Microsoft Surface Duo Review: Creating a New Device Category

Summary

Microsoft is attempting to create a new category of dual-screen devices, separate not only from single-screen devices, but folding phones as well. There are other things that any other phone does better — or just more comfortably — even at a tenth of the price. However, there are scenarios where the Surface Duo is more efficient than any other device of any kind, and, on that basis, it succeeds.

Context

Microsoft first announced the Surface Duo back in October 2019 with the intention of whetting developer interest in creating apps for the dual screen device and locking in Google’s commitment on changes to Android. Last month, Microsoft provided crucial details on features and pricing, and then gave select analysts and journalists two weeks with final hardware for review. The Surface Duo is now available for purchase in the United States for $1400 from Microsoft, Best Buy, and AT&T.

Techsponential has previously written about Microsoft’s platforms strategy with Duo; this report provides analysis on Surface Duo’s interface, use cases, and market impact after multiple discussions with Microsoft and two full weeks of hands-on experience.

First, What Is It?

The Surface Duo runs phone software and makes phone calls, but its form factor elevates information consumption over more typical phone use cases. The Surface Duo runs phone apps, and so it can certainly substitute for a phone, but the form factor and initial hardware design requires some fairly significant departures from how consumers have come to use their smartphones.

The Surface Duo folds, but it is purposely a dual-screen device, not a folding phone. When you open up folding phones like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 2 or Huawei’s Mate Xs, the default mode is to have a single app that takes up the large, contiguous surface. That is the default mode for small tablets like Apple’s iPad mini as well. However, when you open up the Surface Duo, the default mode is to run two different apps on each of the displays. Each display is wider than a typical Android phone, which gives content – especially email, notes, spreadsheets, and eBooks – room to breathe. Apps can span both displays and the Surface Duo’s 360 degree hinge mean that it can be manipulated into various shapes (tent, laptop), but it is most natural to use it horizontally, like a pamphlet, jumping back and forth among two separate apps.

The hardware is gorgeous and feels worthy of Microsoft’s $1400 price tag. The hinge is an engineering marvel, with just the right resistance and the ability to stop at any angle. Both displays are calibrated to the same color temperature and colors are bright without being oversaturated. The side fingerprint reader works quickly and is well-placed. Microsoft could not fit in NFC or wireless charging, which is unfortunate, but NFC is not as important in the Surface Duo’s U.S. launch market as it is elsewhere.

The Surface Duo Has a Learning Curve

My first impressions of the software user experience were not positive. Surprisingly, the longer I used the Surface Duo, the more I liked it. While the UI generally worked properly in my testing, I encountered some bugs that required restarting apps, or required me to restart the device (this was before the most recent software update). There are new interface gestures to learn to launch, dismiss, span, move, and get to multitasking. Some of the Duo’s gestures seemingly overlap or conflict with in-app gestures. For example, backing out of a Facebook conversation could get frustrating, and some games wanted to jump to the other display if my swipes weren’t precise. Changing to a different posture (folding or flipping the device) isn’t perfect; the accelerometer was often too slow or too quick to react, leading to some frustrating situations where you try actions twice, and the Surface Duo ends up stuck in the wrong mode. However, the real improvement wasn’t once I committed the gesture system to muscle memory. The key is to accept that the Duo prioritizes certain work modes and adds friction to others, and adjust your use of the Surface Duo accordingly.

Ideal Surface Duo Use Cases

The more I used the Surface Duo, the more I saw information consumption and management scenarios that are improved thanks to the two screens. Microsoft’s Panos Panay likes to talk about how the Surface Duo lets you stay in “the flow,” and as touchy-feely as that sounds, the experience really is different, and in some ways better, than a single, larger tablet screen that you need to manually configure. Microsoft’s multitasking approach with two displays is coherent: it’s always obvious where the app is going to launch and in what state. Open an app icon on one screen, and that app opens on that screen. Click a link, and, as long as the opposite screen is unoccupied, the link opens on the opposite display, leaving your original content uncovered and ready for your return without losing your place.

The Surface Duo makes it incredibly quick to zip in and out of apps, pop open an app pair to check package status (FedEx & UPS), social media feeds (Facebook & Twitter), or dive deep into email (Outlook with messages column and content view). I found scheduling on the Surface Duo (Outlook & Outlook Calendar) to be more productive than toggling between apps on a phone or arranging apps manually on a tablet or even a laptop.

Reading feels natural on a device that easily bends into a mini-book form factor. As you'd expect, the Kindle app is one of the best use cases - provided the book is mainly text. (Graphic novels, however, don't work well, despite the wide, colorful panels. They're too small to read entire pages without zoom, and when you do zoom, the hinge and inside bezels - as small as they are -- badly intrude on the experience, breaking up panels, cutting off text, and ruining the art. This is a use case that is significantly better on Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 2.)

