Remember the Microsoft Surface Phone? We’ve been writing about it for about half a decade now, starting back in the days when Nokia was a part of Microsoft. It has passed through a few changes, but it has finally arrived in the shape of the Microsoft Surface Duo. Unveiling yesterday during the special Surface event, the product is a bit underwhelming at first.
First of all, what we’re seeing here is a mere prototype and the final version will be made available around the holiday season of next year. Microsoft Surface Duo is also very light on the specs, in the official announcement. It feels a bit like the ZTE Axon M had a baby with a Nintendo 3DS. It has a hinge that allows it to rotate at 360 degrees and comes with two 5.6 inch screens.
It’s not very clear if those are LCDs or OLEDs… The screens are on the inside and there’s none outside, but if you rotate the device the inner screens go outside. The hinge is also rather simple compared to what we’re seeing on the Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X. This device runs Android, oddly enough, as Microsoft didn’t feel the need to put the new Windows 10X on it.
It also has the Office suite bundled, Android 10 preinstalled and some tweaks to the UI and usage experience. We’ve got stylus interaction and one of the screens can work as a keyboard and the other as a regular screen. Surface Duo packs a Snapdragon 855 CPU, which may well become Snapdragon 865 when it debuts next year. We’re expecting a large price, past $1000 and there was no talk about the cameras. Also I can’t seem to see one here… so there’s clearly some more work to be done.
