True, I wrote that comment as I was watching the announcement live stream. It's still pretty much a prototype at this point but I hope they don't mess up that windows theme a lot.
I mean, Microsoft has always had a vested interest in Android's success, given that they are paid for every Android device sold because of software patents.
The opposite question applies: With so many other manufacturers building folding screen or multi-screen Android phones between now and Holiday 2020, how is Microsoft's any better?
It's not like there is a lack of competitors in the Android manufacturer game.
Maybe its not necessarily "dead on arrival", but at least from what has been announced so far, it doesn't yet sound competitive in what is already a terribly (and ugly) competitive hardware market. At least if Microsoft were trying their own OS again, they'd have a better statement of why they were building the hardware. Meanwhile, doesn't the market already have enough Android phones?
I'm going to pick one up regardless, but if they can bring Windows 10 X to this device, and provide a docking experience that expands to approximate a full PC, the result would be fantastic.
Indeed they did, but this is a device still in development, to be released late 2020. I would not be surprised if the Windows 10 X team is working to make it at least possible to run 10 X on the smaller device. I'd much prefer 10 X with an Android subsystem. But like I said, I'll pick one up regardless.
I'm sure it could run 10 X easily enough, the problem is the same problem that killed the Windows Phone ecosystem. No one's developing mobile/touch apps for anything other than Android and iOS. Windows has been fully touch enabled for years now but still there are almost no apps that take advantage of that, there isn't even a decent kindle app in the microsoft store. I wish this wasn't true but the truth is mobile belongs to Apple and Google and tablets belong to Apple.
Which is why I'd like an Android subsystem. I want the basic UI experience and default apps to be Windows 10 X. For 90% of my phone usage, I'm using the stock apps (launcher, email, browser, calendar, etc.), and I'd prefer that to be the 10 X experience rather than Android. I want Android to feel like an app safety net, not the primary experience.
But like I said before, even without that, it's still the right device for me.
Yeah, but that raises the question as to what's the upside for Microsoft for building the Duo? Why divert expensive engineering resources to become just another niche Android phone vendor and help shovel money into Google's pockets on top of that?
The only thing they said is that they "are building upon Android".
I think it could both means that they are using Android as an OS or that they built some kind of WSL-like subsystem. The latter scenario is more interesting because it would open up the possibility to run UWP apps that can also run on Windows 10 X, both leveraging the two screens.
Google introduced project Treble in Android O and P to allow Android to work against a HAL to basically decouple the underlying Linux Kernel and drivers from the over arching Android Framework.
There was speculation that this would enable Google to swap out the Linux Kernel for Fuschia when it becomes available.
The Windows NT Kernel has had a HAL and the ability to do this since it's inception in the 90s. Microsoft has been toying around with WSL on the desktop, what are the chances that they just beat Google to the punch and are running Android on the Windows Kernel?
How crazy would it be if WSL was just a cover for getting Android running ontop the Windows Kernel?
IIRC WSL1 used a kernel compatibility layer, WSL2 uses a virtual machine [with the albeit minimal but very real overhead] so I find difficult to imagine they running android on top of NT [whatever they're calling the kernel nowadays]
I think they renamed the NT Kernel to Windows Kernel to simplify things but in usual Microsoft fashion it just complicates comparing or discussing Today with Yesterday.
This is still my holy grail of computing device. I want a portable device (phone) that gives me a phone style interface when portable, but when docked, a desktop-like experience. Yes, there have been efforts, but I want this to be mainstream and well thought out.
I have a NexDock that I think was a kickstarter a few years ago that is a dumb laptop (hdmi in, usb for charging, bluetooth keyboard and mouse) that could be plugged into a phone. Used it for Raspberry Pis and Intel Compute sticks for a while.
I am hoping I can do this with the librem5 and a dock.
Samsung DeX is currently the most popular (only?) implementation of that, and it's decent in my opinion -- especially if what you really need is a desktop-sized browser.
Given how badly they flubbed their entries into smartphones, I'm kind of glad they are trying again in this new form-factor. Given that it's relying on Android, it should have more staying power than before (and an app store that isn't awful).
