Even though Microsoft’s Surface tablets are considered to be one of the best in their class, there is a new hybrid tablet that has peaked the curiosity of Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella. Eve V, a Windows 10-powered tablet, was developed with the inputs provided by user community created by the company itself and has reportedly got the attention of Nadella.
The Eve V tablet has a starting price of $1,399 (Rs. 96,000) and as per the company, the funding from IndieGoGo campaign will be used to cover manufacturing costs and handling of pre-orders, as reported by Business Insider. However, the tablet is said to already be a finished product and fully functional, thanks earlier funding provided by Intel.
At the time of writing this article, Eve V’s listing on IndieGoGo has already garnered $936,352 (Rs. 6.4 crores), or 1,248 percent of its initial goal of $75,000 (Rs. 52 lakhs). The tablet has already been back-ordered to April 2017 but can still be pre-ordered from IndieGoGo. Eve CEO Konstantinos Karatsevidis told Business Insider that Satya Nadella got interested in the product after reading about the project and will get his unit when the device starts shipping in February.
The most unique thing about Eve V is that everything from the keyboard to its cover material has been decided after receiving inputs from Eve.Community, the user community website created by Karatsevidis. The website allows users to simply register and start giving their suggestions for the device.
After receiving inputs from the community, the developers decided to ditch a rather slim design in order to incorporate a larger battery, which was preferred more by contributors. In a comparison with the Surface Pro 4, the Eve V is seen to have more modern processors, more ports (including USB Type-C), a slightly higher resolution display, better battery life, a quad-speaker setup, and a smaller price tag despite the similar configuration.
Even though Microsoft has constantly pushed all the devices that run on Windows 10 platform, it will be interesting to see if Eve V’s challenge to the Redmond-based company’s critically acclaimed lineup of hybrid devices creates a cause of concern for Microsoft.