The best I can come up with is the stereotype that women are better at multitasking? Something sexist like that probably wouldn't work out well for Microsoft so I doubt there's much behind it.
I'm not sure though, the commercial is a sort of story about a group of women planning to go on a trip. That's entirely reasonable, I don't see what gender has to do with the product. It's not like they sell a pink and a blue one for girls and boys or anything.
I was very excited for it, but it is way too expensive (sensible, given the experimental nature) and seems like US only (nonsensical)... Did the first iPhone or Pixel launch in US only?
Eh, I am underwhelmed. Android based device that appears to be overpriced based on available stats ( starting $1399 ). I am not certain if MS learned anything from Windows Mobile flop ( or learned the wrong lesson ).
Then again, I am not its target demographic. MS Surface line never entered my consideration.
Interesting, has there been any reviews for this yet? All the screenshots look like it's just two phones next to each other instead of one UI that takes advantage of its unique form factor. I'm also surprised they don't use bing as the default search engine in their screenshots, is that a aosp requirement? Finally, this makes me want to dust off my nintendo ds.
I find that very interesting and even significant. The Microsoft of 10 years ago would never in a million years use someone else's OS. I see it as a good thing.
I don't want to sound negative (and have to admit I don't represent the whole population) so if this appeals to you, can you explain to me why please ?
As much as I dream of the day where you will be able to just change your screen size on a whim, we don't have the tech yet.
And it seems to me that if you need more screen estate, you will just get a tablet, not an hybrid ?
The idea of it appeals to me. Phone size and weight, and thus portability, yet I can quickly and easily switch to viewing and working with the same details on a larger screen when that'd be useful. That can't be as effectively achieved with two separate devices.
I currently own a Galaxy S6 Tab. I use it for note-taking and reading books (primarily non-fiction and technical PDFs). Portability is always an issue with tablets. I don't always have my tablet with me, and even when I do, it can be inconvenient to pull it out of my bag. This seems to be 5,6" closed, which sounds like something that might fit into my pants pocket, then I could always have it with me. I've tried using a recent Samsung Note, but found the lack of screen space too much of a constraint that I ended up selling it again fairly quickly.
I'm definitely interested, though of course I'm not 100% sure it'll fit my needs until I actually try it for a week. The pricing is also iffy. I'm not sure I'm willing to give such an expensive device a try, especially with Microsoft's poor record when it comes to QA on their Surface line in general.
I don't even have kids and camera is also the deciding factor for me.
For that reason, seeing Marc Levoy calling it quit at Google makes me pessimistic for the next pixels.
to be fair the 4 was already a bit underwhelming in that area (flagship level camera but unlike the previous generations it did not really push the enveloppe).
Parent here. I won't buy a phone that doesn't have a good camera and take "live photos". The camera is the only reason I've not looked into getting rid of my smart phone entirely. I'd have to find some way to keep WhatsApp working, though, or else convince my entire contact list to migrate, and find a solution for MFA that works with everything from Steam to Github, so either of those might end up being blockers if I actually tried, but I'm not trying because I won't give up a good Internet-connected camera (=auto-backups) that takes live photos.
I just gave it a quick DDG, and it looks like that still means my only option is iPhones (or 3rd-party apps on Android, but I am very skeptical the experience & results with those would be anywhere near as good).
by live photos you mean photos with a live 0.5 second video shot ?
Android has been having this for a pretty long while as well, at least on pixel. Off the top of my head, no idea if this applies to the whole ecosystem (might be pixel only, might be google camera only (so that would apply to any phone where you can install this app) or it might even be a pixel feature but tons of OEMs have already duplicated it (that's not exactly a recent feature so I would not be surprised)
Oh, yeah, just DDG'd it because I was curious whether Android had it now and all I could find were a bunch of "good news, now you can get live photos on your Android phone with a third party app!" hits. Cool that they have it now, too. AFAIK no stand-alone cameras have the feature, which is too bad.
The advantage is that it's a tablet in (roughly) a phone form factor. My Nexus tablet (7 inches) BARELY fits in my pants, and is a bit uncomfortable to carry around.
