if it is foldable do we all have wildly different ideas about what it will do, leaving many people wanting more from the phone? We’ve not even got anything sinilar to compare our wishes to. Right now, we don’t even know what the reliability of a foldable screen is.

For me the fact that Microsoft is even investigating a foldable phone is encouraging. They might find that it is not practical because it’s too thick or they can’t get the folded out screen to be smooth, maybe they can’t get a long enough battery life or perhaps it doesn’t really offer the productivity experiences we think it can.

But that’s fine. There’s no point bringing out something that doesn’t fulfill a need. We know they are brave enough to cancel a product if needed as they did with the Surface Mini.

The thing that is encouraging is that this is a software company trying out innovative hardware ideas. Microsoft has to do this. It has worked very well for their Surface devices and obviously they need to do something different with Mobile devices and soon or they won’t even be able to carve out single digit market share.

Perhaps the Surface Phone won’t have a foldable screen but it brilliant Microsoft are even trying that idea out and patenting it. Whatever the Surface Phone is though it needs to be innovative.