I use Excel frequently at Techsponential, tracking client interactions, logging preloaded apps on phones, and light data analysis/charting. However, I had never even considered using Excel on phones because spreadsheets look terrible on long, tall displays. Microsoft updated its Office apps for the Surface Duo, and the Duo's displays are each 3:2, which is far closer to a PC monitor. It turns out that mobile Excel on the Surface Duo is …great? There is enough information in single screen mode, and the bezels aren't much of an issue in spanned mode. Excel on the Surface Duo is still better for looking things up than for building formulas on the fly, but I was shocked that this is even a use case for a phone. And a pretty great one at that.

Microsoft may be prioritizing its Office and Azure-powered franchises over Windows with the Surface Duo, but Windows has not been forgotten. You can pair up the Surface Duo with any Windows 10 machine and it will mirror the full dual-screen phone experience. I briefly tested this and found it to be a bit trippy to run Android apps on your desktop, but it worked.

What Needs Work

There are certain things that this form factor just isn’t good at, such as single-handed use cases like playing puzzle games – it’s just too wide to hold comfortably for long periods of time. Folded in half, the Surface Duo is still 93.3mm across, which is wider than even the largest phablets of yesteryear like Huawei’s Nexus 6P (78mm), Samsung’s original Galaxy Note (83mm), or the Nokia Lumia 1520 (85mm).

Many of the typical things you do a lot on phones, such as taking a photo and posting to social media, are awkward on the Surface Duo. Anything having to do with image capture on the Surface Duo requires multiple steps and more friction than other smartphones and tablets. There is only one camera, and it faces the user, so to take anything other than a selfie, the Surface Duo needs to be folded over, and there is a delay while the Duo figures out what orientation it is in. The Surface Duo’s camera takes fine pictures in good light, but cannot compare to smartphones with more room for large sensors and dedicated wide angle and telephoto units.

The Surface Duo seemingly has perfect 50/50 weight balance between the two screens, but typing on one side of the device is still unwieldy unless you swipe, dictate, or flip the entire device on its side to move the keyboard to the bottom display.

Viewing YouTube content works well in tent or laptop orientation, and fairly well for AT&T TV and SlingTV as long as you are OK with a relatively small image compared to what you’d see on large widescreen smartphone. However, you will need to use headphones, as the speakers Microsoft was able to squeeze into the super-thin 4.8mm case just don’t move a lot of air. You can easily span content like widescreen movies across both displays, but I did not find the experience satisfying: the hinge is in the way, and my brain just never filtered it out like it does for a folding phone’s crease.

Microsoft chose an older Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor for the Surface Duo, but I had no issue with performance quickly launching in and out of social media, productivity, browser tabs, and basic games. The lack of 5G could give someone pause over the long term, but for now, 5G in the U.S. is still developing. However, battery life is unimpressive, hitting 15% by late evening with just moderate use. The Surface Duo should make it through most days now, but once coronavirus restrictions lift, I expect to need to recharge it to make it through a busy day.

There is no external display for notifications. Microsoft has added a peek gesture where you open the Surface Duo just a little, but once you are doing that, I found that I always opened it for full access. Without any way to know whether to open the Surface Duo – and without NFC – Microsoft really needs to offer a smartwatch as an accessory. (I used Samsung’s Galaxy Watch3.)

The Surface Duo can be used with a Surface Pen, but one is not included, and I found that latency was quite high using a Surface Studio Pen. I then switched to the Pen from the Surface Pro X, and, while still not as responsive as the S-Pen Note20 Ultra, response was much better. OneNote can show folder structure when spanned across both displays. Microsoft is really close here, but I had trouble mixing ink and text when I tried to use the Surface Duo as a digital Moleskine.

The Surface Duo does not fit into any of the cupholders in either of my cars (and one is a minivan that can swallow anything), which means that using it for GPS navigation is not a viable use case until somebody makes an extra-wide car mount.

Finally, wide and heavy form factors are not ideal for making phone calls, at least not without headphones of some kind. Microsoft would like you to use Surface Earbuds (not included).

The Competition

Given that this is a new category and previous attempts at dual-screened devices from Kyocera, ZTE, and others have failed, Microsoft largely has the market to itself. LG is the closest, with dual screen case accessories for some of its phones, and Samsung’s folding phones overlap somewhat in productivity use cases, if not design.

LG has tried to get its DualScreen accessory to offer some of the multitasking and utility that Microsoft is bringing to the Surface Duo, but LG’s interface is not as elegant, and it lacks Microsoft’s suite of apps that take full advantage of the form factor. LG’s hardware is downright clunky. The Velvet phone itself is striking and svelte. However, when placed in the DualScreen case it is unbalanced when open and extremely thick when closed. The Velvet has much to recommend it for someone looking for a 6.8” 5G phone at an affordable price, but the DualScreen experience is not comparable to what Microsoft offers on the Surface Duo.