I'm less interested in the productivity side of things, but this looks great for entertainment. I don't like reading ebooks on a phone-sized screen, which wouldn't be an issue. This could also be pretty neat for light gaming with Steam Link/Xbox Gamepass/Moonlight. I'm currently in a situation where I'm able to work remotely for a while, but I'm not going to bring my desktop with me if I spend a week at a cabin in the wilderness.
At this price it's not quite worth it for me, but hopefully the Surface Duo does well and dual screen devices get a bit cheaper and add in features I care about like wireless charging
The idea of it sounds interesting to me. Not necessarily as a "phone" though, but more of an iPad replacement.
The problems for me:
1. It runs android. While I hope that MSFT will support it into the future, I fear if it flops that the dual screen setup and support is going to dwindle over time.
2. No pen slot. This is a huge fail IMO - one of the main ways I would want to use this is as a small digital notebook. Having to carry a surface pen separately kind of sucks.
3. No external display. I know they are already pushing it price wise, but even just a small OLED strip would suffice, to let you see a notification without having to unfold the device to see what it is. Missing this makes me think this will be a terrible phone - to know who is calling you now have to take it out of your pocket, open it, then choose what to do.
The problem is I think the $400 iPad Mini likely outclasses this device in terms of software and performance.
I guess MS is still feeling the sting of their previous foray into the phone market, so they're trying to market it as a Surface?
As a phone, it stands out. The giant screen that fits in your pocket is a neat gimmick. It stakes out some potentially influential space on the ground between "phone" and "computer", where market expectations haven't been fully established yet. It costs around as much as other elite phones. "Surface Phone" could have been a great shot into the cutting edge phone market.
As a Surface, it's on a different OS and won't run the same software. It gives up peripherals, ports, and screen real estate. Adding a keyboard would make the Duo less practical as a mobile computer than a Surface with the tidy keyboard option. It costs as much as far more powerful Surfaces, but at least it fits in your pocket?
Just a phone with a screen the size of one side of that Duo, offering the biggest single pane that will fit easily in the back pocket of a pair of jeans.
Perhaps you're naive to the Surface design team's experience with hinges but judging from that pedigree it's extremely unlikely they haven't engineered the heck out of it.
Microsoft should focus on actual innovation. We've reached stagnation in SV - it's all an adtech scam now. A bifold phone with no new technology. Just tape it together and call it "innovation."
Apple is in a rut too, but Apple has released more interesting hardware than microsoft has in ages. New Xbox - glorified gaming PC with no unique titles at Launch. Halo Infinite had graphics from 2014. Windows 10 spies on you, has a terrible dual infrastructure OS with newschool apps and old school control panel.
Oh and I'm supposed to think Teams which really just stole ideas from everyone else is innovative.
I was a windows phone user for ages, I’ve got several surfaces, and I’m super hyped about dual screen phones.
Unfortunately this device just isn’t made for 2020 (or 2017) usage: small battery with no wireless charging, not waterproof, no NFC (aka no wireless payments), questionable/unproven camera, processor with 2017 specs driving two screens.
On top of all that, surface has particularly bad hardware reliability. Of the devices I’ve owned, each has had to be factory serviced. My Nokia phones from the windows phone 8 era all needed to be factory serviced. And all that for the low price of two iPhones.
Sadly this is yet another innovative device that will be killed by making the wrong trade offs. I expect it to be copied and executed much better by Apple or maybe Samsung (I tried the Note 10 recently and the stylus is much better than the surface pen).
Samsung already has a folding phone, and it seems pretty clear they are going to push hard on the flexible OLED screens since it's something no-one else currently does well.
I actually think this device was made for me. I carry an iPhone for my personal phone, but I keep a separate device for work where most of the things you just mentioned don't matter. I need it to last a work day and waterproofing, NFC, and the camera won't matter to me in that context, etc.
There is a good chance this will replace my laptop for ~75% of my work, which is dominated by meetings, not focused work time.
My role is a bit delivery management and a bit account management so I have a lot of facetime (well, pre-COVID) with B2B clients and I am also responsible for making sure delivery teams are on track.
An average day for me is 50%+ meetings and the rest of the time is spend coordinating actions (slack, text, emails, JIRA boards, Aha, etc.) as a result of those. Right now I bounce around between a laptop (Surface Pro) and a paper notebook. I could also probably do most of my job with an iPad Pro but the idea of the split screen appeals to me enough for me to overcome the switching cost that, for whatever reason, the iPad Pro did not.
