Today we're going to be doing a durability on Microsoft's newest phone – The Surface Duo 2 that
costs $1,500. It's got two screens though which means our durability test will be twice as fun.
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[Intro]
In front of us today we have the Microsoft Surface Duo 2.
Last year's Duo 1 was concerningly flexible in some weird places,
but did ultimately survive my durability test so this should be interesting. Inside the box
we see there is no charging brick, just a USB-C charging cable. Lack of a brick is fine with me,
I have about 700 sitting in a drawer. I'm not sure what the rest of y'all are doing though.
Apparently the Duo 2 is all about multitasking...kind
of like having 2 displays on your desktop. The biggest difference between this year's Duo
and last year's Duo is that Microsoft has actually added cameras this time around and that
camera bump is slightly angled so the phone can still flip all the way around and kind of close
together...kind of. Seems a little out of place, not going to lie, but not a deal breaker. Having
cameras is more important than it folding flat. But it's kind of a bummer we have to compromise.
The hinge holds it's place at any point during the opening process and can be propped up like
a laptop so you can set it on a table and watch YouTube videos on the upright screen.
It's also got magnets on the back which can be used to mount Microsoft's stylus to the phone. And
once again, I am a fan of this design, with some caveats though, but I'll get to those in a second.
First, let's scratch the screens. Normally with folding phones like the Samsung Z Flip
and the Z Fold, the folding screen is made from a super soft plastic. We can see what
material the screen is made from on this Duo 2 by using the Mohs scale of hardness. A level 2
or 3 would be plastic. A level 5 or 6 would be glass, and a level 8 or 9 would be sapphire.
Luckily we start seeing scratches at a level 6 with deeper grooves at level 7.
And scratches at a level 6, with deeper grooves at a level 7,
which does make this the most scratch resistant folding phone we've tested so far this year.
No plastic screens here. Now this does mean there is a substantial gap and bezel between the two
halves, just like you would expect on dual desktop displays. The front facing camera is protected by
that same Gorilla Glass Victus. The sides of this $700 smartphone in 6 months are made from plastic,
like we see around the USB-C port and the plastic SIM card tray.
Microsoft actually tweeted that their phone is IPX1, which means it's water resistant to singular
droplets of vertically falling water, like the tears of Duo owners after seeing the price drop.
You should still grab a tissue though because the IP rating system only counts in fresh water
and not salt water. And this entire frame and buttons are made from plastic...minus
the hinge. The hinge is made from metal.
One cool little gimmick though, if we plug in my Anker power bank we can see that the
charging indicator notifies us through the curved glass on the spine of the phone. This
also works for notifications, and if you have a magnifying glass you can even see a little clock.
Samsung, of course, solved the notification issue by adding a whole front display
which would have been useful here on the Duo 2 instead of just peeking through the hinge. If you
have to pick up and kink your phone to the side to see notifications, you might as well just open it.
One substantial improvement over last year's Duo though is that this time around instead of only
having one internal selfie camera to work with, we finally have some real cameras on the back. A 12
megapixel normal camera, a 12 megapixel telephoto, and a 16 megapixel ultra wide – all protected
under that same angled glass camera bump. I'm a fan of this improvement. However, I don't deal
much with software during my reviews, but having watched other reviews on YouTube, I understand
that this Duo 2 is still just as finicky as the Duo 1, which is unfortunate. With it's dual 5.8
inch 90 hertz displays, Microsoft could really come out swinging...if they ditched Android. And
hear me out. Microsoft should own what they own, drop Android and plop a full fledged
Windows operating system on here. The Surface Pro tablets running full Windows are pretty amazing.
Luckily we have two screens to burn so I can keep on talking. Microsoft could crush the
mobile productivity space in ways that no one else can. But here they are, trying to adapt a super
creative phone to an Android operating system that prefers boring rectangles. The Surface Duo 2 is
just begging to be a full fledged PC in my pocket, but it's being held back by Android. Can you
imagine pulling a full Windows 11 PC out of your pants. It already does 4K video over USB-C so I
could connect to external monitors while traveling by adding a Bluetooth, mouse, and keyboard...I'm
getting excited just thinking about it. I'd never bring my laptop anywhere ever again, which is
actually probably the very reason why Microsoft doesn't do it. The dual AMOLED screens both
lasted an incredibly long time under my lighter though without leaving much of a mark at all.
Finally, we do have a side mounted fingerprint reader, which normally
I do prefer, but since this one is made from plastic, and I already scratched it,
it's having a hard time performing. I think we can let it slide though, it's kind of had a hard day.
Now it's time to see how structurally solid this multitasking glass and plastic sandwich really
is. Yeah, I can fold at 360 degrees minus a few for that camera bump, but one annoying thing is
that the phone does have to be opened each time you get a phone call and closed again after the
call is over. Luckily, even when slammed shut with an exorbitant amount of force, the glass is not
cracked. Slamming it shut backwards also has no effect on the phone. Nice work so far, Microsoft.
Now the bend test. When bent from whatever side this is, we don't see any flex from the hinge,
but we do see some massive flex from the other end of the phone.
I'm going to say the true winner here is the Gorilla Glass Victus bending and flexing to
the extreme on all sides without shattering. It's the only thing holding this phone together
cuz it sure is an Android. Well, Microsoft Surface Duo 2 has survived my durability test.
I'm curious though, would you swap your Android phone for a dual screen full fledged pocket
computer? Do you think Android is holding the Duo series back from something epic?
Let me know your thoughts down in the comments. Come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter.
And thanks a ton for watching, I'll see you around.