Tag Archives: Software

"The Surface Duo is wonderfully thin and wonderfully intelligent and redesigns the smartphone."

• Impossible, wonderfully thin

• The hinge is perfectly constructed

• Luxurious build quality

• Smart app management software

• Buggy software (still)

• Design compromises

• Steep learning curve

Technocrats flat-out rejecting a certain amount of Microsoft hardware, hiding the fairly successful Surface product line, ignoring the Xbox platform, and skipping decades of innovation in keyboards and mice. With a knowing twinkle in their eye, these people will point out the failure of Windows Phone, then lean over and say smugly, "Do you remember the Zune?"

Yes, we all remember the Zune. And Clippy. Sigh.

That same crowd put the Surface Duo on the list of flops and found that their hardware just wasn't competing. However, this new device offers a lot more than megahertz and microchips. With the duo, Microsoft wants to rethink what to do with those 7 or 8 ounces of metal and glass that you take with you everywhere like a Bible, just like how the first iPhone turned portable phones into smartphones we can't stop using. But does it succeed?

design

Let's get this out of the way. It's easy to look at a data sheet for the Surface Duo and see a number of tradeoffs. Sure, it's thin, but where's the wireless charging or 5G? Sure, it's way cheaper than other foldable devices, but you are losing the fastest chipset on the market.

Instead, think about design decisions. Smartphone manufacturers have been battling physics and Moore's Law for years to save a tenth of a millimeter from their phones while adding a few minutes more talk time. These decisions are designed to squeeze as much engineering goodness as possible into a device about 7mm thick and about 6 inches long.

The latest example of this is the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G, a beautiful piece of glass 6.5 inches long and 8.8 mm thick. Compare it to the Samsung phone launched in 2019, the Galaxy S10 Plus – a beautiful piece of glass 6.4 inches long and 7.8 mm thick.

Jeremy Kaplan / Digital Trends

Microsoft Duo is different. Each screen is 4.8mm thin, a little over half the size of this new Galaxy. Half the size! When folded, it is 9.9 mm, a little more than a millimeter thick. It's all about the thickness of a magazine, which is just remarkable.

If your average smartphone is roughly the thickness of a PB&J, putting two of them together – like other foldable devices like the Galaxy Z Fold 2 or the LG V60 ThinQ – is like building a hoagie. And I'm not in the habit of putting submarine sandwiches in my pockets.

This is where the "design decisions" come into play. Microsoft engineers wanted a device that was thin enough to make you gasp. That decision powered the hardware and shaped the device. This means that wireless charging was not possible. And 5G chipsets and the multitude of antennas running through the innards of most phones like your circulatory system just don't work. Because of this, Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 865 chip is missing. NFC still requires an additional antenna, which is why it was omitted and with it the possibility of paying in a grocery store or a subway turnstile. And an ordinary battery is too thick to fit in this device. More on that in a second.

Yes, there's a reason the Duo lacks a number of features that are common to other phones. However, it's still some kind of compromise even if you know why they were left out.

Display quality and hinge durability

The Surface Duo consists of two 5.6-inch AMOLED displays with a resolution of 1800 × 1350 at 401 pixels per inch. Microsoft's marketing team calls them "PixelSense Fusion" displays for some reason. Together they make up an 8.1-inch tablet with a resolution of 2700 × 1800. The duo pushes roughly 5 million pixels, in other words what seems like a lot for a device with a small battery. The battery life is still decent, which speaks for countless hours of technical work.

The screens are covered in Corning & # 39; s Gorilla Glass and are deep and dark with clear contrast. When looking at Carfection's 2020 Mini JCW GP review, colors popped off the screen – a little warmer than natural, but very pleasing to my eyes. Thanks to all of those pixels, it's sharp like a turn.

A continuous torque system allows you to fold the device 360 ​​degrees to any position, but there are really four to lean into: flat like a tablet, folded like a book, fully open or closed, and propped up like a tent. This is the last one useful when watching videos. I put the duo next to my laptop and watch music videos or John Oliver. It's liberating.

Jeremy Kaplan / Digital Trends

There is also a special mode. Just open it a crack and you will see it tell you the time and date. That seems a little silly. When you raise your arm, can't you just look at your watch? Oh, that's right – we ditched watches in favor of the more convenient smartphones and then took away some of that convenience. Hmm

In any case, you can stop the device at any point in those 360 ​​degrees, which means you can shorten the tent and crouch if you are a taller person, or more acute if your tabletop is at eye level. Regardless of its position, the hinge is responsive, pliable, and frankly fun. It also holds any position tenaciously; This tablet won't cut you in half. Permanent? You bet.

I most often use the duo with both hands like a book. Opened in my right hand, I open apps and check email with my left hand. However, if there's something to delve into, I fold the device back on itself and do it on a single screen. Note that this still requires two hands. This is a big change from almost every other phone you've used.

