Last week, Microsoft released a collection of firmware and driver updates for the Surface Pro 4. The changelog, when it was finally published, had a curious entry. Two items were listed as adding "support for an upcoming product release."
| Windows Update History Name | Device Manager Name |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Driver update for Surface Embedded Controller Firmware | Surface Embedded Controller Firmware
|
| Microsoft – System – 103.1413.258.0 | Surface System Aggregator
|
The obvious conclusion to jump to would be that this is an early indication of the Surface Pro 5. That doesn"t seem likely, as it wouldn"t make much sense for Pro 5 firmware to show up in an update to the Pro 4. It also doesn"t matter very much. The Surface Pro 5 will launch at some point - probably this spring - and this won"t change anything.
It seems more likely that this is referring to another configuration of the Surface Pro 4, which wasn"t yet on the market. This seems like a more logical conclusion, considering that Microsoft began selling a variant of the Surface Pro 4 today that does not come bundled with a Surface Pen.
The Surface Pro 3 actually had a similar incident back in October 2014. Although it was certainly more specific, there was an update to the Pen driver that enabled "additional upcoming configuration options".
We reached out to Microsoft to confirm whether or not the new Pro 4 SKU is indeed the model that the changelog was referring to, and the company said that it has nothing to share.