Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Surface Duo Review: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly!”.
Hey what’s up mkbhd here, and this is the surface duo screen on in all of its super sweet hinge, well-built ultra thin glory. It’S an amazing piece of hardware, but actually using it, as i have been for the past two to three weeks is a bit of a mixed bag, so i’m just gon na come right off the top and say it. I don’t think most people should buy this and that’s fine. I think, there’s a lot of pretty cool devices out there that just aren’t right for most people to buy and use.
That’S all right, but now that you know that right off the top of the review, i want to approach this a little bit of a different way, a little more conceptual and just highlight the good, the bad and the ugly which actually for for surface duo. I’M gon na adjust a little it’ll, be the good, the meh and the bad, because there are some really good pieces and some really good ideas. Then there’s some meh stuff that didn’t really quite work out and then there’s some really bad too.
But the most interesting thing is almost all of this comes from it being a first generation device. This is the first surface duo. It’S the first foldable phone from microsoft.
It’S the first android phone from microsoft. It’S the first dual screen pocketable device with no cover screen. Like this, the first razer thin phone with a 360 degree hinge and two five-inch displays like this.
So it’s the first at a lot of things. But the thing is it’s, the second generation of most things, that’s the most interesting, or at least the most telling like that’s when you get to see all of the learnings about what went well and what didn’t go well and what they can change versus what they Can’T that’s what’s exciting, i’m literally already looking forward to surface duo 2 like a lot, but let me just show you what went well and what didn’t with this one, [ Applause ]! So what’s the good? Well, if you remember the first impressions video, where nobody was allowed to turn it on uh, i was raving about that hardware and that hinge – and i am sticking by that – the crazy thinness is obviously the first thing that strikes you. It’S barely thicker than a usbc port on each side and then the 360 degree hinge.
It’S awesome. It has this smoothness, but also firmness to it where it can stop in any position. That’S just awesome so props to the hinge engineers and the result is all these postures, these different modes that you can hold or prop up the device.
There’S book mode horizontal with you know, one screen on each side kind of like a book like this. There is compose mode so keyboard on one screen: content on the other single screen mode, thanks to the hinge flip, it all the way around 360 degrees pick a screen, there’s also tent mode and peak mode and right as you get into all these postures, things do Get pretty complex because now the device is responding to a variety of orientation, changes and state of fold changes and we’ll get more into the bugs, of course later in this article, but when it works well, it’s really cool. It’S really nice. You can open up an app on one screen and literally do anything you want on the other screen.
You can read two things at once. You can watch a video on one screen and take notes on it. On the other screen. You can move the video to the other side and move the notes back to the other side. You can just mess around you.
Can you can close something and multitask while the video keeps going, you can always switch? What screen something is on or even drag to. The middle and span it between two screens now not every app, looks good spanned across both screens matter of fact, most don’t like right now, it’s up to developers to get in and update their apps and take advantage of this multitasking experience, which may not happen very Quickly, depending on how popular this is, but if you look at microsoft’s suite of apps, the 365 suite outlook is a really good example where you span it across and you get email on one side and you can. You can use your calendar and view single events on one side and the calendar on the other, it’s great so for me and surface duo, i found i tend to start by opening it up in book mode and then i slowly get into whatever i’m doing, which Is usually just on one side and then it’s kind of awkward having the other side just kind of staring at me with nothing happening, wasting power, so i often switch over to single screen mode and use it like that and that’s cool. It keeps the volume rocker and the power button on the right hand, side it’s not bad. Basically, it’s just a little wider than normal for typing, which i will again get to in a bit, but hey, there’s always compose mode for when i need to do some really extended typing, like crafting a beautiful tweet with no typos or you know, writing an email Really the best example of this and microsoft knows: multitasking is a huge upside for surface duo, but samsung.