With regular phones, you can hold a subway belt on the left and read a Kindle book on the right. The duo is so wide that I can't reach my thumb over it and can barely hit most of the icons at the bottom of the screen. Held in one hand, my thumb hits the center of the screen. Forget about reaching for a menu.

Use the Surface Duo

Nothing escapes the fact that the duo are tough. When I first flushed, I called it light. I was surprised that two screens would no longer weigh. But if I'm being honest with myself, every phone I've worn for the past three years has gotten progressively heavier. We all just ignored it and we're caught up in the race for faster and newer. So I'll say it here. At 250 grams, the duo is heavy. Android Authority called the 220-gram Galaxy S20 Ultra "too damn heavy". If it's more than half a pound, that's worse. I wonder what they are going to say about the Galaxy Z Fold 2 that weighs you down like a brick with about 280 grams.

Even so, I am ready to look beyond weight if you can do more with it. And you can! It just takes some work.

Here's the thing: this device is incredibly familiar, but it doesn't work quite like other smartphones. Keep in mind that the Duo is the first device I've ever seen and it knows how to hold it thanks to a series of sensors that line the edges of each screen.

Jeremy Kaplan / Digital Trends

Thanks to these accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers, it knows when you are holding it like a book and reacts appropriately when you camp it next to your plate. (Caution: The speakers are on one side of the display, so camp them right or pump soundtrack on your roommate. You won't be happy.)

Common gestures are more or less the same, except that you have to learn some new ones. Swiping up and left or right is different here. Some phones come with a menu with the latest apps. Here's where you can use this action to close an app and forget about it off-screen.

Likewise, you can move a window from one screen to the other by dragging it from the bottom to the top and hurling it over the partition. This action is absolutely fascinating. I could do it all day. Drag the default settings menu down at the top of the screen. Do it from ¾ the way down for a search bar.

Details like this litter the user interface and show the attention to detail Microsoft has wasted on this device. Look at the row of quick start icons that stretch across the bottom of both screens. Open an app on one screen and the six icons will flit and dance to the other side, where they'll nestle together to adjust. It's charming.

When it comes to buttons, the duo has little to offer: the right screen has a volume rocker, an on / off switch, and a biometric reader in a dent that sits right under your thumb. I worried unnecessarily about that. It works well. It also gives the entire duo a little vibration when you record it as the device notices you and suggests that it rarely goes. I like that. It's like the rumble of an engine on the gas.

software

The Duo runs Android 10 with a little Microsoft. To take advantage of the real estate, Microsoft worked closely with the team of software engineers at Google to create special functions just for a device like this one with two screens: a new type of icon groups a pair of apps and launches them side by side, one per Screen. This seems immensely powerful.

Likewise, Microsoft has integrated drag-and-drop functions into some of its apps, with which you can, for example, highlight a few sentences from an email in Outlook and drag them into tasks where they become the agenda.

The big feature is dual screen support: expand an app to fill both screens by dragging it from the bottom to the hinge. Outlook has been redesigned to show a list of emails on the left and a reading pane on the right. It's kind of a game changer. Think for a second how many times you hit the back button on your phone to go back to what you did.

Microsoft has integrated a smart keyboard for this device into SwiftKey, which can be used to switch between single, double and full screen mode. Thanks to all of these sensors, it knows if the left or right screen is active and moves to pick up just that thumb. Getting to the center of the keyboard can be difficult in full screen mode, but it's still neat to hold the duo like a small laptop. I wipe more often than usual.

Jeremy Kaplan / Digital Trends

Finally, the company built a key instruction into the duo: use the screens wisely. Apps that others launch do so intelligently on the second screen, so you can keep doing what you did. The All Trails app starts Google Maps on the second screen. News apps can access individual site apps from the screen.

I'm just glossing over these tech efforts because there are few: Microsoft built drag and drop support into an app or two, including OneNote, which I've never really found convincing use for. And almost no apps are designed to make smart use of both screens, despite Microsoft talking about this device a year ago. Sure, they can invent this new user interface, but it's up to others to make hay with it. Google has had endless problems getting developers to create apps for big screens, as has Samsung. Microsoft has struggled in the past to get developers to support its latest initiatives. There is a risk that Instagram, Tik Tok, Adobe, and everyone else will simply refuse to do the job, which dramatically hinders the duo.

Speaking of work, this is clearly work in progress. After I and a number of other journalists complained about annoying malfunctions in the software, Microsoft released a weekend update that improved the camera, reduced the jerky scrolling, corrected strange behavior and much more.

But it's still not quite there, which is frustrating. Every now and then I open the duo and no screens appear, but both. Or I expect an app on the left and right. Or I turn the device and the app stubbornly refuses to leave portrait mode. These mishaps are hard to forgive. Those basics have to work every time … or Microsoft sees a higher response rate than the national debt.

camera

Outside of smartphone reviewers, few people take advantage of the ridiculously advanced features built into today's smartphone, like unexpected extras in a cookie. Spinach and chocolate chips? No thanks. Butterscotch and Baked Beans? Why would you even offer this? By skipping these unwanted features, Microsoft saved money and avoided the raised bezel that scars the back of most flagship phones.

