Kurt Shintaku's Blog

I’ve gotten asked this 3 times now in the past 48 hours:

“What’s with the felt on the back of the black touch/type covers for Surface?”

In case you haven’t noticed, the black versions of both the Type Cover and the Touch Cover have a backside made of a Polartec felt-like material.

I asked the question internally here at Microsoft and received a variety of responses.

• The Polartec material is easy to clean and provides a better grip for the keyboard’s base than just the plastic.
• The Polartec backside acts as a cleaner for the glass on your Surface.  Flip it over and use it to rub off smudges & fingerprints.  It does a great job.
• The black plastic that would normally be there instead of the Polartec ‘felt’ can get marked up from standard use & susceptible to easily visible scuff marks due to the way scuffs appear on the black.  Other colors don’t have this issue because of their vivid light reflection but against black, the smudges/ discoloration can really show.

If I get an official response, I’ll post it here but right now, it looks like these are the reasons.