Right off the batt, some of you may ask: Why should we even talk about a Surface Book 3, if the 2 is not even in yet?
A good answer to that would be that talking about the Surface Book 3 would be like talking about going to Mars. It will definitely be a reality, sometime in the future, with tons of realistic speculation that can be made about how such feat will be accomplished, and how monumental it will be when it finally happens.
Talking about a device that won’t be out for another 2-3 years (at most), means making an educated guess about what devices will be like after 2018, and if history serves, they will change considerably, within a shorter time span than it took the PC’s tube monitor to become an antique.
For starters, as far as portable devices go, the trend that will follow through the release of the Surface Book 3, will continue to restrict the ability to upgrade existing hardware, leaving RAM as the only surviving upgradeable option in the future. While that may seem like a bad thing, it’s important to note that portable devices cannot afford the same simplicity and accessibility as desktop PCs, which means all the effort that goes into building a portable device has a very clear focus on optimizing hardware with airflow, power management and security as the fulcrum.
A Surface Book 3 device example is especially relevant, because the Surface Book has very little in common with a traditional laptop. Microsoft has revolutionized the way to build 2-in-1 laptops with a design that allows the Surface Book to become a tablet, for all intents and purposes, with both its base and the detachable screen, being reliant on their own individual processing hardware and battery pack, while still being able to share twin resources when reassembled.
One thing that some have commented about is whether Microsoft will ever change the current shape of the dynamic fulcrum hinge, the tank thread-looking mechanism that allows the Surface Book ‘s display and base to lay completely flat.
A number of consumers have been asking whether Microsoft will ever launch a Surface Book that when in clamshell mode, becomes completely flat, instead of featuring its current “signature” round gap.
As a matter of fact, there is a realistic chance that Microsoft will heed these concerns, as the Surface Book is only the first of its kind, with a long line of successors ahead of it.
Just like the original Surface tablet, Surface Book is only the first of its kind, with a long line of successors ahead of it. It’s not impossible for many aspects of its design to change in future years, not only according to design trends, but also to new technologies and innovative standards yet to be introduced.
Another important thing to consider is that laptops and ultraportable are very much gravitating around a cloud-based future, where devices will be progressively less reliant on local hard drives.
Services like OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud and DropBox are likely to evolve into a form so familiar to consumers, that it will be almost seamless to using a local hard drive, except for the fact that many services will require an Internet connection. Still, considering that wireless Internet availability grows exponentially, it would be fair to assume that cloud drives will be the norm, at least by 2020, with many ultraportable and portable PC manufacturers building devices accordingly, including Microsoft.
Finally, processing power is going to be of greater concern as VR goes mainstream, and consumers begin to demand it. Surface Book is already a rather powerful laptop, with a discrete NVIDIA GPU, and 6th gen main processor, but a Surface Book 3 could shatter contemporary performance, with VR ready mobile hardware.
Intel is an a fast track to build faster, more energy efficient processors beyond Cannon Lake, and this could mean that laptops as thin as a Surface Book or an Apple MacBook Pro, could feature current desktop workstation performance before 2020.
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