It must be said that the company has also made compromises.

The duo contains a single camera: an 11-megapixel sensor with a basic aperture of 1: 2.0, very small pixels and without OIS (optical image stabilization). It's on the right side and ready for a selfie if you want. There is 4K 60 fps video, slow motion video support, panorama and portrait mode as well as digital zoom up to 7x. But they are basic things, and not everything works well.

Jeremy Kaplan / Digital Trends

The autofocus on this camera is … not good, let's just come out and say it. I saw some bees buzzing around my Rose of Jericho bushes, and after saying a silent prayer for them (after all, someone has to do it) I leaned over for a moment, pressed the button, and watched the bees whiz before the camera picked up a shot. It took a few tries before I learned to properly measure my recordings.

And while the colors are decent, your photos will never match the great shots from the best camera phones like the Huawei P40 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro. That said, it does some nice tricks: start the camera, flip the right control panel (the one with the lens) back, and the camera app will automatically switch to the correct control panel so you can snap a picture of what you are look at. Flip it back and you're ready for selfies. Expand the app to fill both areas and you'll be able to see your photo library on one side and the live image on the other, making it easy for you to review all of those self-portraits.

95% of people find the camera perfect for 95% of the photos they want to take. Most of them would be happier with a camera as powerful as the Google Pixel 4a, which is literally $ 1,000 less than the fancy phones I mentioned earlier. No one looking at your photos will ever know that your pictures could have been a little better. More importantly, nobody will care.

performance

As you've probably heard, the Surface Duo runs last year's Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 platform, the same chip used in the 2019 Galaxy S10 phones rather than the 2020 Galaxy S20. The same processor as in the 2019 OnePlus 7 Pro instead of the 2020 OnePlus 8. The same … well, you get the picture. It also has 6GB of DRAM and 128GB or 256GB of storage depending on how much money you want to lose.

But is any of that really important? The benchmarks certainly tell a story: we ran the popular 3DMark suite of benchmarks and got results in line with last year's chips:

3D Mark Sling Shot Extreme: 5,745 (OpenGL)

3D Mark Sling Shot Extreme: 5,055 (volcano)

Geekbench 5 CPU: 735 single core, 2,768 multi core

But numbers are numbers; real performance is something else. Over the course of several days and a series of apps, I never had the feeling that the performance was below average anyway. If you've bought a laptop in the past few years, you know what I mean: it is probably good enough for most of your work, isn't it? Sure, a new one is faster, but it's just good enough for surfing the web and checking your email.

Battery life

The duo are a marvel of engineering for a variety of reasons. One of them is the 3,577 mAh battery, which is spread over two different sides of the device. According to Microsoft, special controllers ensure that both sides run evenly and wear out. Amazing! You will never notice, but I find such little facts fascinating.

Jeremy Kaplan / Digital Trends

The company claims you have up to 27 hours of talk time, but let's face it: who wants to spend that much time chatting? In my tests, I was able to easily stretch the battery throughout the day with a lot of Internet surfing, email use, and video-based use. The box contains an 18 watt fast charger that seemed to do the trick.

Our opinion

The Surface Duo is eye-catching, functionally distinctive and expensive. Having two screens seems like a novelty, but I've been better able to work with two screens working more or less together. With my calendar on one side and my email on the other, I can see my day at a glance. With my inbox on the left and a reply message on the right, my phone is suddenly much better at email. And propping it up to watch a video is just incredibly satisfying.

However, the fact that the software still needs work is worrying. How long does the polishing take? And will developers adopt this strange new device? We still have questions.

Is there a better alternative?

The obvious alternatives are foldable screen devices like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 and the LG V60 ThinQ. The duo makes them seem silly. These things are just huge, and in the case of the Galaxy Z Fold 2, hundreds of dollars more. And anything with 5G could be a smarter buy given the huge global pressure to develop the new networking technology. Microsoft can't just "add" it. It's either there or not, and in two years' time the lack of 5G will become more prominent, just as poison ivy will develop days after you touch this pretty plant.

How long it will take?

The physical shortcoming of such a device should be the hinge, but this one feels designed for nuclear warfare. The software could be the Achilles' heel, however: developers should start supporting the features Microsoft developed as it will be widely supported in future Android builds. But will they?

Should you buy it?

Are you the kind of person who buys version one of anything? Who likes to dazzle friends with the latest sharpness? Then grab the duo and impress the world. Everyone else should wait a couple of weeks to make sure Microsoft can resolve the software issues and encourage Twitter, Facebook, Zoom, and the world's game makers to endorse this platform. And they will … probably.

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