Given it's relying on Android now and doesn't seem to have (based on this announcement) any compelling reason to exist long term in the ugly, over-crowded OEM market of Android marketing, it's a gimmick and shouldn't have any staying power at all.
I'm not sure if everyone forgot a day ago, but if Microsoft had just removed the offline account setting on Windows 10, what could be the likelihood that they could just enforce it in the Surface Line up, even including the Android products?
Nice looking Surface lineup and hardware nevertheless, but after Microsoft removing that offline setting, I think that was a big turn off and a no deal from me for now, unless they reverse that atrocious decision to using online accounts only.
You can still have offline accounts, but they do make it a real pain to figure out how to do it during Windows setup. I have to take PCs offline entirely to get the option now. While Microsoft is doing a lot of be more developer friendly (e.g., I love VS Code), Windows just gets more and more user hostile.
It took almost 30 years since the kernel was released, but Microsoft is officially releasing something with a Linux based operating system. Pretty wild to think about.
it's interesting how in the last few years the Microsoft and Linux/Android ecosystems seem to developer side-by-side.
Personally I've replaced my last macbook with the surface and my iphone with an android phone, use mostly linux or windows with WSL these days and I see less and less apple products in particular among developers where the windows/linux combo seems to become more prevalent, at least anecdotally.
They've had Linux Azure offerings for quite a few years, and famously contributed a fair bit of code to the Linux kernel to make some of that possible.
They also released those Nokia branded Android devices.
It is not like MS has been doing consumer hardware releases for that long or anything!
It'll be interesting to see the support, IMHO one thing that keeps people (software devs and consumers) from buying into a new Android OEM that is selling an "Ecosystem" (e.g. Samsung Note) is the fear of a product line being dropped.
It almost feels like Microsoft is conceding the server market, recognising that the ride of cloud computing has been a real boon for Linux - they're putting all the tools in their desktop product to make sure engineers can work easily with Linux, without actually needing Linux to do it.
I really hope that we see a single-screen Surface phone in the future.
IMO, Microsoft have done a fantastic job with the Surface Book. If they could replicate that high-end build quality while providing a solid feature set and a clean Android build, I can't see it not selling well. Throw a headphone jack in, and I'd wait in line for it!
The dual screen is interesting, but I don't see its use just yet.
Speaking of the Surface Book, my aging MacBook needs replacing, and I was interested in seeing a Surface Book 3 release as an alternative. Sad it didn't materialise.
The Surface Laptop unfortunately doesn't work as tablet.
I'm very "disappointented" by the event, as it seems that the Surface Book series is dead.
If this is the case, I guess that the reasoning has been that who want a powerful machine just buy a regular laptop.
It's a shame for those who use the SB both as tablet and dev machine (which is the intended audience). At this point, it's not sure how the SPX will be usable as dev machine (e.g. I guess it will have relatively little memory). The vanilla SP is an alternative, but 12.3" is small for me (and can't imagine for those who own a 15" SB).
I'm interested in how many people actually use their Surface Book as a tablet.
I know a load of people with the standard Surface that use it like a tablet, but very few people that regularly use their Surface Book's detachable tablet functionality. I can probably count the number of times I've ever wanted to take the laptop apart on one hand.
I use it a lot! The SB tablet is the state of the art (sadly, because evidently there have been no advancements). Nothing is so light: even the Surface Pro X is inferior (13.5"/730g vs. 13"/770g). This comes from the interesting design choice of stripping as much as possible from the tablet itself (the Surface Pro instead, is intended to be more functional, when in tablet form, since it's coupled with lightweight bases).
In the past, I used it primarily to read electronic versions of several paper magazines; this format is (IMHO) best read on a large screen - the sweet spot is around 14, so 13.5 is the closest (I reckon the 15" is too big; the SB laptop form factor has a bulky design).
In the present, I use it for studying (textbooks, mostly) - for textbooks, even 12.x" is fine, so even a Surface Pro would do.
Having said that, I like it as a tablet so much that I've pretty much ditched the base and bought another laptop for development.
The SB laptop form factor just sucks (IMHO), as it's very bulky, and Microsoft has an insane pricing strategy, that makes it unjustifiably expensive for developers looking for a serious dev machine. Nowadays it's more competitive due to being old, but the 16 GB models have never been competitive, both in price and form factor, to competitors like the Dell XPS.