Having a decade old note taking system that I still actively use inside of OneNote is also a contributor to my interest. My biggest fear for the Duo is that the stylus experience is subpar, so I'll certainly be trying that out first.
To me, battery life isn't that big a deal for phones. You can pick up a 10,000-mAh portable battery pack on sale for under $20. If I'm going out, I put one in my bag.
If it was running Windows 10 like Surface Neo would it have changed your mind, assuming you would see some productivity benefits being a Windows ecosystem user?
But its doubtful Neo would see its light and even if Microsoft released a tablet with Windows 10 IMO it's again getting into the same mess of Windows Phone era. If Neo gets successful, it would likely need to release a smartphone with Windows 10 and if Duo gets successful it would need to scale it up to tablet(which is what likely to happen).
>My Nokia phones from the windows phone 8 era
I concur, I bought a Lumia 640 for development of our app for Windows Phone ecosystem. One day I used a different charger (Of same spec) and the phone charging port went kaput; Searching the web, it seems to be a very common problem but MS never bothered to call back the devices. But, there are similar stores for Google Nexus line of devices and I think for early Pixel devices too.
tl;dr Consumers have higher expectations for the quality of mobile hardware and software (driven by iOS and nowadays Android) than Windows can currently provide.
The reliability issues are bordering on a dealbreaker for me at this point. I've had lots of Microsoft hardware; maybe I'm just unlikely, but the only thing that didn't need factory service was an Xbox One. I'm not a Microsoft hater by any stretch, but having to get a Zune 80, Surface 3, Surface RT, and Xbox 360 factory serviced really soured me. I've had several Android and Apple devices at this point and none have needed factory service.
Windows 10 still isn't tuned well for mobile, and the few parts that are just aren't generally reliable. I'm actively working on a UWP app right now and the problems are endless - issues with resizing windows, crashing when themes change (built in apps like Maps have the same issues so its not my code), broken vector icon rendering, etc. The whole thing is based on COM, which tends to lead to leaky abstractions when exposed through higher-level APIs. It is hard enough to make high-quality software on Windows that developers often fail and it leads to weird quirks. Even with traditional desktop apps, getting things like maximize behavior right with customized windows is actually very hard (see Slack, Teams or VS Code on a high/mixed DPI setup).
The argument here seems to be "It can replace an iPad and a phone", but I'm not so sure it can replace either one.
Setting aside the fact that Android tablet software is still a bit of a mess, are people going to want to watch movies and play games on a tablet with a big crack in the middle? Even surfing the web, you can't really view a page well in landscape. Likewise spreadsheets, word processing, etc
Apps like email which do well with multiple panes would be great, but only if they can mind the gap.
So much of what I use the iPad for is full screen, I'm a bit skeptical about how well those things translate to 2 half screens.
The "crack" doesn't bother me -- but then again, I'd never want to watch a movie on anything less than a 15" screen anyway -- but I'm old I guess.
"Two apps at once" is good, but the winner to me is master-detail support in all apps when it makes sense, without fussing around with child/popup windows, tabs or dividers -- this is a huge productivity gain, IMHO. (E.g., email list in bottom, selected email on top, etc.)
> but the winner to me is master-detail support in all apps when it makes sense
Assuming all the apps in question support this view. I'm sure Microsoft's tools will. Not sure about how many others.
> this is a huge productivity gain, IMHO.
Versus what? On an iPad/ tablet, you can have splits where it makes sense int he interface. On this, you are stuck with the hardware split. Obviously it's way better than a phone if that's your compare. So if your job can be done on a phone, this is maybe the boss.
At $600-$800 I think I'd give it a go--basically an iPad Mini (a form factor which I love) that folds up when not in use. I'm surprised they didn't show more gaming applications. I think you could use half the screen as a controller and the other half to play the games and that would be an upgrade over most current touch controls.
I love my Windows phones, but alongside Project Reunion this looks like a capitulation that the Windows strategy for mobile devices is a lost battle.
Even Windows 10X now looks like it won't be coming as expected.
Given how the whole Android ecosystem works, in terms of updates and Java support, is not as I would like, but I guess one needs to take such things how they are and not how they could be.
So "Courier" could have been Windows, but it ended up being Android based.
