Surface Phone Speculation Spurred By New Phone APIs In Windows (arstechnica.com)

Microsoft has been rumored to be working on a "Surface Phone" for years now, with little concrete evidence that such a device actually exists. "But the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview has given new fuel for the speculative fire, it has a set of new APIs for cellular phones," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Windows has had integrated support for cell modems since Windows 8, but this has been restricted to supporting data connections. Telephony -- dialing numbers, placing calls -- has always required either Windows Phone or Windows 10 Mobile. This has made the full Windows 10 unsuitable for a phone. That may be changing. Windows 10 build 17650 -- a preview of Redstone 5, the next Windows update after the delayed April update -- includes some telephony APIs. The new APIs cover support for a range of typical phone features: dialing numbers and contacts, blocking withheld numbers, support for Bluetooth headsets and spearphone mode, and so on and so forth. There also looks to be some kind of video-calling support, suggesting support for 3G or LTE video calling.

Comments

Re:For Cortana?

[rtb61]

If M$ were to drop the Windows anal probe 10 and forced software installs, that might help but I think the trust is gone and people will simply not buy any consumer level software from M$ they do not have to for existing compatibility. Games are keeping them afloat in the consumer market but that market hold is diminishing. They had better start being really, really nice to their customer base, otherwise there will be no recovery. I doubt it though, they are still driven by corporate arrogance and wont change until it is too late.