Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Surface Duo Unboxing & Impressions: Hinge Goals!”.
Hey what’s up mkbhd here, and this is something that we’ve been waiting for for a pretty long time ever since over a year ago, when microsoft sort of pre-announced that they’re working on a foldable android surface phone, this is what we’re waiting for now, it’s finally here So this is the microsoft surface duo and this this will be the first time i’ve held it since those initial pre-unveilings now right from the top. This is just an impressions, video and there’s again a limitation of what i’m allowed to show here, and it’s very specific. I can’t turn it on until the full review, so this is going to be a shorter video, but i just wanted to talk for a second about this hardware choice in foldables in general and how i think this actually smartly fits in. So in this uh fancy.
Reviewers kit box here there are some surface earbuds, as well as the duo itself and there’s also a letter from panos about being one of the first to try the duo and how excited they all are about it. Of course, i’m interested in the duo’s box itself here – and i think this smaller box is what we can expect people to actually get when they get the phone. So as we get into it, it’s always weird to see it says: microsoft and android on the same box, but that’s what’s happening here right at the top. You have the device wrapped in some plastic, [ Applause ]. So this is it and wow uh, but i’m gon na put it down for a second, because, notably also included in the box.
We got to show is a surface duo, bumper, which is actually designed to protect the edges of this razor thin foldable, and you also get your paperwork. You get an 18 watt power, brick and you get a usb type-c, cable, okay. So my first impressions of this thing, just holding it, are wow. This thing is thin.
This is an incredibly thin piece of hardware holy smokes and it feels great to hold. So i think a reason by microsoft is limiting this whole first. Impressions thing to just hardware only is because the hardware first impression experience all around is super super positive with this whole tablet phone thing, whatever we’re calling it now, i think once you turn it on and you get a load of those bezels and you start using The last year specs and the not so impressive camera, i think that’s when you start to fall back down to earth about the whole thing, but there’s no denying.
This is a super impressive piece of hardware. The whole outside of this thing is glass, not metal. Like other surface products, so it is shiny, as you can see, reflections from it. But since it’s white, you don’t really see many fingerprints and there is no screen on the outside. It’S just a microsoft logo under the glass on the front and nothing not even any cameras, nothing on the back so clean all the buttons are on the right side, so the volume rocker the power button and then a fingerprint reader which doubles as kind of like A pry point to open the surface duo like a laptop, that’s all on the right side, along with the sim card tray and on the inside.
Here you see the camera up near the earpiece and that flash all up on the inside, plus some other hidden ambient light and proximity sensors and from there it’s really all about the hinge. Now microsoft, making a folding phone to me shows that they believe it is. The future in some way, but the important part is they’ve made this bet here on this hinge. This is a 360 degree hinge, and i think i said out loud within like four minutes of taking it out the box.
I think this is the nicest hinge i’ve ever used in a piece of tech. It is so smooth and firm and satisfying it’s honestly incredible and i’m including laptops and other folding phones and everything in this. I think the hinge engineers specifically for the surface duo here deserve a round of applause and really the best part about all this. Is it can firmly hold itself up at any angle that you want, so you can have it halfway, open or completely flat or anywhere in between really which is super satisfying, unlike something like a galaxy fold, for example, which really just sticks to two positions which are Closed or locked fully open anything in between really isn’t going to work, and then there’s also this little move.
I kept seeing in the demo where, if you want to put it flat on a table, there’s this thing where you kind of place it down and then just press in the middle to get it perfectly flat, and i thought that was nifty. It just ends flat and that’s probably why they didn’t want a camera bump on the back of this thing, because they actually see a lot of people, probably using it, while it’s just sitting on a desk just halfway open a couple. Other things i noticed. Yes, there are magnets inside the surface duo potentially for other accessories, but i was just messing around with a surface pen and yes, it will hold a pen to the back of the surface duo. If you want to it makes sense, i guess to attach it to the back or the side, and a little magnet paper reveals where those magnets are – and this does seem like a perfect form factor for note, taking like writing in a little notebook here. So i’m glad those magnets are in there and i just i don’t know i really can’t get over how thin this thing is. The usbc port on the bottom right side is almost the thickness of the entire half of the tablet.
So if you’ve got a usbc port around you somewhere take a look at that. That’S how thick half of this tablet is, and it actually doesn’t feel flimsy at all. As far as like flex, when you really bend or pry at it and try to twist it. I think that’s thanks to the glass sheets on the front and the back. The only concern i have with the thinness is just, of course, how it’ll do with battery you already know.
Not a lot of internal space means not a lot of battery, and the surface duo has battery in both halves. That add up to about 3 600 milliamp hours and that’s for 8.1 inches of total display, and you know here, might as well toss up the rest of the spec sheet while we’re at it. There is some concern with the older specs, as i’ve mentioned, and i think as soon as you really intake that that’s when the the falling back to earth starts to happen. It’S an amazing first impression, but you know i’m gon na turn this thing on and i’m gon na start using the last year’s specs.
Then i’m going to have this 60hz screen and this 11 megapixel camera, which is also not just a selfie camera, but the primary camera, because you flip it around and take pictures like that. There’S nothing on the back. So you know all this is going to start to wear on you and it’s it’s 1400 bucks. There’S the small battery, there’s the no headphone jack, there’s, no water resistance! There’S no wireless charging! This to me kind of feels it’s so first gen, like the galaxy fold, was that i’m almost already considering not recommending it at all for anyone, because it’s not about buying this as a finished product as much as it is a proof of concept and an attempt To see how this idea of a foldable works so really the point: is everyone has a different way of attacking this new frontier of foldables that we’re moving into whether it’s lg with the dual screen case or the the samsung galaxy fold or the z flip? Or this or the royal flex pi everyone does it different and actually think this is a really smart way to do it from microsoft in 2020, so basically they can just build around this whole dual screen thing for now right, you can have this unique.
360 degree hinge, which again can’t stress enough how amazing that is, and then you don’t have to deal with the extra thickness and all the problems that right now come with the early generation. Not so mature tech of actual folding displays and that’s the stuff that you know samsung and others will have to deal with, but then sometime in the future, after you’re done leaning into the dual screen thing, you can eventually move the surface duo to a foldable screen When the tech is actually good enough to be this thin, i think that’s a good plan. It’S basically the opposite of the samsung plan, where i love a galaxy fold, but it’s going straight from the infant tech that is foldable displays and building a chunky phone around. It to try to make it work, so that’s how we ended up with this, and you know that this is just my first impression. Of course, the full review of this is coming very soon make sure to subscribe and hit that bell. If you want to be among the first to see that when it comes out, but let me know in the comments what you want to know about using a phone like this, is it a phone, a phone tablet like this as a daily driver, because that’s what I’M going to be doing i’m going to turn it on now, thanks for watching catch, you guys in the next one peace. .