Does it too on the fold? Is the app pairs, so they call them app groups and you can launch two apps at the same time, two different apps and you can come up with all sorts of sweet, combos and great ideas for how to use these. All you got to do to make one of your own is pick an app hold. It down. Select app group pick the second app to pair them together then pick which screen you want each one to be on then create it, and just like that, i’m feeling, like an absolute productivity machine, pulling out the surface duo, flipping it open, launching a calendar in the Email at the same time – and yes, that’s easily my most common app group – it’s just so good – it makes so much sense with the dual screens, typically when you’re multitasking on a phone. If you even do this at all you’re like dragging two different windows, around sort of abstractly and even on the fold, you can do three at once, but how many people are really doing that with this? It’S just kind of staring you in the face like you have to you have to multitask. So that’s what it does well really. Well, that’s the core of what makes it a surface. So now, let’s get into this stuff that is uh meh, so the bezels, a lot of people out here are really not feeling it.
I definitely wish they were thinner, but you also have to realize the side. Bezels uh are actually a measure against accidental touches. That’S about as thin as you could get them without starting to touch the screen all the time, but i just think the top and bottom bezels are a little thick, then pocketability. So, okay, it is two 5.6 inch displays, but, as you can tell they’re very wide for if it was a normal 5.6 inch phone plus those bezels, so the whole thing is shaped like a passport that you might be more likely to put in a back pocket.
So for me it does stick out a bit in the front pocket i’ve kind of gotten used to it uh. But at this point, there’s there’s some big phones out there and this one sticks out, above all the rest as a little bit tough on smaller pockets. Maybe a little bit narrower would have been more palatable and then typing overall yeah. It’S it’s all right, like it’s a it’s a mixed bag like i said so, the compose mode where you’re just typing on the bottom screen, and you have whatever content on the top screen.
That’S fine and microsoft. They partnered with swiftkey on this keyboard for android. That sort of smartly adapts to whatever posture you’re in and shifts the keyboard accordingly.
So if you’re in book mode, you can’t really type with one hand all over that one side screen. So if you need to it shifts the keyboard over and on one side, you can reach all the keys. It’S still way slower than two thumb typing, but it’s better than nothing. The only bummer here is uh other third-party keyboards.
Don’T have this optimization yet so my keyboard of choice is gboard and it just looks silly trying to span across the whole thing. So typing was hit or miss got ta, use, swiftkey and then performance. It’S you know, look we knew it wasn’t gon na be the best performer. It was in development for a whole year, so it has last year’s specs, snapdragon 855 and six gigs of ram it’s not going to benchmark the highest. We knew that, but i think just using it, you start to see performance issues and i think my biggest performance issue here was just overall fluidity at 60, hertz and sure that’s partially, because i am coming from other smooth high refresh rate flagships, including the new galaxy Fold actually, but i’m also just noticing a ton of little hiccups and lags while just moving around and multitasking.
I think this device, that’s geared specifically for multitaskers, could have hit us with a little bit more than six gigs of ram like. If it was me, i would have wanted like 12 gigs of ram in this guy, but yeah if you’re used to flagship performance or any other high-end performance from an expensive phone, you kind of get it here, but overall meh and then battery life is also. You know kind of middle of the road better than i thought it would be.
Actually so standby time is pretty good. It’S a 3600 milliamp hour battery, so i find when i’m opening it and using it like two screen multitasking. I can start to bleed through battery pretty fast and i can kill it in a day now, when i’m switching to one screen mode, which i did more often than not, which by the way, is kind of rough with some uh car gps’s like if you try To put it in your dashboard, it’s kind of silly, but either way when i’m using it one screen, i’m not drawing power from the back screen as much so i’m actually getting better battery life. When i do that and right now, i’m at half battery at 1 30 pm it’s acceptable. But again you know you don’t have wireless charging. You only have 18 watt fast charging, so overall the battery meh, but then we get to the bad like the stuff that it’s truly terrible at, and i don’t throw that word around very often. But it’s when you get this first gen stuff, sometimes you’re just gon na not have things go well right and so i’ll even try to explore a little bit. Why i think some of these things went so bad. So, first of all the speaker, the speaker is absolute trash and i think it’s pretty simple, there’s just not enough room in here for some great speakers like it’s a thin body, they’re, not really top or bottom mounted, like you might expect to find them.