I don't really care if this product is successful or not, but I want to say that I'm glad to see hardware experiments from Microsoft. Not a lot of company are willing to experiment with different form factor at the scale of Microsoft, so it's nice to see some attempt to innovate!
Given the choice between this and the Surface Go 2, I'd take the latter--it runs an OS that can run things I use. It's either have something less convenient that's useful, or something that's more convenient but still requires me to keep another device to use for some other things.
Maybe some day MS will make the Surface Duo run Android apps on a full OS, or make enough changes to Android to make it a usable as a primary not consumption-oriented device.
Hmm, based on the last picture the pen seem to be an additional device on the side, I don't see a way to attach it to the Duo itself via magnet or another mechanism. Maybe a missed opportunity here, it's always annoying to have the pen somewhere else when you need to use it.
Since so many of the screenshots show them running a separate Android app on each screen, I wonder if the apps themselves actually run simultaneously.
Or if it's like Android apps on my Chromebook where only a single active app actually runs, while all other apps get suspended in the background, even if they're visible.
The latter would make this concept pretty useless so I hope they actually solved this and are planning on upstreaming the changes so all future devices can benefit.
As someone who has been using split screen on Android frequently as of late this device is intriguing. The one thing I'm not sold on yet is the keyboard but maybe I need to literally have it in my hands before I pass on it.
Price is definitely steep. They clearly know their market.
This (and the Galaxy Fold i guess) could be the perfect sysadmin/on-call device - except for the price maybe. Small enough to carry around and use as a normal phone day-to-day but offers actually usable screenspace for remote sessions, docs, etc. if the need arises.
Also weirdly reminds me of the Sony Vaio P for some reason.
I guess you have to be a tablet user to really see the value. The fact that tablet users have more screen realstate increases their desire to want more on their screen. While for example I as a mobile user can't think of much use-cases because I'm used to a different user experience and my expectations are different.
I'm not sure if Microsoft strategy to call it a new device category instead of tablet is effective though. I can imagine if Apple was doing it, they would just call it a fold-able/dual-screen tablet.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 151 ms ] threadI watched the ad for it, and the thing that stood out to me was I think the "cast" was entirely female. I wonder if that was intentional?
Is there any reason this would be marketed at women specifically?
The hardware looks nice but I'm rather let down to see it's just running Android.
I'm not sure though, the commercial is a sort of story about a group of women planning to go on a trip. That's entirely reasonable, I don't see what gender has to do with the product. It's not like they sell a pink and a blue one for girls and boys or anything.
Was the all-female cast intentional or just incidental to the team that worked on the ad?
I think it's perfectly fine either way, but I was curious.
iPhone - Yes, and was only available on At&t for the initial 5 yrs
Then again, I am not its target demographic. MS Surface line never entered my consideration.
Is this Microsoft's first Android device?
I find that very interesting and even significant. The Microsoft of 10 years ago would never in a million years use someone else's OS. I see it as a good thing.
I don't want to sound negative (and have to admit I don't represent the whole population) so if this appeals to you, can you explain to me why please ?
As much as I dream of the day where you will be able to just change your screen size on a whim, we don't have the tech yet.
And it seems to me that if you need more screen estate, you will just get a tablet, not an hybrid ?
They seem to think people use the phone has a handset without headphones/speaker, which is a bit strange.
I'm definitely interested, though of course I'm not 100% sure it'll fit my needs until I actually try it for a week. The pricing is also iffy. I'm not sure I'm willing to give such an expensive device a try, especially with Microsoft's poor record when it comes to QA on their Surface line in general.
The universal feedback I've seen from peers who are considering the pre-order is: I can stop carrying around an iPad.
$1399 replaces an ipad and a phone for them. Time will tell if the usability matches their expectations.
For that reason, seeing Marc Levoy calling it quit at Google makes me pessimistic for the next pixels.
to be fair the 4 was already a bit underwhelming in that area (flagship level camera but unlike the previous generations it did not really push the enveloppe).
I just gave it a quick DDG, and it looks like that still means my only option is iPhones (or 3rd-party apps on Android, but I am very skeptical the experience & results with those would be anywhere near as good).
