Microsoft surface duo 2 review android#
Microsoft surface duo 2 review free#

The word that most comes to mind when describing the Surface Duo is 'flat.' The body of the phone is not perfectly flat, but it's uninterrupted sheets of glass on the front and back of both halves. SPECS AT A GLANCE: Microsoft Surface DuoДЇour Cortex A76-based cores (One 2.84GHz, three 2.41Ghz) and four Cortex A55-based cores at 1.78GHz I mean, not me, of course, but some people.

Microsoft surface duo 2 review free#

If you've got two free hands, there's something very comfy about holding the Duo in book mode and just casually flipping through something.В The shock and awe of Microsoft's design language is probably enough to make some people fall in love with the device and ignore all its other faults. The phone is absolutely cracker-thin, and along with the Moto Razr, it's one of the rare foldable smartphones that doesn't look like an ugly brick. It's a minimalist glass sandwich with a sophisticated pearl white and chrome color scheme that is just a pleasure to look at. The main thing the Surface Duo has going for it is that it is very pretty.

A smartphone that is very bad at smartphone things.

Uh, how are you supposed to type on this thing?.

Microsoft surface duo 2 review android#

The Software: Windows Incorporated makes an Android build.

Andromeda: Why the Surface Duo is such a weird Android device.

Instead, the company turned in a borderline incompetent smartphone that I really had to force myself to use during the review period. Microsoft needed to knock this out of the park. The Surface Duo feels like a phone that was slapped together without a plan, and the reports of the phone's history indicate that's what actually happened.В We would like to gently welcome Microsoft to the Android ecosystem, but we are not grading $1400 smartphones on a curve. The phone is missing a whole host of features you would expect for the stratospheric $1400 asking price, and even the hardware that is here seems like it's a least a year old. It has crippling productivity problems that negate any benefit you could get from the two-screen design, it's extremely awkward in day-to-day use, and it's very buggy.

The phone feels like it was made without any respect to ergonomics, hand size, pocket-size, or anything that makes a good Android phone. I bring up Microsoft's sales pitch because, boy, is the Surface Duo bad at doing the things Microsoft says it's supposed to be good at.

Microsoft's websiteВ also says the Duo was designed to 'inspire people to rethink how they want to use the device in their pocket,' indicating that the company definitely sees this as a primary device. Microsoft is calling this a 'productivity' device thanks to it having the side-by-side app capability of a tablet-style foldable smartphone without any of the janky display technology. The Surface Duo sales pitch is that foldable display technology isn't ready yet, so try this best-we-can-do-right-now version that features two rigid, 5.6-inch OLED displays attached together with a 360 hinge. The hardware apparently dates back to plans to revitalize Windows for phones, but after that plan fell through, the hardware was upcycled into the most head-scratching Android phone of the year. Microsoft's first-ever Android phone (sorry, we're not counting the Nokia X) was announced and demoed an entire year before its release, hinting at what a long and winding road the Surface Duo took from inception to shipping.

After one of the strangest run-ups to launch in smartphone history, the Microsoft Surface Duo is here.