It’S uh. Just at the top here in the earpiece and the slot up there, that’s it so at absolute maximum volume, it sounds like a normal smartphone speaker at 50 volume and inside a tin can like it’s pretty brutal, not enough room for a good speaker here and then The camera, so the camera is in fact terrible. The quality is trash and we kind of knew it would be already because it’s like the opposite of what the zenfone is doing so on the zenfone 7, the huge main camera swivels around and becomes like basically the world’s best selfie camera. On the surface duo you swivel around the selfie camera and it becomes possibly the worst main camera you can have at least the worst i’ve seen in a 1400 phone anyway – and you know, microsoft does call it an adaptive 11 megapixel camera. So it can tell when it’s taking a selfie and optimized for faces versus when it’s taking a regular photo but yeah all the optimization in the world isn’t gon na save this you’re, not gon na make a webcam feel like a big optically stabilized sensor. It’S just not gon na take good photos, but look it’s not just the quality of the photos, this bad.
It’S also just the ergonomics of taking a photo there’s, no back camera like we’ve established so every time i want to take a photo of something in front of me. I have to do this flip it around unlock it open the camera app and then it’s going to be in selfie mode. So now i have to try to swivel it around and get it to flip and by the time, i’m doing all this half the time. The shot is gone or i don’t even feel like taking a photo anymore. So it felt like it actively discouraged me from taking photos and videos and really the worst bug is trying to get it to switch to the front viewfinder you’re supposed to be able to double tap, to get it to switch. But it still stays in that selfie mode so often and pretty much anywhere else in the ui. You can force it to switch screens at any time by double tapping the off screen and it usually works great. But i guess in the camera, it’s not listening to the double tap and the accelerometer is difficult to get it to switch it’s rough and then there’s a there’s, a flash up there in the in the top bezel.
Just to what. Why is there a flash? Is anyone really using this for nighttime photography but look microsoft? They know their audience right. This is the same company that has the the biggest most advertised feature of their new ear. Pods is the ability to swipe through powerpoint, slides, like the surface duo? Buyer doesn’t really take a ton of photos and videos and stuff it’s not a big deal. This will be fine for the occasional video chat. You know scanning documents, maybe a selfie once in a while, but i think the point is just leaving it at that is sacrificing what most people would want, which is like a nice set of cameras on the back, for what they’ve already decided they want, which is A nice thin device with a 360 hinge that folds flat and i think that’s going to hold it back.
I mean don’t get me wrong. I still raved about how thin it was in the hardware and how much i love it, and i like that. I could get creative and prop it up in tent mode and get videos of myself without needing anyone’s help, even though the videos were garbagio quality that was kind of cool. But the theme that i’m getting at here is overall practicality suffering at the expense of folding.
It in half is the thing that’s holding back all: first generation, folding phones, it’s the challenge for all of them, and it’s definitely happening here with surface duo. This phone has no wireless charging, no ip rating, no real ecosystem around it very little app support out of the gate and even a lot of the little things you might hope for in a phone of this price, no 5g, no headphone jack, no high refresh rate. No super fast wireless charging, not great haptics.
You know. Practicality is clearly suffering to achieve this form factor, but in future generations, when this actually improves and they’re able to add back those things. That’S when foldables will actually have a convincing future when it’s not like you’re, sacrificing and sacrificing, but you happen to get it to fold now when the fold is just another feature, that’ll be a sweet future.
That’S the day! That’S that’s what i’m looking forward to. So you know you do file this first, one in do not buy but keep an eye on it, because i really think they’re on to something i like the dual screen thing. It’S the same reason i sit in front of dual screen monitors at my desk.
Instead of an ultrawide, it’s because the productivity, the staying in your flow, the compartmentalization of having two screens, it works, it’s real, and so i’m looking forward to the next surface duo and that’s the review of the first one thanks for watching catch, you guys the next One peace .