There have been several speculations as to the exact date of release of the much-anticipated Microsoft Surface Pro 4. Some have been saying that a July 29 release of the new tablet will push through to coincide with the unveiling of Microsoft's latest OS, the Windows 10 PC edition.

While others are saying that Microsoft would extend Microsoft Surface Pro 4 until next year and it will come with Intel's new Core M processor. Other reports indicated an October release for the 2-1 tablet/laplet of the Microsoft Surface family.

One thing is sure, Microsoft is very tight lip on the release of the Surface Pro 4 that is expected to give Apple's iPad tablet series a very serious competition.

As of yet, the specifications of Surface Pro 4 models are still unknown, although some sources speculate that it will be available with two different screen sizes - 12 inches (30 cm) and 14 inches (36 cm). Surface Pro 4 will be run on Intel x86 Broadwell or Skylake i5 or i7 CPU, have up to 16 GB of RAM and up to 1 TB SSD. It is also rumored to have LTE support.

WCCF Tech said the new Surface Pro 4 will also come with the latest Windows 10 operating system and sport a similar display resolution to the existing Surface Pro 3. However, Microsoft is planning to launch the Surface Pro 4 at a lower price than the Surface Pro 3 in a bid to generate more customers and give the market-leader Apple, a good competition over its iPad family.

A separate report by Business Korea added to rumors that the Microsoft Surface Pro will indeed be unveiled in the second half of last year as Apple and Microsoft have placed a large order of 256 GB SSDs that use Samsung's NVME technology. These 256 GB SSDs is important in manufacturing memory cards.

The publication stated, "Samsung Electronics recently signed a new SSD supply contract for its 256 GB SSDs to be used in the laptops of major suppliers such as Apple and Microsoft. The contract volume is estimated at 20 million units, and the supply is predicted to be completed by the second half of next year. The products are said to adopt the new standard of Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe).

The report said the 256 GB SSDs is capable of transferring data at a speed of 2 GB/s which is three times faster than the current Surface Pro 3 which runs at 600 MB/s."

Microsoft Scraps Surface Mini

Meanwhile, it was reported that Microsoft abruptly scrapped the Surface mini which was touted at first, to rival Apple's iPad mini.

In an interview with ZDNet, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella explained the decision to stop the Surface mini, "What I want us to stand for is not have envy for somebody else's success. I want us to stand for what is it that we've done that customers actually care about. Why is this important for us to take to market? I actually don't even care as much about initial grand success in terms of volume or share. Does it meet a specific scenario that we have done very well for some set of plans? It's a shorthand for doing customer scenarios that are differentiated.

"I want to be more customer-led. When we say customer-led, that doesn't mean just listen to customers about X and then do the same feature. It's about being able to anticipate what we can do to really differentiate their own lives. GigJam wouldn't have come from the thinking of let's look out there and see who is doing something.

"That is how we created Microsoft. Nobody had done Visual Basic. Nobody had done Access. Nobody had done Outlook. We created categories or democratized categories. We either took something very complex and made it simple so that everyone in the world could adopt it, or created something where it didn't already exist -- where nobody came to us and said, this is what we want. Once we did it, everybody wanted it. That's the bar for devices and our software and services."