Of course, I don't imply that many people use it this way because I do, so I really don't know the general use cases :-)
I see a lot of value with this phone prototype over the laptop version.
It gives a better typing experience than a phone currently does & offers unique controls for apps on the 2nd screen.
Whereas with the laptop version I assume people will be missing their keyboard typing experience or complaining about having to carry around a bluetooth keyboard. I still hope they improve their concept of docking an Android phone & using it as a laptop replacement with a keyboard, mouse & monitor.
Hopefully it makes people watch videos in landscape again & quit recording in portrait mode. That alone would be a win!
- Edit - I just read a better article explaining their keyboard concept for the laptop version. That seems like a slightly better experience than I was imagining. Hopefully it's harder to lose than their pen.
Why would they make a single-screen phone for Android when the market is already saturated with them? (It's silly enough for them to make a dual screen phone for Android when all the existing OEMs are already trying to hype future foldables or multi-screen beasts.)
I wouldn't call the high-end Android market saturated. There are a number of players, but it's a market of compromises. If you want a stock Android experience, you go away from Samsung. If you want a headphone jack, you go away from Google and OnePlus, etc.
The Surface range is good because it packs so much functionality into a nicely designed package. The same design principles, with a full feature set, would sell like wild-fire, and would put a lot of other phone manufacturers on notice.
The high-end Android market is about as saturated as it can get, because multiple generations of hardware sales keep showing new high-end options dropping out because high-end users (mostly) just want iOS and buy iPhones.
Most high-end phones for Android don't sell like wild fire. AT&T and Verizon stores (among others) are pretty clear that Android is "cheap" and the iPhone is luxury/high-end.
I don't think Microsoft has an answer for that existing market dynamic here for Android phones. There doesn't seem to be enough of a value proposition that Microsoft might have anymore luck as Android device competing against the iPhone.
IMO it was a mistake to give up on the Windows 10 mobile OS but it's also true that MS has made too many mistakes for it to ever take off at the point where Android and iOS have been developed for at least 7 years already.
Amen to this; I want another Windows Phone. If I'd wanted an Android phone, there are plenty of options already.
Microsoft would've done better by making a x86 Surface Go running full-sized Windows that happened to make phone calls. There were a few models of Android tablets that could make phone calls, so it's not as if it were a outrageous idea.
It's an Android, so no new choice here, sadly. Google may even be insisting on Google Search as default, given the search bar's prominent visibility in Microsoft's promo material with the Google Search logo.
No. Microsoft is much better at handling an ecosystem than Amazon. As far as I can tell, MS is using standard Android with Google Play Services(?) Amazon was trying to create its own ecosystem.
Amazon has a nice suite of services. A phone that has Music, Books, Shopping, Cloud Storage for Photos, and a few key apps (Uber, Lyft, popular games) but somewhat constrained otherwise, would be great for Seniors or people who don't need a high-performance general-purpose computer in their pocket.
How would that be any different than what they tried with the Fire Phone? You can already buy cheap Android phones that can do all of those things using either Google’s services or Amazon services
Perhaps, but I believe that not being able to install one or two crucial apps (e.g. banking) would be a deal-breaker for a good portion of those people.
Agreed. Amazon is really experimenting recently with new form factors. It could be really exciting if there was a non-flagship phone from them in the future. What they should double down on is also making the Alexa experience the best.
Agreed. There is too little competition in this space. Having more choice would mean there wouldn't be the whole Google Services / Huawei fiasco. Apple and Google are effectively blocking competition in the marketplace.
2. Does anyone remember the name of a similar Microsoft notebook that was teased 5-10 years ago? It was a foldable notebook and notetaking device kind of like Remarkable. I wonder if this is the spiritual child of that.
Re: 1: The last official OS builds for Windows Phone expire from security support next month (November 2019). Microsoft has been telling owners to move to iOS or (especially) Android for months now. (It's why I've got an iPhone again in my pocket now after years of Windows Phones. Sigh.)
> The Surface Duo features two 5.6-inch displays that can rotate 360 degrees, allowing it to be fully unfolded as a miniature unfold to 8.3-inch tablet.
