After more than a year of waiting, one of Microsoft’s most anticipated and much talked about products is finally here. Today, September 10, marks a new day in Microsoft history, the official launch date, and the public availability of the Surface Duo.

As a reminder, the Surface Duo is available for purchase unlocked from either the Microsoft Store or Best Buy. There’s also a carrier-locked AT&T version for sale, too. Pricing starts at $1,400 for a model with 128GB of storage, or $1,500 for a model with 256 GB of storage. Both variants come with 6GB of RAM inside, as well as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor. The Microsoft Store also has a trade-in program as well, for you to save up to $700 by trading in your old phone.

It should also be noted that the Duo features a single 11MP selfie camera, which also serves as the main camera when the phone’s two screens are flipped around and rotated. Software-wise, the Duo ships with Android 10, with an upgrade to Android 11 when it’s ready. The device will also get three years of Android updates, too.

It has been been a big journey to this day, and it all began when Microsoft played with the idea with its canceled Project Courier concept. Panos Panay recently talked to The Verge about these origins, as well as the future of the Duo, too, and the article is a really good read.

We recently went hands-on with the Surface Duo at Best Buy and invite you to check out our initial impressions post. We’ve also ordered ourselves our own Surface Duo, too, and will be doing a full review in the coming weeks, and an unboxing within the next few days.

We’ll even be showcasing the Duo on our new Podcast, so be sure to drop us any comments, questions, or suggestions about the Duo in the Discus section below. We’ll do our best to answer your questions on camera during our show!

The iOS and Windows 10 versions of the Microsoft Whiteboard app both updated this week but, while their release notes on their app store pages show identical release notes to the previous update, the notes within the Microsoft Store app on Windows 10 actually lists changes which suggests that the web versions of the store listings haven’t been updated yet.

Regardless of what the situation is, here’s what’s new with this update:

• New poll options! You can now create multi-choice polls and public polls
• Fixed crash when downloading files
• Dark mode fixes when adding people to groups and starting direct messages

Do you use Microsoft Whiteboard? Let us know what features you’d like to see added in future updates in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Microsoft app content.

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‎Microsoft Whiteboard

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Perhaps, in an effort to sow the legal landscape with a crop of anti-competitive rhetoric, Slack recently warned its investors that Microsoft could act in a “retaliatory” manner soon.

As vague as the threat sounds, Slack stuffed the warning into its latest 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as part of its fiduciary responsibilities when reporting its latest quarterly earnings.

On Tuesday, Slack underscored a potentially bumpy road ahead for investors as the company’s recent antitrust complaint to the European Commission against Microsoft might result in earnings-effected retaliation from the Redmond-based company.

Furthermore, we could be subject to retaliatory or other adverse measures by Microsoft, its employees, or agents in response to the complaint that we filed with the European Commission.

Despite the dire admonition, Slack has yet to clarify what retaliatory actions Microsoft could enact that would result in a direct adverse result for the company.

In another seemingly obfuscating move, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield explained to investors openly that the market was just too big at the moment to be worried about any significant pressure from Microsoft.

Win rates are the same. We are now in Quarter 14 of competing with Microsoft. We’ve won over and over again in Office 365-using customers. … No doubt that it causes some friction, it’s another thing for us to overcome, but it doesn’t put any kind of ceiling or limiter on our growth.

Meanwhile, the company buried another nugget of fearmonger rhetoric regarding Microsoft’s continued growth in its 10-Q stating, “This competition has intensified in recent periods and we believe that it has harmed, and may continue to harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition.”

Even as Slack’s earnings report beat analysts’ predictions with revenue up to $215.9 million for the quarter, the company continues to view Microsoft’s ability to leverage its enterprise suite to grow its enterprise chat solution as illegal.

While Slack’s eye has been largely on Microsoft, the company’s after-hour trading was affected by dark-horse newcomer Zoom and its crazy ridiculous growth amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Microsoft has not publically addressed Slack’s claims over the past few months and continues to make inroads with customer adoption for Teams at the moment.

