The screens of this “late prototype” device are seven inches apiece. The home button resides on the hinge and status messages (wireless signal, battery life) are displayed along the edge of the screen. Out back (as in the cover) is a camera.

While the device supports different types of multitouch input, it’s designed primarily to be used with a stylus. One neat interface trick: the space between the two screens — the hinge — doubles as a “pocket” to hold items you want to move from one page to another.

Courier is a real device, and we’ve heard that it’s in the “late prototype” stage of development. It’s not a tablet, it’s a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They’re connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre.
microsoft courier tablet
Until recently, it was a skunkworks project deep inside Microsoft, only known to the few engineers and executives working on it—Microsoft’s brightest, like Entertainment & Devices tech chief and user-experience wizard J. Allard, who’s spearheading the project. Currently, Courier appears to be at a stage where Microsoft is developing the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies.