Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Microsoft Surface Duo Full Review”.
Thanks to ting for sponsoring this video, we went from paper to screen in what seemed like a blink of an eye and now we’re making another change. Phones and smartphones have really been designed around one shape some fold, some slide, some flip and some definitely flop, but they’ve all been engineered for some part to go to your ear. Some parts to go to your mouth, but making phone calls now is just such a small part of the giant device equation and you look at the direction that smartphone design has been trending. Actually making phone calls is becoming such a less important design. Cue when it comes to these new devices, so when you look at the microsoft duo, it’s easy to look at it as just another novel form factor of a smartphone, but the more i used it the more. I realized it’s not a phone, it’s much much more! Let me explain so the duo is the first, i guess phone in a long time that takes a totally different approach to smartphone design, we’ve seen like foldables before, but in one of their forms, whether closed or open. They look like regular phones that do something else. The duo is completely unique when it’s closed up screens in you can’t use it, and when you open it up it’s much wider than a traditional phone. Everything about it is just different than what we’re used to from.
Essentially, the first time you take the duo out of the box, i think you’re struck by just the sheer thinness of i’m just going to call it a phone, because i don’t know what else to call it. I want to avoid the overused sort of hyperbole term of engineering marvel uh, but there is some crazy engineering that went in to making this thing possible, and this is a just ridiculously awesome hinge. I don’t know how else to describe it. The hinge is amazing in every way. 360 degrees goes all the way around. There’S no hinge wobble. You could stop it at any number of those degrees and it will stay there. The fact that it does all of that will having electronic components going back and forth.
Those screens can talk to each other is even more ridiculous, so hats off to microsoft. For that hinge, it does come with some like drawbacks, though, despite it being so cool, there is a very visible gap between those two screens, so when you’re holding it and you’ve got the phone in front of you, you can see the light coming in between it And that’s not even to say the giant bezels that are inside of that. It’S something that you have to get used to, but the quality of the displays are really good. I mean they’re they’re amoled, so you’d expect the colors to be bright and black to be black, but the quality of how things look on it.
It’S certainly subjective to my eye. The screens. Look absolutely amazing. The duo is also a gorilla glass 5 on the front on the inside on on everything.
So it’s not sort of that magnesium alloy! You might expect from surface products, but that also means because the whole thing’s gorilla glass, you can actually fold its screens out and keep it in your pocket. That way, if you want to it’s, actually how i use it. So when i pulled it out, i could use it a lot quicker than having to open it all the way up, but personal preference. So after using the duo for about two weeks, i’m still struck by how amazing this phone feels in the hand it’s something so different that i haven’t seen before, and that novelty still hasn’t worn off all right. So that’s like just one part of the phone. That’S the hardware. The software, though kind of what makes everything work is different as well and, quite frankly, it’s complicated. So microsoft is viewing the duo as a two screen phone, not a foldable and while like to us that difference might be unclear, i think to them and the direction they want to take.
The line makes a ton of difference. So here’s how microsoft envisions people using the duo, essentially it’s single tasking, multiple apps so having two apps running side by side on each screen and in that aspect the duo absolutely delivers. When you have two separate apps doing two separate things, you can appreciate the direction microsoft is going and what the duo is capable of doing, having email on one and social media feed open on another. It’S an awesome experience. The other vision is screen extension, so for right now, it’s mostly first party, microsoft, apps and some select third-party apps, like the kindle that can sort of take advantage of those two displays, while using one app so in outlook. For example, when you open an email, it’ll jump over screens, that’s cool to have, and that adds utility to what you get over a traditional phone and also some other cool stuff are happening that microsoft envisions you using on a daily basis. You can open the launcher from either side and whatever side you open the app on it’ll open on that screen. So other cool stuff that’s happening here is keyboards because of the big form factor.
If you have it open, you can’t really hold it and do big typing. So microsoft has a swift key on here. You open up an app on the right screen. The keyboard is going to come up on that screen and write a line.
If you do it on the left, it’ll align on the left, it’s a small tweak that makes sort of one thumb typing on this really easy to use and sort of lends itself to a premium. Elegant experience, also something that microsoft has here is app groups. So you can sort of select one icon, that you create that’ll open, two things up, so maybe it’s youtube and twitter or whatever it might be for you it’s nice to have. I didn’t use it that much and i kept forgetting my use case tends to differ on day to day and task the task, but there are two things that you do all the time it works really well for things like that, if you needed another sign that Microsoft isn’t viewing the duo as a traditional smartphone.