Android has been having this for a pretty long while as well, at least on pixel. Off the top of my head, no idea if this applies to the whole ecosystem (might be pixel only, might be google camera only (so that would apply to any phone where you can install this app) or it might even be a pixel feature but tons of OEMs have already duplicated it (that's not exactly a recent feature so I would not be surprised)
I'm less interested in the productivity side of things, but this looks great for entertainment. I don't like reading ebooks on a phone-sized screen, which wouldn't be an issue. This could also be pretty neat for light gaming with Steam Link/Xbox Gamepass/Moonlight. I'm currently in a situation where I'm able to work remotely for a while, but I'm not going to bring my desktop with me if I spend a week at a cabin in the wilderness.
At this price it's not quite worth it for me, but hopefully the Surface Duo does well and dual screen devices get a bit cheaper and add in features I care about like wireless charging
The problems for me: 1. It runs android. While I hope that MSFT will support it into the future, I fear if it flops that the dual screen setup and support is going to dwindle over time.
2. No pen slot. This is a huge fail IMO - one of the main ways I would want to use this is as a small digital notebook. Having to carry a surface pen separately kind of sucks.
3. No external display. I know they are already pushing it price wise, but even just a small OLED strip would suffice, to let you see a notification without having to unfold the device to see what it is. Missing this makes me think this will be a terrible phone - to know who is calling you now have to take it out of your pocket, open it, then choose what to do.
The problem is I think the $400 iPad Mini likely outclasses this device in terms of software and performance.
As a phone, it stands out. The giant screen that fits in your pocket is a neat gimmick. It stakes out some potentially influential space on the ground between "phone" and "computer", where market expectations haven't been fully established yet. It costs around as much as other elite phones. "Surface Phone" could have been a great shot into the cutting edge phone market.
As a Surface, it's on a different OS and won't run the same software. It gives up peripherals, ports, and screen real estate. Adding a keyboard would make the Duo less practical as a mobile computer than a Surface with the tidy keyboard option. It costs as much as far more powerful Surfaces, but at least it fits in your pocket?
No need for a fragile and hard to hold hinge.
Just a phone with a screen the size of one side of that Duo, offering the biggest single pane that will fit easily in the back pocket of a pair of jeans.
Please.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob%27s_ladder_(toy)
Perhaps you're naive to the Surface design team's experience with hinges but judging from that pedigree it's extremely unlikely they haven't engineered the heck out of it.
Can't imagine this will be popular at all.
A phone OS, then why not use a phone? Oh, bigger screen? Use a tablet. With huge phones nowadays this just doesn't serve a market.
it's a glorified nintendo DS for 1399. Embarassing.
You do realize a world existed before Apple made the iPod and the iPhone right?
Microsoft should focus on actual innovation. We've reached stagnation in SV - it's all an adtech scam now. A bifold phone with no new technology. Just tape it together and call it "innovation."
Apple is in a rut too, but Apple has released more interesting hardware than microsoft has in ages. New Xbox - glorified gaming PC with no unique titles at Launch. Halo Infinite had graphics from 2014. Windows 10 spies on you, has a terrible dual infrastructure OS with newschool apps and old school control panel.
Oh and I'm supposed to think Teams which really just stole ideas from everyone else is innovative.
Unfortunately this device just isn’t made for 2020 (or 2017) usage: small battery with no wireless charging, not waterproof, no NFC (aka no wireless payments), questionable/unproven camera, processor with 2017 specs driving two screens.
On top of all that, surface has particularly bad hardware reliability. Of the devices I’ve owned, each has had to be factory serviced. My Nokia phones from the windows phone 8 era all needed to be factory serviced. And all that for the low price of two iPhones.
Sadly this is yet another innovative device that will be killed by making the wrong trade offs. I expect it to be copied and executed much better by Apple or maybe Samsung (I tried the Note 10 recently and the stylus is much better than the surface pen).
There is a good chance this will replace my laptop for ~75% of my work, which is dominated by meetings, not focused work time.
An average day for me is 50%+ meetings and the rest of the time is spend coordinating actions (slack, text, emails, JIRA boards, Aha, etc.) as a result of those. Right now I bounce around between a laptop (Surface Pro) and a paper notebook. I could also probably do most of my job with an iPad Pro but the idea of the split screen appeals to me enough for me to overcome the switching cost that, for whatever reason, the iPad Pro did not.
