At $1399 For The Microsoft Surface Duo, Why Would Anyone Want Last Year’s Specs?

Ah, but the software, you will say. Microsoft must have done wonders to make Android work like magic on this dual screen phone.

Microsoft says “Any app has to run”. Hang on! On its part, Microsoft has updated Word, Excel and PowerPoint, for instance, to span the width of the two displays. So too for OneDrive. Amazon Kindle app will feel like you are flipping the pages of a book—mind you, this is the promise we have been hearing since the first Kindle was born. Smartly enough, Microsoft has made tweaks that would understand how you are using the displays. For instance, if you click on an email attachment, it’ll open on a second screen if that is free.

In my experience with the Samsung Galaxy Fold, how apps run, how the width of the gorgeous 7.3-inch Dynamic AMOLED is used and using the same screen space to use multiple apps was never in doubt. Samsung had done enough work on Android to make all this slick as it should be. In fact, open an app on the outside display, open the Galaxy Fold and the app seamlessly transitioned to the foldable screen as soon as it lit up. Depending on what you want, open multiple apps on the same screen and give them as much space as you want. Remember, the Galaxy Fold is one large foldable screen experience, which offers enough to let you share that space between multiple apps and tasks. While the improvements with the Galaxy Z Fold2 remain to be seen, improvements are only to be expected.

The dual-screen architecture and implementation of the Surface Duo does allow you to place the phone in different modes, such as the tablet mode, tent mode and clamshell mode. But would you do any of that often enough with a device which you are bound to hold in your hand more often than not? Yes, the Surface Duo gets a stylus, something that Samsung doesn’t bundle with the Galaxy Fold. Oh no.

The Microsoft Surface Duo, I have to admit, must be exciting for many. One can always argue that this is a dual screen phone and not a foldable phone. Let us not kid ourselves with that. The lines are blurred, and the experiences that are attempted to be delivered largely the same. But there are still no real leaps, at least on the face of it, compared to what foldable phones have already done last year. And that is perhaps why Microsoft proudly says on the products listing page—” New Surface Duo for Business”. Ah that. This is not a consumer play then.