It’S the camera, it’s 11 megapixels is only one of them and i’m kind of looking at it more like a webcam than i am a traditional smartphone. Camera photos aren’t great that come out of it. They’Re, fine and they’re, probably on the low end of average, when it comes to photos across the smartphone space, but the fact you can move it around, use it for different angles. Depending on how you arrange and fold the device does give it a lot more utility than really any other single camera out there and what it is perfect for, especially now are those you know.
Microsoft team calls zoom calls. You know. Google hangout calls all that stuff. You’Re doing web chatting it’s really good at stuff like that. So if you’re thinking about picking up a 1400 surface duo, it’s it’s not cheap. You might want to save some money.
I think that’s where something like ting can really come into play. So, first, if you go to john.ting.com and you decide to sign up, you’ll get fifty dollars of credits and part of what the beauty of ting is. First, you can switch very easily use it for a few months, while you’re home decide to switch back. If you want, but also it’s not a prepaid service, you pay for what you’re, using and you’re only going to pay for the data that you are actually consuming, and that is a giant value proposition that you just can’t get with the other major carriers, especially now People are looking to work from home. I think it’s really helpful to save your money so be able to make phone calls or narrowly would porting.
Your number over is incredibly easy. They send you a sim card and you really just pop it in, and you are good to go. They make it very simple.
The process of switching phones sometimes can seem daunting. Ting has simplified the process completely and if you decide to sign up again at john.ting.com they’re going to give you 50 worth of credit, and that’s only good for september. So if you want to sign up, you may want to consider doing it sooner rather than later. I think, what’s holding the duo back right now is it holds back a lot of any sort of thing that has a new form factor? That’S third party apps microsoft went with android because they didn’t want to make the same windows phone mistake.
They wanted app support on their hardware, and that is a giant deal to them, and android obviously has a huge, app marketplace with with google play, and so that was paramount to do a success, but, like any new form factor developers might not want to support it Until people start using it and people might not start using it until developers support it. That’S where i started to run into a lot of problems with the software so take instagram, for example, obviously, a very popular app that a lot of people use on their phones. When i was in somebody’s story, for example, i wanted to swipe home a simple gesture that you can do on on pretty much every other android device that issue it didn’t work all the time on the duo. Sometimes i wanted to open two apps side by side. It wouldn’t work and that’s where you start to see some of the software bugs that are plaguing at least this iteration of the duo and this software that we have right now at launch, and the good side about that is.
Software can be fixed. But as you start to use the duo more and more and sort of the luster wears off and you have to live with it, use it work with it. You do start to notice that it’s an imperfect device and i start to do multiple things and i have those sort of apps that won’t open or sometimes stutters and slow down. It’S hard to wonder if maybe some of that is also due to hardware the snapdragon 855 is in here instead of the 865 plus that’s out right now on premium devices, probably not so much on that side. 855, it’s a very capable chip.
What does give me pause, though, is six gigs of ram uh when it comes to android and multitasking a device like this. That is made to have two apps running fully side by side. I do worry over the longevity of the device that six gigs might just not cut it so yeah. There are definitely some software issues, but the company’s name.
It’S microsoft. The soft is in there for a reason, they’re a software company, so i’m inclined to believe and their track record with the surface line proves that they move really quickly with software updates. So by time you watch those videos. Some of these issues may already have been fixed and if they are we’ll update it, but i wouldn’t let software hold you back from considering the duo at least right now, so you look at the duo from microsoft’s perspective, it’s very clear that they do not view This as just a phone but more a computer in your pocket, look at the emissions that are on here.
You do not have things like wireless charging. You do not have nfc, you do not have any official iep rating things. You’D expect your phone to have, but not your laptop. Now those are still things that are really important to me nowadays and for those reasons, i’m not sure i could use the duo as my only device day in and day out, but the duo is a complimentary machine as a small computer in my pocket that can Go along with the smartphone might be a perfect sweet spot, but a 1400 price point.
It’S a very expensive sweet spot. That’S probably not for a lot of people right now. Quite frankly, i think that’s! Okay! By microsoft. They are aware of the shortcomings of the duo and they know it’s not for every consumer out there, but i also think that they know the direction they want the duo to go what gen, 2 and gen 3 might be, and while we are not aware of What that grand division is microsoft track record, i think, gives them the benefit of the doubt for how the duo can improve over the years.
But judging this as a device right now as it stands, it’s a hard one to recommend for everybody. But if you watch this video, you keep saying yes, i want that and i need that. That’S who the phone is going to be for as a complimentary machine. It excels as a dedicated phone.
I think it falls short and what the vision is going to be in the future. It’S probably somewhere in between .