- A portion of this video is sponsored by Surfshark.
For the first time in five years, Microsoft has a phone.
What do you mean it's not a phone?
(upbeat music)
Yeah, of the many things to understand
about the all-glass, Android-powered, dual-screen device
called the Surface Duo,
the fact that it's not meant to be a phone
is the second most important one.
I mean look, it has an earpiece and mic,
you can force it into that role of a smartphone.
but it's better to think of it
as another device you carry,
a pocket-friendly version of the Surface
you might be familiar with from the PC space.
And just like those Surfaces,
the Duo is more expensive than competing products.
It's more ambitious as well.
And this is the most important thing to understand,
you probably shouldn't buy one in its first-generation.
That shouldn't come as a surprise.
Almost every first-generation product is a risky buy.
Just look at those foldables I love.
The first Galaxy Fold was rushed
to market and got recalled.
The first Motorola Razr revival had enough compromises
that even I held off buying one.
It's only now that we're seeing wave two of those products
with the Razr 5G and Fold2 showing early signs of greatness
that we can look back and say,
"I sure am glad I didn't write off that whole category
just because the first attempts were shaky."
So it is with the Surface Duo.
And what's interesting to me is the things
that I was most concerned about going into this review,
those are the things that have been the least of my worries
over my two weeks with the device.
Battery life was the biggest surprise of the bunch
given how insanely thin this thing is.
While I do need to charge it every night,
over two weeks of 16-hour days
it's never died on me before midnight.
Pocketability is another pleasant surprise.
Yeah, it's more comfortable in a cargo pocket,
but it does fit in standard ones.
If you were a guy clothes anyway.
And the other two potential showstoppers
I hear people talking about are almost totally solved
by the use of a smartwatch.
I'm talking about the lack
of a cover display for notifications.
Even the most basic Wear OS watch will give you
all the notifications an external screen would.
And most of those watches will also let you
tap to pay for your daily coffee.
What if he's still pay the old fashioned way
and prefer your wristwatches dumb?
Well, you still probably don't need an outside display
as much as you think.
See, when you're new to the Duo,
with the parallel to a Moleskin
is so overriding, so obvious,
it's easy to fall into the mental trap
of thinking that's the only way to close it.
But instead, try to think of it more like a spiral notebook.
All you've got to do is fold it backwards,
and you've got a traditional, slab-style Android device
with a screen exposed all the time.
It's wide, yeah, but it's also incredibly thin,
not much thicker than an iPhone 11 Pro.
That's what helps make it
more pocketable than you might think,
and bellyaching about bezels aside, beautiful to boot.
So okay, the Duo can be used as a big smartphone
with an optional second display.
Great, is that useful?
The answer I've found
is three different flavors of sometimes.
The first is what I use most often,
keeping an eye on a background task
while doing something else.
Like if I'm walking somewhere,
I can catch up on Twitter
while keeping Google Maps up in full screen
or track my inbound Grubhub or Lyft driver.
Or if I'm in a particularly talkative group chat
which I usually am,
I can keep up with that conversation on the second screen
instead of getting constant out-of-context alerts
on top of my main one.
The second use case is literally doing two things at once.
Like curating a shot list based on a script I've written
or logging into an app using two-factor authentication.
And the third is what Microsoft calls spanning.
This is filling up both displays with a single app.
Most of the time,
this frankly sucks because Android doesn't know the seam
between the screens is there.
It just sees a big, wide canvas like a tablet.
As I discussed in the first episode of "Into the Fold,"
that seam in the middle is ultimately why I think
foldables are the real future,
But Microsoft at least for this generation
thinks differently and as such,
it has optimized its own Office suite for spanning.
So Outlook is pretty cool.
You can put your mail list on one side,
the full body of the email on the other.
And this is huge,
the multi-column support in the new Kindle app
has made the Duo my favorite $1,400 ebook.
Seriously, it's great.
Now credit where it's due here,
this isn't a first-of-its-kind product.
LG has offered second screens for its phones
over the past few years in the form
of somewhat clunky clip on cases.
But by making the Duo's double displays
both permanent and pretty,
Microsoft sort of tricks you into using them more often.
So you find more situations where they come in handy.
A banking app and a calculator,
a newsfeed and a transit ticket,
a dinner menu and a calorie counter.
And since the concept originated on desktops,
it translates well back to them too.
If you're willing to carry a keyboard and mouse,
ideally more portable ones than mine,
what a potent and productive mobile workstation
this could be.
Now I say could be (light music)
because in its current state,
the Duo hurts my productivity instead of helping it.
Yeah, remember how I started off saying
first-generation products are often bad?
Well, that's usually because they're undercooked,
and the Duo is pretty raw in the middle.
Example, a couple of days ago
I forgot to charge my laptop,
so it was almost dead when I got to the coffee shop
to write this review.
I thought well, golden opportunity to put
the productivity promise to the test
by writing my script on the Duo, right?
