Today marks the 3-year anniversary of the original #SurfaceDuo, as well as the end of official support of the device from #Microsoft.
Though the software could have used more support, the form factor was an innovative addition to the mobile market.
The Duo 2 however will continue to be officially supported until the Fall of next year, but it is a shame that the Duo line has otherwise been discontinued.
If anyone is interested in the #pixelFold phone and comparing to the #surfaceDuo, here are some side by sides. This is SD 1, I skipped SD 2 and am so far happy with the PF as a replacement. #foldables
@TimPurdum the only thing holding me back from fully endorsing the Pixel Fold is how it handles the keyboard. Compared with the Duos, the keyboard occupies most of the bottom half of both screens when multitasking on the inner display. I am typing about half the time I'm using my device and while I greatly dislike the Z Fold for consuming media, I find that the typing experience is better for me as a gesture typist. The Z Fold also has the advantage of the S Pen support.
If the Pixel Fold had a multitasking launcher experience similar to that of the Duos, automatically moving the screen on the cover display to the left side of a split inner display, and showing the cover screen on the right, as well as docking the keyboard to either the left or right screen, as the Duos work, or would be an ancon experience I would fully support and endorse, even without the pen support.
@DaleRoss frustrates me too. I do have some thoughts about that though.
The Fold 4 has a "special" pen to keep the tip from gouging the UTG of the inner screen. The aspect ratio of the inner screen works better to hold on one hand and then use the other hand to scribe than the Pixel Fold in landscape. The Duo and Duo 2 would let the user fold the screens so that you could write on a screen half the width of the device. Google could have added pen support for the cover screen and not the inner screen, solving the pressure problem and the screen width problem, but then you'd have people complaining that you have this amazing inner screen and can't write on it.
While I would have liked to have the whole screen to use as a writing surface, regretfully, I think it might have been a good call to leave it out of this release. I think getting the form factor of without the pen is a higher priority than being able to write on it. Once again, this is probably where the Duo 2 did it better.
laying the device open and flat to write could be a thing.I write on a Surface this way. but the beauty of Duo is pull it out like a small notebook and take notes. this is a thing , an important thing.enough of a thing that I believe Microsoft should focus on that.i see a lot people use those small paper notebooks.
About 2 months ago it just decided to have about half the battery life and run hot. My guess is that some app is burning the battery, but I'm frustrated that in Android 12L apps can't get the low level details about processor and battery usage. I'm still under warranty, but I guess I'm out of luck getting that fixed.
As such, at the Google I/O event, I put in an order for a Pixel Fold. Microsoft isn't really helping here. sigh
I'm going to court the Pixel Fold for a week and see. I've also got a Z Fold 4 on my dance card because I am frustrated that I'll be giving up my Surface Pen support.
What's really frustrating to me is the Pixel Fold reviews I've been watching. So many reviewers are bragging about how they like the wider cover screen, how they like having two apps side by side without them being stretched, how they like the cover screen better for videos, how they like the screen folding flat, how they like being about to use the external cameras to take a photo and have the interior screen used to take the picture, or pose the phone to make use of the hinge to set the phone down and not need a tripod. Everything they've said here describes what I love about the Duo and have been saying since the launch. The only real difference in that list is the missing outer cameras of the Duo, but for every reviewer of the Duo 2 who complained about the camera bump, you still can't lay your Pixel Fold or Z Fold phones flat when they're open, much like the complaints raised for the Duo 2... Duo could lay flat.
I think the Pixel Fold case might actually solve that, being thick enough to match the bump height, but I haven't looked at that yet.
What neither the Pixel Fold or Z Fold get right in my opinion is the Launcher. Duo and Duo 2 nailed it and make multitasking intuitive.
Dredging up an old post I made on Deaddit about the time as the Duo 2 launch, I said that the Duo 3 should maybe be a foldable with a cover screen, maintaining the 2:3 / 4:3 aspect. Launching an app on the cover display, when you open the device, the app can either move to the left side keeping the right open to launch a new app, could open full screen, or it could stay on the right maintaining continuity, decidable by the user and/or remembering how it was used last. I wasn't as certain what app should become the app on the cover screen if two were on the inner screen when it was folded. The Pixel Fold almost fits that bill prefectly. The way the Pixel Launcher is working doesn't quite match the same design, but just imagine the Microsoft Launcher with Pixel Fold hardware.