As it stands, Slack and Microsoft’s Office 365 continue to work interoperably and should maintain for the time being, especially as the European Commission scrutinizes Microsoft’s every Teams related move for the foreseeable future.

Update: It appears as though the Duo is now back in stock at Microsoft. Our original article still can be seen below.

The Surface Duo is set for release tomorrow, September 10, but if you’re hoping to buy one directly from Microsoft at the very last minute, you might be out of luck. We’ve just realized that the Surface Duo is currently listed as out of stock online at the Microsoft Store.

Currently, when adding the Surface Duo to our Microsoft Store Cart for checkout, both the 128 GB and the 256GB models of the Duo end up being listed as out of stock. Seen in the image below, the store cart also gives us an error, telling us that one or more of our items are currently out of stock, suggesting that we remove it or save it for later.

It’s unknown to everyone how many Surface Duo devices Microsoft initially manufactured for this first run on the launch day, so there’s no telling if this sell-out really can be used as a gauge of interest for the dual-screen foldable. Still, the Duo is actually listed as available for pre-order at Best Buy, so if you really want a Duo tomorrow, you can buy it from that retailer instead.

On another side, it is also possible that this could just be a temporary store error. And, it could also be linked to the fact that since September 10 is now less than 24 hours away, Microsoft could no longer possibly deliver actual pre-orders in time for September 10.

Anyway, our own Surface Duo just shipped. We will be doing a full review within the next few weeks. We’ll also be doing an unboxing in the days ahead, so be sure to keep it tuned to OnMSFT for all your Surface Duo news and information.

Following months of leaks, Microsoft officially announced the Xbox Series S yesterday, which will be a $299 discless console providing gamers an affordable entry point into the next console generation. The company has followed up this morning with another post that reveals what’s inside this cheaper alternative to the Xbox Series X, which will be priced at $499.

First of all, the Xbox Series S will nearly 60% smaller than the Xbox Series X, and it will feature the same “Robot White” color previously seen in the Xbox One S back in 2016. The console will also come with a matching white next-gen controller, which will also be available for purchase separately this holiday season.

Under the hood, the Xbox Series will include a 512GB custom NVMe SSD that supports Microsoft’s new Xbox Velocity Architecture, and providing more than 40x the I/O bandwidth of the Xbox One. Microsoft highlighted that this NVMe drive has identical I/O performance as the one in the Xbox Series X, which is 2.4 GB/s raw and 4.8 Gb/s compressed with a custom hardware decompression block. Just like the Xbox Series X, the Xbox Series S will support the 1TB Seagate Expansion cards that will provide the same speeds as the console’s internal NVMe SSD.

The Xbox Series S also shares a similar CPU with the Xbox Series X, and that’s a custom-designed AMD 7nm eight-cores Zen 2 CPU running at 3.6 Ghz. On the GPU side, the 4 teraflops AMD RDNA 2-based GPU will deliver “approximately 3x the GPU performance of Xbox One.” The console also comes with 10GB of GDDR6 memory, compared to 16GB on the Xbox Series X.

Overall, the Xbox Series S should be perfect for gamers who prefer smoother frame rates of a native 4K resolution as it’s designed to play games at 1440p at 60 frames per second, with support for up to 120fps. The Xbox Series S will also be able to upscale games to 4K when the console is connected to a 4K TV set. It remains to be seen how Microsoft’s upscaling technology will compare to native 4K graphics provided by the Xbox Series X.

“With the increased efficiency we get from the next generation AMD RDNA 2 graphics architecture combined with the virtual memory multipliers enabled through the Xbox Velocity Architecture, Xbox Series S will deliver performance and experiences well beyond the raw specs,” the Xbox team emphasized. Additionally, the Xbox Series S will share its development tools with the Xbox Series X, and it should be pretty straightforward for developers to optimize their games for the entry-level console.

If Microsoft introduced an “Optimized for Xbox Series X” badge earlier this year, the company clarified today that “games built for the next generation will be optimized for both Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.” For next-gen games that will Smart Delivery, this means that gamers will automatically receive the best version of the game that’s optimized for their console, whether it’s an Xbox Series S, an Xbox Series X, or an Xbox One.

