After a long series of postponements, the long-awaited birth of Windows 10X would be seriously in jeopardy: the words of Microsoft.
Announced in 2019 along with dual screen devices such as Microsoft Surface Neo, Windows 10X is almost officially cancelled. It should have been available in a few months, but the first signs that something wasn’t going right emerged in July 2020, when rumors suggested that Windows 10X development was being delayed.
To make public the very likely cancellation of the evolution of the world’s most popular operating system was John Cable, head of Windows servicing and delivery at Microsoft. Windows 10X in fact, compared to the current Windows 10, was supposed to be a revision of the existing operating system with simplified design and functionality. After rumors of delays arrived in July 2020, it seemed that 2021 could be the year of Windows 10X but it was not. Windows 10X won’t arrive in 2021 and there’s a significant chance that it will never arrive in the form in which it was announced to the world. That doesn’t mean they’ve given up in Redmond.
Windows 10X will live on in Windows 10
In fact, it seems that Microsoft has no intention of thwarting the research and development work on Windows 10X. “Rather than bringing a product called Windows 10X to market in 2021 as originally planned, we are leveraging the lessons of our journey so far and accelerating the integration of fundamental 10X technology into other parts of Windows and the company’s products,” Cable made known in an unsuspected post on the Windows Experience Blog.
This decision follows a year-long survey of the Redmond-based company, customers and other stakeholders. Cable, head of Windows program management, support and deployment, added that at Microsoft, “there was a realization that Windows 10X technology could come in handy in many forms and reach even more customers than originally imagined.”
In other words, precisely, if Microsoft were to really shut down the Windows 10X project the lessons learned from this experience and the features already developed would be implemented on Windows 10. Windows 10X will therefore live “in pieces” in Windows 10, with the latter that could fulfill the tasks of the first, then equip those devices from the innovative construction – think primarily to foldable – that arrive more and more frequently on the market.
No Windows 10X, no Surface Neo
The cancellation of Windows 10X would involve the entire ecosystem of future Microsoft products with an unprecedented form factor, putting at serious risk all those devices that would have needed the versatility of this evolution of the operating system from Redmond.
The actual debut of Surface Neo, the foldable two-screen initially planned for 2020 with Windows 10X to accompany it, would therefore be seriously at risk.