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 2 costs $600 more than the Surface Duo, though early adopters may not be all that price sensitive if they want it badly enough. The Galaxy Z Fold 2 hardware is, frankly, amazing. It’s a phone that does most phone things and then also turns into a tablet, and because of that it’s probably a device that will appeal to more people, if they can afford it. There is some overlap between the two devices, but we expect that the Surface Duo and Galaxy Z Fold 2 will find different buyers (especially outside the U.S., where the Surface Duo is not available).

Microsoft’s own software provides some of the best experiences on the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Multi-pane Outlook is terrific when the Galaxy Z Fold 2 is turned sideways, and the Galaxy Z Fold 2 actually outperforms the Surface Duo for Excel and PowerPoint use thanks to its uninterrupted folding display. That big, 120Hz display with no bezels running down the middle also makes the Galaxy Z Fold 2 better for scrolling through web pages and watching video. Samsung’s speakers are also significantly louder. The Galaxy Z Fold 2 is also more usable as a standard phone now that the front display stretches across the front cover. Samsung’s cameras are significantly better, and easier to launch and use quickly.

Samsung’s software has improved significantly from the original Galaxy Fold as well. However, Microsoft’s multitasking interface is better integrated with the overall experience. Apps generally open and look great on the Surface Duo’s wide screens, but when most Android apps open on the Galaxy Z Fold 2’s main display, they don’t adjust information density or controls for the tablet mode. You can create dual-screen or tri-screen groupings, but you can’t do it on the fly like on the Surface Duo. You also can’t create or open groups from the launcher, first you need to add them to the side bar. Oddly, you can open Gmail and Calendar in split screen, but not Outlook email and Outlook calendar.

Aside from reviewers and a handful of well-heeled early adopters, few people will try both. However, the Surface Duo is ideal for multitasking workflows, while Galaxy Z Fold 2 excels at immersion in a single app, while doubling as a standard, if narrow, phone.

Market Impact

Microsoft is known for iterative improvements, and there are some obvious areas where a future Surface Duo can improve: adding a camera on the rear, improving camera performance, extending battery life, updating the processor with 5G, adding NFC, and moving to higher refresh rate displays. Microsoft could also take a page from other smartphone vendors and create multiple sizes. A narrower Surface Duo would trade some productivity for more phone use cases. A slightly larger Duo with an integrated Pen and a form-factor-optimized version of OneNote could transform the Surface Duo into a creativity/ideation information appliance, fulfilling Microsoft’s aborted Courier dream from the mid 2000’s. Microsoft and Google hope that more app developers support the new dual screen APIs and that other vendors build dual screen Android devices as well.

However, before it can lead a whole new device category, Microsoft needs people to buy the Surface Duo today. It is certainly not a mainstream smartphone, and a pandemic is an inopportune time to launch a $1400 mobile productivity device with a learning curve and some use case limitations. Still, there are things that the Surface Duo does better than a phone, tablet, or laptop, and in those moments, it is so productively delightful I didn’t want to put it down. People who invest in the Surface Duo experience knowing what they are getting into are going to love it, and that should give Microsoft a base of buyers to build around for the future.

To discuss the full implications of this report on your business, product, or investment strategies, contact Techsponential at avi@techsponential.com or +1 (201) 677-8284.

Addendum: The Embargo

Microsoft imposed a unique and restrictive embargo on the Surface Duo, shipping review units to press and a handful of analysts but allowing first impressions to be based solely on the hardware itself – the unit was not even allowed to be photographed with the displays turned on. This was widely criticized as trying to build hype for the device without registering obvious complaints on what was expected to be poor processor and camera performance, instead focusing on how thin the Duo is, and its incredibly well engineered hinge. Of course Microsoft PR wants to create good PR; that is literally their job. There was always a risk of backlash with this approach, and there was one huge stumble – live Surface Duo units were available at AT&T and Best Buy retail stores during the embargo period, where literally anyone not under embargo could do a first look with the displays on. Many did, and posted them to YouTube, providing a glance at the OS without the context of how it is used. That was a mistake.

However, there was a good reason to force reviewers to actually review the phone properly before posting their thoughts: the Surface Duo is the most software-centric mobile device since the original iPhone. The user experience must be actually experienced to form an opinion. The only way Microsoft thought it could get reviewers to give the Surface Duo a proper evaluation was to force them to do the full evaluation without talking about it first. Even if it turns out to have been a successful approach for a new product category, you can only do this once. For the Surface Duo 2, Microsoft should follow a more traditional review process.