This is what the Duo 3 should have been and it seems like tech reviewers are finally seeing the potential I always saw with the Duo line.
I think the navigation gestures for closing apps are baked into the OS and not something which can be provided by the launcher, but I think the Microsoft Launcher made for the Pixel Fold could at least provide the app launching experience. I know that it is unlikely that Microsoft would adapt things to work, but I hope some Microsoft intern sees this as a Hackathon project and gets Microsoft to put out a garage project. Secondly, I hope the Microsoft execs recognize that the Surface Duo can easily compete on this front.
If Microsoft were to take another year and put out a Surface Fold that takes advantage of the Microsoft Launcher, and fully implements a Microsoft Service stack with apps designed for the Surface Fold first, and they provide the Surface Pen support that Google somehow forgot, the Surface Fold would be a no brainer. Microsoft needs to deliver on the experience.
Thanks for the feedback. I am so glad my Duo 2 remains functional. Google had every opportunity to make the pixel fold work like the Duo 2.what I hear so far, Pixel Fold is not a good replacement for Duo
@DaleRoss 48 hours later, with a Z Fold 4 for comparison, I'm growing on it. It comes down to this.
I smashed my Duo on Thursday when it fell out of my pocket and onto the ground. I was getting it ready to send in anyway for a broken USB port and a small crack next to that port, so I may as well get my repair needs validated.
Duo 2 looks like it is in great shape. Minor blemishes because I got it used, but still under warranty until December. Unfortunately the battery life has taken a turn for the worse. I have to charge it at least twice a day, even if it is just sitting on my desk, unused, when I'm at work. SOT almost measurable in minutes, not hours. No stock for warranty, so it seems like a lost cause.
Z Fold 4 is interesting. Got one used at bottom basement prices, I have a couple months to decide on it. S Pen support, so it is like my Duos. Flipping tall and narrow cover screen. Watching YouTube, I feel like there's as much black bars on the screen as there is video. The one thing it has going for it, is that when the keyboard is on the screen, there's just as much room for viewing the screen as a regular phone. Since I'm a gesture typist, a Swypist, I actually don't find it revolting. The inner screen, also works in portrait better than I expected... The keyboard takes up the bottom third of both screens, but the portrait aspect actually makes slightly more visible. Multitasking is a chore. Customize two different taskbar, or wade through horizontal pages of apps. Hopefully you remember to hold and drag when you find the app you want, because if you forget you're going to have to go through that process again. The UI is also monstrously big. Everything is scaled up larger than it should be and switching it to smaller UI doesn't give you more rows and columns to work with. On the plus side, I get a better audio codec with my earbuds, my watch has additional features, and Windows Phone Link works great as well as having Dex. The Z Fold is great for how it integrates with everything else and the accessories, but the device itself is disappointing.
Finally Pixel Fold. I got a good deal on it through a carrier, so it made sense to explore it. The inner screen is like Z Fold, but turned to landscape instead of portrait. I could scale down the size of the UI on the cover screen and inner display so that everything is more comfortable for me with really dense information. I wish the widgets did just a little better as I can't put the clock next to the weather, even after putting the grid size to is maximum... still more than the Z Fold. The home screen has a glance thing which also show the weather, although not as useful, and it occupies the entire top row of the cover screen and the top left of the inner screen. Then because it is Google, there's also a permanent Google search bar at the bottom. It's a little tough to switch it to Microsoft services because it is so heavily Google centric. It feels great in hand and if you Google instead of Bing, you're covered. The same problems apply for the keyboard. Cover screen actually works well because you can select one handed and Gboard performs well. SwiftKey is great as well and unlike the Duo's has Bing Chat. Typing on the inner screen is a different story. It suffers the same problem as the Z Fold in that the keyboard spans the bottom. In landscape you have less vertical height which is compounded. If you use two hands to type, it is probably a very commanding posture. I use one hand to steady the device and gesture type with the other. In what can only seem like lunacy, Gboard doesn't offer one handed gesture typing on the inner screen. You can use hover, which I am now, but it seems counter intuitive. Swiftkey does a little better, but the biggest gotcha is when you multitask. Google's launcher works better than Z Fold for me because finding the app in the tray is similar to how it is with Microsoft Launcher. You still have to use the drag gesture which makes it a step backwards from the Duo, but it is better than the Z Fold. The keyboard experience on both devices is the same problem in that it spans the whole bottom third of the screen. I wish splitting the screen didn't apply to the keyboard. Honestly it would be a pretty easy fix I believe... Samsung is already there with the Z Fold if you use the third split and use hover above that to hide an app completely. No stylus support, but the device is such a pleasure to work with. It's dense, but because it is thin it also seems like it's nothing. Takes me back to when I first got the Duo.