Unless I'm misunderstanding, it seems like you wouldn't ever need more than 270 degrees.
Seems like a nice way to protect the screen. I wonder how hard it would be to place a small tiny notification screen on the 2nd image. I guess that would make 3 screens then. I recall some similar prototypes that used a small e-ink screen for notifications & a clock.
Remember your comment 5 years from now. There is a reason that most manufacturers are working on dual/folding screens. It is natural to try to get the phone and tablet market at once. I think it's great and hope they have judged their technology correctly, because if done well it is the future.
Personally I don't see the attractive in dual screen devices unless we reach Westworld-like devices that are super thin and can go from phone to large tablet that can potentially replace a laptop.
Otherwise it's just a thick phone that converts to 2 phones...
Agree. I love the design behind the Westworld folding tablets. I don't see myself jumping aboard the train until we get at least a little bit closer to that form factor.
There's an interesting subtlety in Westworld devices that I didn't notice until now, though - they're insanely durable. Dust, blood, hard impacts, slamming the device closed, etc don't seem to damage or impede them at all which simply wouldn't be true of real devices. I think foldable devices are inherently more fragile than smartphones which are already too fragile IMO and thus they'll never work, but few people seem to care about that right now.
Definitely. In order for WW style tablets, I think the biggest hurdles would be material science.
It's also sci-fi and the rule of cool. If someone wanted to parody WW, then a fun scene would be the tech support at HQ. Imagine seeing main characters treating them as disposable and regularly having to pick up new ones.
Thin-film electronics would probably be the starting point. As far as I can tell, that industry is very concentrated on display, solar and "gimmick" electronics (think electronic tamper seals or marketing strategies.)
To make this device, you'd need:
- A battery breakthrough (hard)
- Flexible OLED and peripherals (easier)
- Flexible chips (hard but optional)
- High power efficiency or microfluidic cooling (hard depending on thickness.)
Depending on where you let the device be folded, if you had a small enough SoC, you could protect it from bending and hide it in the panel sections that don't have a seam. The trickier bit is raw power and thermals, which will be the bottleneck for the next few years.
I find the ability to completely "close" my phone really appealing. It feels easier to ignore it, and the screens feel more protected to me.
I can also only describe the second benefit as "its like two monitors". I can watch TV on one and respond to messages/browse on another. I use a Note8+ already, so big screens for watching crap are already my preference though.
Eh I'm not too interested in multitasking on my phone. Even on my 12.9 iPad Pro multitasking is mediocre. If I want to be productive I simply go to a laptop or desktop.
As long as there is enough clearance between the two screens to add a temper glass screen protector to each.
Every phone I've had with a case, grit collects betweeen the case and the back of the phone and scratches the phone up. I can imagine the same thing happening between the two screens if folded in my pocket.
last mainstream device i can recall in this form factor was the droid 2? I think it's been a while since a major one was released, but I could be wrong.
So Clamshell Android phones are a thing. The Freetel Mushashi is a T9-style Android phone with dual touch screens on either side.
Samsung has the Android W series phones which have a similar format.
Regarding the sibling comment, after the Droid 4 and the Motorola Photon Q, there has been a drought of physical keyboard landscape slider phones. Portrait sliders have been available for the Blackberry Priv and KeyOne/Key2, but aside from the soon-to-be-released Fxtec Pro1, not much landscape slider android phone action is going on.
IMHO, the hinged - but separate - displays are a much better idea than the Samsung foldable display. At least for now.
I don't think the reliability of a truly foldable display (e.g. Samsung's Galaxy Fold) will be very good until another couple versions of generational improvements.
Maybe they should go with two glass panels and the foldable display over the hinge. If you have a setting to disable the delicate hinge display when it inevitably breaks it gracefully downgrades to this Duo experience.
+1. IMO the move is to focus on this type of devices and then move to foldable screens if/when both the technology matures, and there is solid demand for this form factor.
The foldable display seems cool, but also seems to be, IMO, an expensive solution looking for something we don't know to be a problem yet. The problem is having no screen at the hinge. How big is this problem though? In theory it's nice but people don't even have foldable devices in these form factors yet. For all we know, most people might not mind the dual-screen approach, just like a lot of people have not minded the notch or other shortcomings of previous and current devices.
