Twitter user @Lilputingnews found 21 Microsoft filings under the FCC listing C3K1997. While most details in the filings are confidential, the tidbits of info we do get point to this being the Surface Pro 9 5G. Of course, all hardware must pass the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates communications (radio, TV, Bluetooth, etc.) in the United States. While the filing does not confirm the Surface Pro 9, there are enough clues to put two and two together. In terms of communication options, the filings point to the following device connectivity: “This device contains the following capabilities: 850/1900 GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 850/1900 WCDMA/HSPA, Multi-band LTE, Multi-band 5G NR, 802.11b/g/n/ax WLAN, 802.11a/n/ac/ax UNII (5GHz), Bluetooth (1x, EDR, LE).” Recently, I reported on Microsoft’s plans to combine the Surface Pro X with the regular Surface Pro range. This means there will likely be a variant of the Surface Pro 9 with an ARM processor. This effectively streamlines Microsoft’s Windows on ARM hardware efforts.
Surface Devices 2022
A Surface Pro 9 is almost inevitable and the known quantity of Microsoft’s upcoming event. However, little is known about what other devices the company will introduce. One of the more interesting rumors has been that Microsoft will launch a Surface Gaming Laptop. The apparent spec sheet points to an Intel Alder Lake H Core i7-12800H and Core i5-12500H being the CPUs that will drive two variants of the new laptop. It will also boast a dedicated graphics card, with the i5 model pairing with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3050 Ti 4GB GPU and the i7 model using a RTX 3070 Ti 8GB GPU. Other notable specs include 16GB (i5) or 32GB (i7) of LPDDR4x RAM, storage up to 2TB (SSD), and a 16-inch 1440p PixelSense Flow screen. Furthermore, the device will run Windows 11 with Microsoft’s DirectStorage API. Tip of the day: With many reachable wireless access points popping up and disappearing again, the available networks list can become quite annoying. If needed you can use the allowed and blocked filter list of Windows to block certain WiFi networks or all unknown WiFi networks.