Ideal for me would be Google's hardware with Microsoft's software. Just treating the inner display like it was two screens would make a huge difference.
Microsoft's Google Pixel Fold with Duo!
Attached is an image using SwiftKey in a Floating/Hover mode to enter text.
Edge is having some issues on Mobile with kbin. This looks like it has potential. #SurfaceDuo needs a good place. The Reddit sub did come back. but it could go away again very soon.
@DaleRoss you should look at using Chrome. The PWA integration on the Pixel Fold, and I presume other devices too, seems better than what Edge is providing right now. If you install a PWA from Chrome, it will actually put it in the app drawer and not just the Home screen now. That's big, because it actually makes multitasking better. Grudgingly it also seems to handle window management better when Edge dropped that feature from Duo. Both of these features should work better on the Duo than what Edge seems to offer. YMMV.
I'm here on my Surface Duo 2 using Edge Canary. As I said in a video, Duo is my continuation of the search for the Pocket PC. I was very disappointed when Windows Phone 7 ditched the designs that HTC gave with integrated foldaway keyboard. Imagine a tilt with a screen like a Duo... Oh wait a minute Duo gives me that!
I really hate that Bill Gates was so focused on the anti-trust stuff. 2005 was the time to have started to build their own Device. HTC would have bee a great purchase and this Duo would have come years earlier, and we'd be on a Windows Platform. We could have that great keyboard, we saw on Windows Phone 8.x and 10 Mobile.
I Sill remember the early 90's in the Microsoft CompServe Windows NT Alpha/Beta forum where I first heard about the Wallet PC. You have to understand the technology we used for mobile phones back then to know how exciting that was. I was hooked in then.
I've been a power user of the Surface Duo and Duo 2. While I haven't been as frequent on /r/surfaceduo lately, many might recognize me from there. I am no stranger to Microsoft phones or embedded devices, having used many WinCE based PDAs in the late 1990s and getting my first smartphone running Microsoft Windows Smartphone 2002. After my Treo 700w started showing its age, I made the jump to Android for awhile before getting a Lumia 950. I went back to Android while I awaited the long anticipated Surface Duo, and I later got the Surface Duo 2.
In my opinion, no other device comes as close to matching my multitasking needs as the dual screen Surface Duo devices. With two 2:3 aspect displays side by side and supporting a 360° hinge, the device is a head turner and I love to show people how it is more than just practical, it's different postures make it transformative. It isn't like any other phone out there, including foldable phones. It is in a category of its own.
What do you like about the Surface Duo? What do you discover you can do using a Duo which you can't do with any other device? Lastly, how did you find this magazine?
@chinpokomon i love my Duo 2. I took it as my primary phone on my last trip to Turkey and it did not disappoint. Battery lasted all day, even with heavy usage. As a camera, it did the job remarkably well, even to the point of surprising me. All and all I'm very happy with my phone so far.
Looks like the December 2023 update has rolled out to the #SurfaceDuo 2. I didn't think we'd see another one this year, seeing as they skipped over November. It's still nothing more than a security patch, but it's still nice to see.
This month's #SurfaceDuo update is now available. Probably nothing more than a security patch, and it's definitely down to the wire coming in this late, but it's still nice to see.