If you already have the 4K-ready Xbox One X, the Xbox Series S should still be an excellent upgrade. With smoother framerates (up to 120 FPS), 4K upscaling, and support for next-gen features like DirectX Ray-tracing, this is a console designed for next-gen games. Faster loading times and the ability to resume multiple games almost instantly should also be a real game changer.

Again, the most important differences between the Xbox Series S and the Xbox Series X is the support for native 4K resolution, and the amount of internal storage, and the presence of a 4K Blu Ray Player. If these features are not essential for you, the $299 Xbox Series S should be a very interesting proposition.

Both the Xbox Series S and the Xbox Series X will be available on November 10, with pre-orders set to open on September 22. If you don’t want to pay $299 or $499 upfront, Xbox All Access will also offer either console with 24 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for a low monthly price.

Last month, we reported that Microsoft is working on a new feature to better separate new conversations from thread replies in Teams channels. In a new post on LinkedIn, Vincent Bellet, a Principal PM Manager at Microsoft, announced that they have started rolling out a “New conversation” button into Teams Channels experience.

“Our challenge was to fix a clear usability issue without bringing any friction for content creators and people willing to engage by responding to a message. We spent a lot of energy to find the right balance between qualitative and quantitative feedback to get to today’s milestone. I am very excited to introduce this change worldwide, hope you will welcome this change too!,” Bellet explained.

Just as a reminder, the initial UserVoice request was posted on the UserVoice forums in May of 2017, and 9,457 Microsoft Teams users upvoted the suggestion since then. Many people agreed in the comments section that an updated UI would be much more valuable to prevent users from starting a new conversation when they intend to reply to an in-line thread in Teams channels.

The New conversation button, which replaces the “Start a new conversation” text field, should improve the usability of the Teams collaboration platform. To be clear, the change is gradually rolling out to a small pool of Microsoft Teams users first, and it should be live for the rest of the userbase in the coming weeks.

It’s finally official, Microsoft will launch both the Xbox Series S and the Xbox Series X on November 10. The company already announced the $299 pricing for the Xbox Series S yesterday, but the Xbox team has just confirmed that the Xbox Series will be priced at $499, a piece of information that also leaked yesterday, but hasn’t been confirmed until now. The Xbox One and the Xbox One X also launched at $499, but the Xbox Series X should offer a true generational leap with an ultra-fast NVMe SSD, and a 12 teraflops GPU that supports 4K at 60FPS, 120 FPS gameplay, as well as 8K.

Microsoft also announced today that both of its next-gen consoles would be available with an Xbox All Access subscription that will include an Xbox console and 24 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. The $299 Xbox Series S will be available starting from $24.99/month for 24 months, and the $499 Xbox Series X will be available starting from $34.99/month for 24 months. Xbox All Access is also coming to 12 new countries this holiday, with more to come next year.

The Xbox Series X was announced back in December 2019 at The Game Awards ceremony, and Sony didn’t strike back with its PS5 announcement until early 2020. As of this writing, the Japanese company has yet to announce pricing details for the PlayStation 5 and its discless Digital Edition variant, and we expect the official prices should be revealed pretty soon. In the meantime, pre-orders for both the Xbox Series S and the Xbox Series X will open in two weeks on September 22.

With the $299 Xbox Series S and Xbox All Access subscriptions, Microsoft is making sure that the transition to next-gen console should as painless as possible for most consumers. Overall, the company seems well-positioned ahead of the beginning of a new console generation, though the company has yet to clearly explain why gamers should choose the more powerful Xbox Series X. So far, the company failed to really demonstrate the console’s power advantage over the PlayStation 5, though the good news is that the company still has 2 months left to do just that.

Microsoft’s dual-screen Surface Duo is launching in the US tomorrow, and the company’s first Android device has been years in the making. In a long interview with The Verge, Surface inventor and Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay revealed a lot of interesting details about the process that led to the creation of Surface Duo, with Microsoft eventually opting for Android instead of a Windows-based OS.