Well, after just a few minutes
I got so frustrated with typos and input lag,
I just couldn't continue, I went home.
I thought maybe it's SwiftKey.
Maybe Microsoft's keyboard is just slow.
But then I installed it on my Razr 5G review device,
and nope, it's rock solid.
So I factored in other bug notes I'd been taking
alongside reviewers from Android Central, Windows Central,
and about five other sites.
Most of our Duos often misinterpret
a single tap as a long press, that's annoying.
When you turn over the Duo,
it's accelerometers are supposed to tell it to flip screens
or at least give you the option to double-tap to do so.
That's kind of a crapshoot every time.
And daily, it has issues
fully registering swipes to get back home
or to switch which screen you're running an app on.
And back at the keyboard
even when I switch over to Gboard
which by the way only works well in portrait mode
because landscape buries the Space bar,
the haptic response doesn't
quite keep up with my keystrokes.
It feels like an issue
with how the display registers touches
or maybe it's just optimization problems, I don't know.
And I also don't know
whether it's fixable through software updates.
Microsoft has promised some of those
to enable things like double-tap to wake,
notification support in the peak view,
and hopefully squashing the lingering bugs.
But as you know,
you should never buy a product based on future promises.
Only based on what it can deliver when you drop the cash.
Speakers samples, a few photos,
and solitaires still to come
after a quick word from today's sponsor.
(soft music)
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Now long term subscribers already know this,
but for the newcomers among you
it's important for me to say it.
I am not rooting for the Duo to fail.
I love strange new form factors.
I admire companies that take risks.
And the last thing I wanna see
in the smartphone world is another stolid slab.
But there's no way around it.
In its current state, the Duo feels rushed.
Using it reminds me of how I felt using the Palm Pre
when I bought it on launch day in 2009.
And I'm frankly surprised Microsoft put it out
to reviewers like this,
especially given the company's history in mobile.
As a Windows Phone fan,
I still remember the pain of using 2015's Lumia 950
which to this day stands
as one of the worst product I've ever reviewed
because it was launched too soon with too little Polish.
And the captain in "Top Gun" said it best.
- Your family named ain't the best in the Navy.
You need to be doing it
better and cleaner than the other guy.
Now what is it with you?
- Of course, Surface is not Windows Phone.
You might have forgotten,
but back in 2012 Surface was a punchline,
best-known for a nearly billion dollar write down
with news anchors for getting its name
and using them as iPad stands, it was sad.
To go from that to a successful product line that showcases
some of the slickest hardware
and computing, that's impressive.
And it's indicative of what Microsoft is capable of
when it really wants to make something happen.
So if you're hopeful that Duo
will eventually come into its own,
there is precedent for it.
Android 11 should bring
native UI improvements for dual-screen devices.
And the hardware, I am smitten
by how beautifully it realizes the dream
of an Inspector Gadget-style computer book,
condensed into a futuristic form
that seems right at home in "Westworld."
Every time I fold it shut and here it's magnets...
(imitates click)
The two halves home,
it somehow lends more satisfaction
to whatever task I've just completed
especially when that task
was a rousing game of windows solitaire.
And the fact that I can use
the Surface pen on either display
and then stick it to the front cover
magnetically is almost delightful enough to make up
for the pen not coming in the box
and that magnetic attraction
being accidental instead of intentional.
But if you're gonna brute force
a new category into existence,
this kind of more than a phone,
less than a laptop specialty device,
well, that takes both clarity of concept
and excellence in execution.
I think the Duo has the former, but not the latter.
And I also think that most folks will prefer a phone
that can do most of what the Duo does
while also packing a camera
that you don't just have to put up with.
With a price falling between
Samsung's excellent Galaxy Note 20 Ultra,
and Galaxy Z Fold2, and many more stumbles than grand slams
where the software's concerned,
the Surface Duo is that weirdo I want to love,
but can only recommend to the hardest-core Microsoft fans.
Come to think of it,
that's how I ended my Lumia 950 review too.
Here's hoping things go differently this time around.
Folks, I'm gonna keep carrying the Duo
alongside my other phones for the next few months,
and I'll be tweeting
and Instagramming as new updates come in.
Feel free to ask me about the Duo in those venues.
Subscribed to the MrMobile on YouTube
so you don't miss followup coverage,
and don't just rely on my impressions.
Check out the full reviews
on both Android Central and Windows Central.
My friends at both sites were a huge help to me
as I wrote this script.
Disclosure, this video was made possible
by a Surface Duo review sample provided by Microsoft.
But MrMobile works for you, not the manufacturers.
Microsoft provided no compensation for this coverage
and was given no copy approval rights
or early preview of same.
That means they're seeing it
for the first time right alongside you.
Until next time, thanks for watching.
And like the New York highway billboards say,
COVID is still a risk.
So mask up and stay safe while you stay mobile my friends.