Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Surface Duo 2: Can This Be Saved?”.
Hey what’s up mkbhd here, so you remember the original surface duo, the dual screen: foldable android device from microsoft, had a lot of potential and a lot of hype behind it. We were hoping it would be great, and then it just wasn’t really that good at all. Disappointingly it had pretty weak performance, the software was very buggy and uh. The camera was trash, but, like the one nice thing about it was it had really nice sleek thin hardware and a great hinge, but there was a lot to fix. But now, one year later we have the sequel, the shiny, new, dark, colored sequel. The answer to microsoft’s nightmares – the surface duo 2.
sweet. So this isn’t the full review. I haven’t had it for very long, but i have some initial impressions on it, which are that.
I think that this device and all microsoft has done to it, has revealed that this idea may not really have a great feature. It may be fundamentally flawed in the way it’s used. Like microsoft, went through and valiantly improved a ton of stuff about this, especially versus the original. They found a lot of flaws. They made them all objectively, better, and yet some of that stuff still also made it worse, see pretty much all the changes microsoft has made are objectively better than the last one. So there’s a bunch of stuff here they have all new high-end specs inside they’ve made the displays, bigger and faster with thinner bezels, and they added a set of real cameras on the back, and there is much better software implementation to tie it all together. But yet this surface duo has a completely new set of problems that this surface duo didn’t have. But then the cherry on top is this new one is now uh.
14.99 1499. That’S actually more expensive than the first one, which started at 13.99 before it plummeted. The whole year it was out, i think it was eventually like 900 off or something like that, so you might think wow. That’S a bold move, making an even more expensive surface, even when the first one flopped so hard, but this was also clearly gon na cost.
More to make so you might remember, when the first surface duo came out, it had one-year-old slightly out-of-date specs, this one’s launching with the highest end chip. It’S a snapdragon triple eight is eight gigs of ram and up to half a terabyte of storage and they’ve done a lot with this new display here. So, first of all, it’s slightly bigger, it’s 8.3 inches corner to corner now with nearly the same size footprint, because the bezels are smaller all the way around, especially that top bezel no more flash needed, since the main camera system is on the back now, and this Display is also now brighter up to 800 nits and it is higher fresh rate. Now it’s a 90 hertz panel weirdly.
There is no option to change refresh rate anywhere in the display settings like you, can’t knock it down to 60hz if you want to, but whatever everything is smoother, especially while scrolling, but the the main new thing here with this display. Is it curves over the edges? In the middle near the hinge from both sides, so it kind of gives this sort of subtle, waterfall, look and the dual screens now kind of have this effect of looking closer together. Almost like it’s one giant folding screen, and this definitely encourages you to span apps across both displays more often and yet treat it like one big display. The only problem with that is, when you do lots of those important pixels in the middle of the screen, are now just spilling over that edge into being unreadable, but also some are completely missing, like you can’t read, whatever’s supposed to be in those middle few pixels. So any pictures or any text that are supposed to be in the middle of the screen are now just gone, which is beyond annoying. It’S a it’s a bit of a problem for any sort of reading, and you can forget about spanning games horizontally. Imagine trying to aim something with the crosshairs missing now it’s the surface duo, so horizontal gaming isn’t really a huge thing. This is actually a great form factor for split gaming, like this emulator games, all that sort of stuff split screen top bottom gaming and that’s actually one of the biggest i’ve had a little bit of time to play with this game passes on this device, and it’s A lot of fun but yeah the missing text in the middle of the screen – uh – not great, but then the other big change to the hardware as you’ve already seen is it has real cameras on the back now it’s got a whole triple camera system, a 12 Megapixel primary plus a 2x telephoto and a 16 megapixel ultra wide all stacked into this camera bump that has matte rails all the way around the outsides there’s a flash next to it.
There’S hdr portrait mode optical zoom, like these cameras, they’re, not amazing, but they are way more capable than before so objectively. If we just ignore the design for a second, that’s better, like they’ve, put better cameras on this phone device, but you know obviously, microsoft never really wanted to bolt cameras to the back and ruin their like perfectly clean sleek, thin design. That’S why they didn’t do it with the first one and they got the great hardware, but then that meant to take pictures of stuff you’d have to flip it open and use the selfie camera like that, and then this was just a webcam. It was pretty bad. So this time, yeah there’s a set of real cameras on the back, they’ve caved and done it, and i can confirm they’re, all better than the webcam was so having some optical zoom having the ability to take decent videos. That’S all nice! I mean it’s a 2x telephoto which isn’t that great, but it’s something, but now that they’ve made this change, which a lot of people, including me, were wondering if they would do it or not. It turns out that this is now a bit more annoying to use. So, obviously, with this mesa sticking out the back you’re now unable to fully open the surface duo to flat anymore, so anytime, you use it with one hand fold it back.