According to Panay, Microsoft started working on a dual-screen mobile device around 2014, after Microsoft cancelled the Surface Mini. At that point, Panay had become pretty much obsessed about creating a dual-screen device, to the point of carrying two pieces of metal connected by a hinge in his pocket for months. The exec did so to get an understanding of how durable such a device would be, and what would be the ideal dimensions for a dual-screen device that should comfortably fit in your pocket.

After Microsoft canceled the Windows RT-powered Surface Mini at the last minute, Panos Panay and his team started working on Andromeda, a Windows-powered dual-screen device which apparently looked quite different from Surface Duo. “At that time, it was different hardware, it’s not the same hardware… it’s not even remotely close,” said Panay. “We’re in so many generations later of development [with Surface Duo], we understand how thin it is, we understand reliability, we understand the robustness of the screens. It has been generationally made, it’s years in the making.”

When designing the Surface Duo, Microsoft ultimately opted for a design where all the internal components would be distributed across both sides of the device, but the company experimented with having all components on one side, and another prototype had the two displays connected wirelessly. There were also some internal debates about LCD vs. OLED screens, and the latter eventually won as they allowed the device to be thinner.

Unfortunately, making the Surface Duo just 4.8mm thin led to some compromises, such as the lack of 5G connectivity, NFC, and a complex camera module. “This is the most emotional product we’ve ever created. A lot of that comes from tension. To get that diamond out, there had to be a lot of it. Microns mattered, not millimeters, microns,” said Panay. “Maybe that’s why it took years to get to this product. There were moments like those because we pushed so many boundaries.”

After Microsoft cancelled the Surface Mini due to Windows RT lacking the apps that consumer want on a tablet, choosing Android for the Surface Duo was a difficult choice, Panay explained. “Bringing Android into the fold, that wasn’t the most simple of conversations all of the time,” admits Panay. “You have to explain that and you want your team on board and people believing it.” Eventually, Microsoft did the right thing as Microsoft was able to work with Google to improve Android for dual-screen devices, and Microsoft didn’t go as far as creating an Android fork like other phone manufacturers have done in the past, some with little success (see Amazon’s Fire phone).

While Microsoft’s Surface Duo will launch tomorrow in the US, we already know that a new version is in the pipeline. The Windows 10X-powered Surface Neo is also still being worked on, though it still has no release date. “I wanted the right time to bring that product with the right experience. We believe in that concept and form factor and size. It will be a beautiful complement to Duo with Windows and I’m excited about it. It’s a product that’s near and dear to my heart.”

The Surface Duo that will start shipping tomorrow will come with two 5.6-inch screens that form a bigger 8.1-inch screen when opened, and the device comes with pretty thick bezels. In the future, Panay hinted that Microsoft could explore different sizes for its Surface Duo and Neo dual-screen devices. “The next natural evolution is different [dual-screen] sizes,” said Panay. “Whether the larger moves into Windows where it’s appropriate to use the Windows codebase and software, and the smaller form factor uses Android, I think you can safely say that’s the right path with what we’re doing right now as a team.”

If we already got the chance to go hands-on with a Surface Duo at a Best Buy store, full reviews should be posted online pretty soon, and stay tuned to OnMSFT for our detailed review of Microsoft’s latest Surface device. In the meantime, we remind you that you can pre-order the Surface Duo from the Microsoft Store, Best Buy, and AT&T.

A special Rockstar Energy and Cyberpunk 2077 collaboration is set to begin next month and it actually sound pretty incredible.

Starting on October 1st and running through to December 31st, five special Cyberpunk 2077 themed cans will begin appearing on North American store shelves. Four of the cans will simply be themed versions of regular Rockstar Energy drinks but the fifth will be a limited-edition Samurai Cola drink inspired by the in-game band headed by Keanu Reeves’ character, Johnny Silverhand. Samurai Cola will also be available in Mexico in limited edition bottles.

While the designs are cool, the real kicker is the unique codes on each can that are guaranteed to unlock a $1 Xbox gift card that can then be added to the Microsoft Store for credit. This credit can then in turn can be used to buy apps, movies and episodes, and even video games such as Cyberpunk 2077.