I wasn't a fan of the UI, but I can still appreciate the speed and fluidity of the phones I saw my friends using. We certainly need more than just iOS and Android in the market. But, I guess I'm wrong as the market spoke...
It wasn't even "the market" that spoke so much as US telecom companies. ("Vote with your wallet just means the rich and the mega-corporations have more votes.") Windows Phone had a good enough market share in Europe and Asia to remain a viable and competitive third place contender for a long time. It was the US where Windows Phone got locked out of the market duopoly by bad deals with AT&T and Verizon, and indications existed that all of the US telecoms were much happier with a duopoly than training/sales/marketing anything beyond that (whether or not that was an anti-competitive trust is left for your own imagination, it's not like the US has strong anti-trust teeth right now).
What you are describing is the usual problem of establishing a two sided market. You need users to make app developers care. You need apps to get users in the first place. From what I remember, MS already had to build some apps themselves / offer significant financial incentives [0]. This seemed hardly sustainable and thus the death of the product was, while disappointing, not a surprise.
So yeah, you don't need a conspiracy to explain this failure.
You can't get users for a product no one can buy. Calling it a conspiracy was largely a gag, but if anything it was a conspiracy of dunces.
Verizon refusing to sell and refusing to allow on their network the Lumia 950 because of a hissy fit that they didn't like how the previous flagship performed and that Microsoft got an almost favorable AT&T deal for the 950 was dumb on several levels.
AT&T getting bored with their 950 deal and then refusing to advertise/market/sell the phone, was certainly a death nail, partly because it was so much easier and cheaper to just micro-manage the Android platform.
It might not have killed the platform in the US if there were more than one phone manufacturer in Windows Phone at that point in time.
(That calls into question if the Nokia buy out was the right move. Which with Nokia last one standing already, it was probably the only move, but the platform had enough market share before Nokia was at risk of tanking that had a couple Android manufacturers gotten fed up with Google at the time things could have gone differently. Though admittedly, armchair quarterbacking is easier with hindsight.)
The app situation was always something that could have been addressed if people were (capable of) buying the platform. The lack of OEM manufacturers and the lack of support/interest from the carriers certainly mattered more than apps at crashing marketshare of the platform below the critical threshold for active application development.
I don't think people were ever going to buy in to the platform. I liked Windows Phone, but it had basically no substantial feature that made people think "wow, it's worth it to drop Android and iOS for /this/."
You got Android if you overwhelmingly wanted the customization. You got an iPhone if you overwhelmingly wanted something that was smooth and worked well. I tried WP for a while and I missed nothing major by switching away.
I really liked the Windows Phone UI too - but christ it was buggy! In true old-school Windows fashion, it frequently crashed and required a reboot.
When Windows Phone died and I switched to Android, the UI didn't feel as intuitive as the Windows one did. And of course it doesn't help that Google change the UI, in particular the settings, all.the.time.
I've been missing my Nexus 7 since it finished dying and have been wishing for a device with this form factor for years... but with a heavily-skinned custom android distro I'm not touching it with a ten-foot pole. MS isn't awful about release cadence and bugfix latency, certainly not as bad as cell network providers or traditional phone OEMs, but there's a reason I run stock android on Droid/Nexus/Pixel devices. Maybe if I can install a stock android ROM on the thing.
(Disclaimer: work at Google, totally unrelated product, not the opinion of my employer, etc.)
All this time my old Nintendo DS Lite had been gathering dust in the drawer because I thought it was strictly for games; now I realize its true calling is to be a phone!
These are all just wrappers around the latest qualcomm snapdragon with whatever twist the hardware manufacture wants to add. Basic functionality in all of them will be badly broken and there's more or less nothing you can do to fix it.
At least the iphone ships with an ssh client and scripting environment now. (not that I'm an iphone fan, it has it's own problems.)
For some benchmarks, the top phones are 50% faster! Storage benchmarks (not shown in that particular review) can be even more dramatic. Battery life differences can be huge (multiple hours) at the same capacity.
Each manufacturer customizes the heck out of the kernel, and also attached firmware. LTE speeds can vary dramatically with "the same antennas". Same for WiFi speeds.