Having a decade old note taking system that I still actively use inside of OneNote is also a contributor to my interest. My biggest fear for the Duo is that the stylus experience is subpar, so I'll certainly be trying that out first.
But its doubtful Neo would see its light and even if Microsoft released a tablet with Windows 10 IMO it's again getting into the same mess of Windows Phone era. If Neo gets successful, it would likely need to release a smartphone with Windows 10 and if Duo gets successful it would need to scale it up to tablet(which is what likely to happen).
>My Nokia phones from the windows phone 8 era
I concur, I bought a Lumia 640 for development of our app for Windows Phone ecosystem. One day I used a different charger (Of same spec) and the phone charging port went kaput; Searching the web, it seems to be a very common problem but MS never bothered to call back the devices. But, there are similar stores for Google Nexus line of devices and I think for early Pixel devices too.
The reliability issues are bordering on a dealbreaker for me at this point. I've had lots of Microsoft hardware; maybe I'm just unlikely, but the only thing that didn't need factory service was an Xbox One. I'm not a Microsoft hater by any stretch, but having to get a Zune 80, Surface 3, Surface RT, and Xbox 360 factory serviced really soured me. I've had several Android and Apple devices at this point and none have needed factory service.
Windows 10 still isn't tuned well for mobile, and the few parts that are just aren't generally reliable. I'm actively working on a UWP app right now and the problems are endless - issues with resizing windows, crashing when themes change (built in apps like Maps have the same issues so its not my code), broken vector icon rendering, etc. The whole thing is based on COM, which tends to lead to leaky abstractions when exposed through higher-level APIs. It is hard enough to make high-quality software on Windows that developers often fail and it leads to weird quirks. Even with traditional desktop apps, getting things like maximize behavior right with customized windows is actually very hard (see Slack, Teams or VS Code on a high/mixed DPI setup).
Here's a small taste of what a modern Windows developer gets to deal with, to accomplish the simple task of displaying a vector icon: https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/1494
Until then it is back to ATL style programming manually editing IDL files, copying and merging the generated outcome.
While forcing .NET devs to keep using C++, now C++/WinRT, because Windows team won't provide WinRT variants of COM based libraries like DirectX.
Sometimes I wonder who is in charge of such decisions.
Setting aside the fact that Android tablet software is still a bit of a mess, are people going to want to watch movies and play games on a tablet with a big crack in the middle? Even surfing the web, you can't really view a page well in landscape. Likewise spreadsheets, word processing, etc
Apps like email which do well with multiple panes would be great, but only if they can mind the gap.
So much of what I use the iPad for is full screen, I'm a bit skeptical about how well those things translate to 2 half screens.
"Two apps at once" is good, but the winner to me is master-detail support in all apps when it makes sense, without fussing around with child/popup windows, tabs or dividers -- this is a huge productivity gain, IMHO. (E.g., email list in bottom, selected email on top, etc.)
Assuming all the apps in question support this view. I'm sure Microsoft's tools will. Not sure about how many others.
> this is a huge productivity gain, IMHO.
Versus what? On an iPad/ tablet, you can have splits where it makes sense int he interface. On this, you are stuck with the hardware split. Obviously it's way better than a phone if that's your compare. So if your job can be done on a phone, this is maybe the boss.
Even Windows 10X now looks like it won't be coming as expected.
Given how the whole Android ecosystem works, in terms of updates and Java support, is not as I would like, but I guess one needs to take such things how they are and not how they could be.
So "Courier" could have been Windows, but it ended up being Android based.
I'd love to know the chain of thought to this thing being created--what problems was it supposed to solve, and for what kind of customer?
Maybe some day MS will make the Surface Duo run Android apps on a full OS, or make enough changes to Android to make it a usable as a primary not consumption-oriented device.
Or if it's like Android apps on my Chromebook where only a single active app actually runs, while all other apps get suspended in the background, even if they're visible.
The latter would make this concept pretty useless so I hope they actually solved this and are planning on upstreaming the changes so all future devices can benefit.
Price is definitely steep. They clearly know their market.
Also weirdly reminds me of the Sony Vaio P for some reason.
I'm not sure if Microsoft strategy to call it a new device category instead of tablet is effective though. I can imagine if Apple was doing it, they would just call it a fold-able/dual-screen tablet.