Feb 18, 2017 11:37 AM EST By Lucy McClaren, UniversityHerald Reporter

For the first time, the Surface Pro 5 has been spotted on a French website reportedly belonging to Microsoft. It has also been referenced by a Microsoft employee who revealed to be a part of the Analog Speech Design team which could mean a much-improved speech recognition. The Microsoft team has been working on the device for a long time, which indicates substantive upgrades as well as a possible launch by April.

It has been one year and a half since the Surface Pro 4 was launched back on Oct. 6, 2015. The Redmond-based giant may have intentionally skipped a yearly upgrade cycle as it focuses its attention to its brand-new Surface Studio and the Windows 10 Creators Update. Now new information has been circulating online that renewed the interest of Microsoft fans regarding the latest Surface Pro iteration.

The first leaked image of the Surface Pro 5 has been seen on an allegedly Microsoft press site for French-speaking areas. The image as can be seen below shows the Surface Pro 5 donning a Type Cover with its Surface Pen lying across the tablet. There are no definitive clues whether the image is real or the website is officially Microsoft's. If it is real, the rendered title "win10-feature-surface-pro-5-z" tells it all that the iPad Pro rival may be ready for launch soon.

Observers say that the Surface Pro 5 may come out in March or April, in time for Apple's launching of its latest iPad Pro 2 since the two companies are close rivals in the Pro tablet market. Moreover, Microsoft may not have planned an October 2016 release since the tablet does not follow the average smartphone upgrade cycle, Phone Arena has learned. The Surface products are quite expensive and consumers may want to hold on to their devices for far longer than just one year.

The latest iteration of Microsoft's flagship tablet has also been referenced in the LinkedIn profile of a Microsoft employee as picked up by Walking Cat. Toby Fitch is a Product Designer in Microsoft and his LinkedIn profile reveals that he has been part of the Analog Speech Design team working on various devices like the Surface Pro 5. The team has been working on the tablet since June 2016, which suggests substantial improvements and more likely a much-improved voice recognition at par with the smarter Siri version now running on MacBooks, wccftech has learned.

Other specs and features that have been reported on the Surface Pro 5 includes the Intel Kaby Lake processors onboard with Core M. These could be followed by the Core i5 and i7 models with magnetic charging stylus. Like the Surface Pro 4, the newest iteration will not have a GPU since its thin design will not support one. Other features include Type C USB port, 3D Touch capabilities, higher resolution and 4k display capability with 16GB of RAM, THOnline reported.

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