The current Android phone I am using works great. It is surprisingly fluid and rather nice to use, though I'd argue Windows Phone 7 was still nicer (or at least more fun) to use, that ship has long since sailed.
It's odd that they would announce it's powered by a Snapdragon 855--a chip which is already a year old, and will be two years old by the time this device actually launches. Hopefully they'll upgrade that before launch.
A high-end SoC from 1 year or 2 years ago is hardly the constraint on modern devices.
I doubt the average person can even tell the difference from a 660, to a 835, or an 855, given all the rest of the components (mainly storage) are the same.
182 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 220 ms ] threadIt’s not like they’re trying their own OS again.
It's not like there is a lack of competitors in the Android manufacturer game.
Maybe its not necessarily "dead on arrival", but at least from what has been announced so far, it doesn't yet sound competitive in what is already a terribly (and ugly) competitive hardware market. At least if Microsoft were trying their own OS again, they'd have a better statement of why they were building the hardware. Meanwhile, doesn't the market already have enough Android phones?
But like I said before, even without that, it's still the right device for me.
There was speculation that this would enable Google to swap out the Linux Kernel for Fuschia when it becomes available.
The Windows NT Kernel has had a HAL and the ability to do this since it's inception in the 90s. Microsoft has been toying around with WSL on the desktop, what are the chances that they just beat Google to the punch and are running Android on the Windows Kernel?
How crazy would it be if WSL was just a cover for getting Android running ontop the Windows Kernel?
I think they renamed the NT Kernel to Windows Kernel to simplify things but in usual Microsoft fashion it just complicates comparing or discussing Today with Yesterday.
Announcing products like this should be reported on as an embarrassment for the companies that do it.
I want to simply have a keyboard and screen that "looks like a laptop" but the brains is actually in the phone in my pocket!
And then when I have a proper dock, I just get a larger monitor(s) and larger desktop keyboard.
But the brains are still in the phone!
The key benefit (of the dumb laptop, especially) is I still want a laptop on the go, but..
1. Why manage data flow across two separate devices. My phone becomes truth, always.
2. My phone already has always-on data. Why worry about data for two devices. (To 4/5-g subscriptions, etc.) Searching for wi-fi.
3. Better power consumption for my "dumb laptop" device. (Less processing power in the laptop, hopefully space for a bigger battery)
I would buy this in a heartbeat!
I am hoping I can do this with the librem5 and a dock.
https://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/apps/samsung-dex/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier
Exec1: does it connect to Exchange?
Exec2: no.
Exec1: nixed!
Exec2 should have said: it will in the future!
Nice looking Surface lineup and hardware nevertheless, but after Microsoft removing that offline setting, I think that was a big turn off and a no deal from me for now, unless they reverse that atrocious decision to using online accounts only.
Personally I've replaced my last macbook with the surface and my iphone with an android phone, use mostly linux or windows with WSL these days and I see less and less apple products in particular among developers where the windows/linux combo seems to become more prevalent, at least anecdotally.
From UNIX point of view, not so much, given that they were one of the first licensees for PC hardware with Xenix.
They also released those Nokia branded Android devices.
It is not like MS has been doing consumer hardware releases for that long or anything!
It'll be interesting to see the support, IMHO one thing that keeps people (software devs and consumers) from buying into a new Android OEM that is selling an "Ecosystem" (e.g. Samsung Note) is the fear of a product line being dropped.
IMO, Microsoft have done a fantastic job with the Surface Book. If they could replicate that high-end build quality while providing a solid feature set and a clean Android build, I can't see it not selling well. Throw a headphone jack in, and I'd wait in line for it!
The dual screen is interesting, but I don't see its use just yet.
I'm very "disappointented" by the event, as it seems that the Surface Book series is dead.
If this is the case, I guess that the reasoning has been that who want a powerful machine just buy a regular laptop.
It's a shame for those who use the SB both as tablet and dev machine (which is the intended audience). At this point, it's not sure how the SPX will be usable as dev machine (e.g. I guess it will have relatively little memory). The vanilla SP is an alternative, but 12.3" is small for me (and can't imagine for those who own a 15" SB).