This is essentially a $1 cashback offer on every can purchased but with the cash only being usable within the Microsoft Store digital storefront and there being a $60 limit per Microsoft account on how many $1 gift cards can be redeemed. It’s kind of unbelievable but it is in fact what this promotion is offering.

As the official announcement suggests, $60 of credit is enough to help many players buy the Cyberpunk 2077 video game but it can also be used on any other digital Xbox video game or DLC.

Redeeming three codes will unlock exclusive Cyberpunk 2077 digital comic books while every redeemed code will enter the user into a draw to win a number of real-world prizes ranging from Cyberpunk 2077 SteelSeries headsets, hoodies, and hats with the grand prize being an actual Rockstar Energy x Cyberpunk 2077 muscle car.

All drink codes will need to be entered on this website here.

Rather amusingly, this isn’t the only Xbox video game having an energy drink promotion this holiday season. Just over a week ago, the Monster Energy Halo Infinite campaign was announced. Like the Cyberpunk 2077 campaign, the Halo Infinite one also runs until the end of the year but it does have a bit of a head start as it began last week. You can read more about the Halo Infinite promotion here.

Are you going to buy the Halo Infinite drinks or the Cyberpunk 2077 ones? Maybe both? Let us know in the comments below and then follow us on Twitter and Pinterest for more Xbox gaming news.

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We’re now less than two days away from the launch of the Surface Duo, and Microsoft is now taking internal action to get ready for the September 10 launch date. In one of those steps, the company just released a new set of support pages for the Surface Duo (via Reddit.)

Seen here, the Surface Duo support pages cover a variety of routine topics. The is a dedicated page on how to use the Duo in different ways, how to place phone calls, as well as how to clean and care for a Surface Duo. There’s even a dedicated page on how to install the Surface Duo bumper, as well.  And, for the folks who aren’t exactly familiar with Android, there is a step by step guide on how to set up the Duo, and even a tour of the Android operating system.

More technically savvy users might also be interested in a separate support page which explains how to recover a Surface Duo if it won’t start or if it isn’t working right. The process involves downloading and installing the Android SDK Platform Tools on Windows 10, downloading a recovery image from Microsoft’s Surface website, and putting the device into recovery mode then using a command prompt on a PC to load the image onto the Duo.

Android tweakers and those interested in accessing the bootloader or “rooting” the Duo should be happy to know that this support page reveals part of how easy it will be to accomplish one of the first steps in doing so. Just like many Android phones,  on the Duo, all it takes is to press and hold the Power button and the volume down button, then release it to get into the bootloader menu.

Following the release of new Patch Tuesday updates for all supported versions of Windows 10 earlier today, Windows Insiders in the Beta channel can also download a new cumulative update for Windows 10 version 20H2. Microsoft is continuing to service the next version of Windows 10 ahead of its public release later this fall, and this new build includes the following improvements:

• We fixed an issue with a possible elevation of privilege in windowmanagement.dll.
• We fixed a security vulnerability issue with user proxies and HTTP-based intranet servers. After installing this update, HTTP-based intranet servers cannot leverage a user proxy by default to detect updates. Scans using these servers will fail if the clients do not have a configured system proxy. If you must leverage a user proxy, you must configure the behavior using the Windows Update policy “Allow user proxy to be used as a fallback if detection using system proxy fails.” This change does not affect customers who secure their Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) servers with the Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocols. For more information, see Ensuring clients stay secure, changes to scans against Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) servers.
• Security updates to Windows App Platform and Frameworks, Microsoft Graphics Component, Windows Input and Composition, Windows Media, Windows Shell, Windows Cloud Infrastructure, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Management, Windows Kernel, Windows Virtualization, Windows Storage and Filesystems, and the Microsoft JET Database Engine.

Windows 10 version 20H2 will be a minor update for the version 2004 of the OS released back in May. The upcoming release will bring minor changes to the Start Menu, the Taskbar, toast notifications, the Alt + tab experience, and more, and Microsoft has recently invited business users to test it ahead of its public release. We still don’t know the release date for Windows 10 version 20H2, but last year’s 19H2 update wasn’t released until November.