It’S got to be slightly open like this. Just a few millimeters short of going flat, which is enough to be easy to slip your finger in and like close it quickly, but it is not as comfortable to use it for a while and hold it like this with one hand. Now i do admire that they’ve shaped this camera bump to match the exact angle that the back screen folds over and touches it so that it lays flush just a neat. Little little couple degree adjustment there, it’s nice! It feels like there’s also magnets in here to hold it against that camera bump, but now, as you’ve noticed, that’s covering the cameras, which means anytime, you want to take photos. You have to swivel it down because closing it up covers the camera.
So now you have to have it open fully like this. Every time you take pictures, i don’t know, maybe you do the viewfinder open at the top and then the photos populating at the bottom and that’s cool enough when it works. Maybe that’s more fun for some people for taking pictures, but overall yeah.
That’S it’s physically less convenient, especially when you just want to snap a quick photo real quick. So you can see why this idea, even though it’s a really cool idea, feels broken. Like microsoft found ways to make this objectively better, especially on paper than the last one, but yet it got more annoying. It got worse to use, and i think fundamentally, i was thinking about all the different ways that they could maybe save this.
Maybe they can fix this in some way, maybe making it thicker – maybe you know filling it in so that the camera bump isn’t a bump. What are the things that they could do? I couldn’t come up with any because i feel like the thing that is flawed about this is the lack of any outside display just this passport design, like, of course, there’s a ton of software. Optimization that’s gone into making this ui work with two screens and that’s super cool, maybe making it a little bit thicker would give you some more battery to power these two screens for longer, but that wouldn’t really solve anything. You know, i thought a lot about the aspect ratio about the layout of everything, but even the layouts better here too now the power button and fingerprint reader are combined into one believe it or not. It wasn’t on the first one and i really like the matte black rails and this new darker color.
It just feels much more professional. It feels more, my type to be honest, but even in the software, the software was buggy last time on the surface duo and it is buggy again this time too mainly i’ve been having touch responsiveness, issues where it really doesn’t like when i start a swipe action From off the display like, if i swipe up from the bezel, it constantly doesn’t respond when i do that plus there’s all kinds of missed button, presses and momentary, complete lapses of all responsiveness. It’S still really bad for a device of this price and you know i’d say i hope they can fix it with some software.
But you know, there’s been an issue for a full year now, so i’m not exactly optimistic, but the fundamental flaw is like there’s no outside screen, which means there’s no usability. When it’s closed, you have to open it to do anything so we’ve seen uh, you know even the moto, razer and samsung z, flip 3 have decently usable outside screens and then of course, the fold 3 just has a whole smartphone ui. Basically, on the outside, you can use it a whole bunch without ever even opening it now, there’s a lot of foldables that have all these different ways of using it without opening it.
But with this you have to open it and then unlock it and use it. Every time – and it sounds like such a small thing just sounds, i feel like i’m just like complaining and it seems really petty, but when you actually use it, it becomes a pretty big deal, and this also means anytime. You fully open it and fold it over flat.
You have just straight display glass now on the outside, so if you were to put it in your pocket like this or put it down on a table like this, that makes the glass pretty vulnerable to scratches, and it’s also just the the extra layer of having To open it unfold, it unlock the phone and then get started with everything, even for like the quickest little thing, if you just want to snap a quick picture or you just take it out your pocket for a quick phone call every time, that’s a huge deal To me now you can view some quick things like the time and check your notifications by actually checking that curved over part of the display in the middle of the phone. While it’s closed, which is more than nothing, it is actually super cool that it curves over. So much that you can actually see it and read it in there, but you don’t really interact with it at all and that’s that’s the absolute minimum in terms of functionality and also this is one just one more thing, but this is minor.
If you try to place it down on a desk like this, it works, but with the camera bump now you cannot place it down on a desk on the other side or it’s annoying i mean you can, but it’s very wobbly and annoying. So it felt like an ambidextrous device before now. You always have to remember to get it right.
So here’s my question to you: we’ve seen companies go back on things right like we. Just we just with apple, saw them release the new macbook pro that we’re all loving, because they went back on a ton of the stuff that we’ve hated about the last couple years of macbook pros and now we’re all over it again. And so i wonder if there should be something considered with the surface duo like what do you think, should microsoft give up on the outside screen form factor, or should they do an outside screen or should surface do i would just stay the way it is for The people who, like it, the way it is and who will pay that price to use this as it exists today i don’t know i’m curious. Let me know in your thoughts below in the comments section, i’m very curious. If anyone has any other ideas about surface duo, but that’s pretty much – it anyway stay tuned to the next article, where we have something that i’m a lot more excited about for sure much more positive video, it’s techtober, there’s a lot coming thanks for watching catch, you Guys, the next one peace .