I know a load of people with the standard Surface that use it like a tablet, but very few people that regularly use their Surface Book's detachable tablet functionality. I can probably count the number of times I've ever wanted to take the laptop apart on one hand.
In the past, I used it primarily to read electronic versions of several paper magazines; this format is (IMHO) best read on a large screen - the sweet spot is around 14, so 13.5 is the closest (I reckon the 15" is too big; the SB laptop form factor has a bulky design).
In the present, I use it for studying (textbooks, mostly) - for textbooks, even 12.x" is fine, so even a Surface Pro would do.
Having said that, I like it as a tablet so much that I've pretty much ditched the base and bought another laptop for development. The SB laptop form factor just sucks (IMHO), as it's very bulky, and Microsoft has an insane pricing strategy, that makes it unjustifiably expensive for developers looking for a serious dev machine. Nowadays it's more competitive due to being old, but the 16 GB models have never been competitive, both in price and form factor, to competitors like the Dell XPS.
Of course, I don't imply that many people use it this way because I do, so I really don't know the general use cases :-)
It gives a better typing experience than a phone currently does & offers unique controls for apps on the 2nd screen.
Whereas with the laptop version I assume people will be missing their keyboard typing experience or complaining about having to carry around a bluetooth keyboard. I still hope they improve their concept of docking an Android phone & using it as a laptop replacement with a keyboard, mouse & monitor.
Hopefully it makes people watch videos in landscape again & quit recording in portrait mode. That alone would be a win!
- Edit - I just read a better article explaining their keyboard concept for the laptop version. That seems like a slightly better experience than I was imagining. Hopefully it's harder to lose than their pen.
The Surface range is good because it packs so much functionality into a nicely designed package. The same design principles, with a full feature set, would sell like wild-fire, and would put a lot of other phone manufacturers on notice.
Most high-end phones for Android don't sell like wild fire. AT&T and Verizon stores (among others) are pretty clear that Android is "cheap" and the iPhone is luxury/high-end.
I don't think Microsoft has an answer for that existing market dynamic here for Android phones. There doesn't seem to be enough of a value proposition that Microsoft might have anymore luck as Android device competing against the iPhone.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....
IMO it was a mistake to give up on the Windows 10 mobile OS but it's also true that MS has made too many mistakes for it to ever take off at the point where Android and iOS have been developed for at least 7 years already.
Microsoft would've done better by making a x86 Surface Go running full-sized Windows that happened to make phone calls. There were a few models of Android tablets that could make phone calls, so it's not as if it were a outrageous idea.
How do seniors learn to use devices?
Mostly from peers or mostly from children? If from peers, how do they seed the ability?
I can't see how you could get seniors to start to use a "dumbphone" specific to them, unless the UI was spectacularly easy to use.
2. Does anyone remember the name of a similar Microsoft notebook that was teased 5-10 years ago? It was a foldable notebook and notetaking device kind of like Remarkable. I wonder if this is the spiritual child of that.
2. You're probably thinking about the Courier. You'll see more about that in the thread about Surface Neo, which is the modern take on Courier.
https://youtu.be/dmaioTs0NH8?t=5111
The bigger dual screen device is the Surface Neo.
Unless I'm misunderstanding, it seems like you wouldn't ever need more than 270 degrees.
https://andro4all.com/files/2019/10/Microsoft-Surface-Duo.jp...
From this:
https://livecenterimages.azureedge.net/livecenter-images/lci...
The catastrophe that is the Samsung folding phone didn’t send a strong enough message to the industry I guess.
Otherwise it's just a thick phone that converts to 2 phones...
In case anyone hasn't seen Westworld: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3dD7jOLaes
It's also sci-fi and the rule of cool. If someone wanted to parody WW, then a fun scene would be the tech support at HQ. Imagine seeing main characters treating them as disposable and regularly having to pick up new ones.
To make this device, you'd need: - A battery breakthrough (hard) - Flexible OLED and peripherals (easier) - Flexible chips (hard but optional) - High power efficiency or microfluidic cooling (hard depending on thickness.)
Depending on where you let the device be folded, if you had a small enough SoC, you could protect it from bending and hide it in the panel sections that don't have a seam. The trickier bit is raw power and thermals, which will be the bottleneck for the next few years.
