There have been reports that Microsoft was supposed to unveil a smaller version of its Surface tablet alongside Surface Pro 3 at last month’s press event in New York. Called Surface Mini, the company’s CEO Satya Nadella and Executive VP Stephen Elop apparently believed that the Qualcomm-based tablet might not be competitive enough for the market and subsequently decided not to announce it at the event.
Sounds like another usual dosage of industry gossip, isn’t it? Well, it turns out the Surface Mini actually exists and this is confirmed by Microsoft itself…by accident.
Specifically, Microsoft has actually mentioned Surface Mini in the user’s guide for Surface Pro 3 which was officially published recently in conjunction with the release of the tablet in North America. In total, Surface Mini was mentioned four times in the guide and it is also interesting to note that Surface Mini actually supports the active Surface Pen that Microsoft made for Surface Pro 3.
In case you need to see these references for yourself, you can download Surface Pro 3’s user guide over at Surface’s official site. After that, turn to page 5, 24, 25 and 39 or just search for “Mini” to find them. Alternatively or once Microsoft fixed it, you still can see them below:
[Source: Paul Thurrott]