I find the ability to completely "close" my phone really appealing. It feels easier to ignore it, and the screens feel more protected to me.
I can also only describe the second benefit as "its like two monitors". I can watch TV on one and respond to messages/browse on another. I use a Note8+ already, so big screens for watching crap are already my preference though.
Every phone I've had with a case, grit collects betweeen the case and the back of the phone and scratches the phone up. I can imagine the same thing happening between the two screens if folded in my pocket.
Samsung has the Android W series phones which have a similar format.
Regarding the sibling comment, after the Droid 4 and the Motorola Photon Q, there has been a drought of physical keyboard landscape slider phones. Portrait sliders have been available for the Blackberry Priv and KeyOne/Key2, but aside from the soon-to-be-released Fxtec Pro1, not much landscape slider android phone action is going on.
I don't think the reliability of a truly foldable display (e.g. Samsung's Galaxy Fold) will be very good until another couple versions of generational improvements.
The foldable display seems cool, but also seems to be, IMO, an expensive solution looking for something we don't know to be a problem yet. The problem is having no screen at the hinge. How big is this problem though? In theory it's nice but people don't even have foldable devices in these form factors yet. For all we know, most people might not mind the dual-screen approach, just like a lot of people have not minded the notch or other shortcomings of previous and current devices.
The best designed UI imo, and a great alternative to Ios and android.
So yeah, you don't need a conspiracy to explain this failure.
[0] https://www.pcworld.com/article/2031384/microsoft-stokes-win...
Verizon refusing to sell and refusing to allow on their network the Lumia 950 because of a hissy fit that they didn't like how the previous flagship performed and that Microsoft got an almost favorable AT&T deal for the 950 was dumb on several levels.
AT&T getting bored with their 950 deal and then refusing to advertise/market/sell the phone, was certainly a death nail, partly because it was so much easier and cheaper to just micro-manage the Android platform.
It might not have killed the platform in the US if there were more than one phone manufacturer in Windows Phone at that point in time.
(That calls into question if the Nokia buy out was the right move. Which with Nokia last one standing already, it was probably the only move, but the platform had enough market share before Nokia was at risk of tanking that had a couple Android manufacturers gotten fed up with Google at the time things could have gone differently. Though admittedly, armchair quarterbacking is easier with hindsight.)
The app situation was always something that could have been addressed if people were (capable of) buying the platform. The lack of OEM manufacturers and the lack of support/interest from the carriers certainly mattered more than apps at crashing marketshare of the platform below the critical threshold for active application development.
You got Android if you overwhelmingly wanted the customization. You got an iPhone if you overwhelmingly wanted something that was smooth and worked well. I tried WP for a while and I missed nothing major by switching away.
When Windows Phone died and I switched to Android, the UI didn't feel as intuitive as the Windows one did. And of course it doesn't help that Google change the UI, in particular the settings, all.the.time.
(Disclaimer: work at Google, totally unrelated product, not the opinion of my employer, etc.)
These are all just wrappers around the latest qualcomm snapdragon with whatever twist the hardware manufacture wants to add. Basic functionality in all of them will be badly broken and there's more or less nothing you can do to fix it.
At least the iphone ships with an ssh client and scripting environment now. (not that I'm an iphone fan, it has it's own problems.)
I disagree.
The performance and battery life differences between different phones running the same chipset is insane.
Read through https://www.anandtech.com/show/14716/the-black-shark-2-revie...
For some benchmarks, the top phones are 50% faster! Storage benchmarks (not shown in that particular review) can be even more dramatic. Battery life differences can be huge (multiple hours) at the same capacity.
Each manufacturer customizes the heck out of the kernel, and also attached firmware. LTE speeds can vary dramatically with "the same antennas". Same for WiFi speeds.
The current Android phone I am using works great. It is surprisingly fluid and rather nice to use, though I'd argue Windows Phone 7 was still nicer (or at least more fun) to use, that ship has long since sailed.
I use the Termux app to SSH on my Android phone all the time.
I doubt the average person can even tell the difference from a 660, to a 835, or an 855, given all the rest of the components (mainly storage) are the same.