Microsoft Surface Duo 2 review: Better, but still buggy

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Microsoft’s new Surface Duo 2 smartphone poses an issue.

When we select to overview a product, we attempt to take action objectively. We check the machine, evaluate it to others in its class, after which advise readers whether or not we expect they need to purchase it or not. That’s nonetheless the purpose. But the negative response to the Surface Duo in addition to the mediocre choices that accompanied the waning days of Windows Phone period actually tarnished Microsoft’s repute within the smartphone area.

I feel it’s essential to acknowledge that skepticism, and apply it with a contemporary eye in direction of some key questions: Does the Surface Duo 2 succeed as a part of the Windows ecosystem? How does it evaluate to different Android telephones? Does it resolve the problems that plagued the primary Surface Duo? And can it work as each a conventional cellphone, in addition to some new breed of productiveness machine? Customers actually by no means noticed the unique Surface Duo as something particular, and it tanked. Microsoft noticed twin screens and the way in which it built-in into the app ecosystem because the promoting factors. Customers anticipated a high quality digital camera, NFC, 5G, and wi-fi recharging.

The Surface Duo 2 represents Microsoft’s try to succeed in a center floor. Yes, it checks a number of the containers individuals requested for, however little extra. The digital camera is simply okay, there are nonetheless bugs, and the worth tag is outrageous. But below sure circumstances, it shines.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Surface Duo 2 configurations and pricing

The Surface Duo 2 prices an astounding $1,499.99, minimal, for the bottom mannequin with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Two different variations can be found: a 256GB SSD mannequin ($1,599.99) and the top-of-the-line Surface Duo 2 with 512GB of storage, for $1,799.99. If you purchase into the Microsoft ecosystem, you’ll be saving most storage-chewing pictures and movies to the OneDrive cloud anyway, which signifies that something above the bottom mannequin is superfluous.

Microsoft additionally sells a Surface Do 2 bumper ($39.99), which we didn’t check, which surrounds the Duo 2’s edge and gives some fundamental safety. It seems that the majority third-party circumstances are going the identical route, with the Microsoft Surface Duo 2 Riveter case ($89.95) from Otterbox adopting the identical strategy. If you’d prefer to ink on the Surface Duo 2, you should purchase the Surface Slim Pen 2 ($129.99) and the Surface Duo 2 Pen Cover (worth not disclosed but) which can grip and cost the Slim Pen 2. The actual thumb in your eye is the $40 Surface Duo 2 charger. No, Microsoft doesn’t ship a charger alongside the Surface Duo 2 (thanks, Apple) and also you’ll pay further for the plug. There is not any wi-fi charging. A USB-C cable is fortunately included, although, and free of charge.

The Surface Duo 2 is a dual-SIM cellphone, however with one eSIM and one bodily SIM slot.

Surface Duo 2 fundamental options

• Display: 5.8-inch AMOLED (1344×1892, 401 PPI, HDR, 90Hz, 800 nits max) (single display screen); 8.3-inch AMOLED equal (2688×1892) (dual-screen equal); Corning Gorilla Glass Victus
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G
• Memory: 8GB LPDDR5 DRAM
• Storage: 128/256/512GB (256GB as examined)
• Camera, rear-facing: Wide: 12MPixel, f/1.7 aperture, 27 mm, 1.4µm, twin pixel phase-detection autofocus (PDAF) and optical picture stabilization (OIS); Telephoto: 12MP, f/2.4 aperture, 51 mm, 1.0µm, PDAF, OIS, 2X optical zoom/10X digital zoom; Ultra-Wide: 16MP, f/2.2 aperture, 13 mm, 1.0µm, 110^o diagonal subject of view with distortion correction
• Camera, rear-facing: 12MP, f/2.0, 24 mm,1.0µm
• Network: WiFi 6 (802.ax), Bluetooth 5.1
• Wireless: 5G (mmWave, sub-6); LTE Bands: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, 48, 66, 71
• Battery: 4449mAh (rated)
• Dimensions: 5.72 x 7.26 x 0.21in. (5.5mm) (open); 5.72 x 3.63 x 0.43 in. (11.0mm) (closed)
• Weight: 284g / 0.63lb
• Operating system: Android 11
• Optional equipment: Surface Duo 2 Bumper ($39.99); Surface Duo 23W USB-C Charger ($39.99); Surface Slim Pen 2 ($129.99); Surface Duo 2 Pen Cover

The Surface Duo 2’s book-like pair of screens is the cellphone’s promoting level, and it’s the apparent place to start. Unlike, say, Samsung’s Galaxy Fold gadgets, there’s a definite hole between the 2 shows — these are two separate screens, which may fold closed like a ebook or else fold again alongside itself. With the unique Duo, this was the one option to take a photograph, as there was only a single digital camera. With the Surface Duo 2, Microsoft invested in a rear-facing three digital camera array. Unfortunately, that creates a reasonably thick digital camera bump that stops the Duo 2 from flattening out when folded again on itself. It doesn’t appear to have any adverse impact on both the digital camera or cellphone, nonetheless.

Microsoft likes to tout the engineering behind its Surface hinges, and sure, the Surface Duo 2 lives as much as its repute. The Duo 2 can sit, cocked at a 90 diploma angle, in order that one display screen can show an e mail app (Outlook appends a “Sent on Surface Duo” signature by default) and the opposite can undertaking Microsoft’s SwiftKey keyboard. (SwiftKey appears to be the one keyboard possibility as an alternative of Gboard.) This is a unbelievable orientation for content material consumption, as I discovered whereas streaming the MLB playoffs whereas cooking dinner. The 5.8-inch AMOLED display screen can be glorious for taking part in streamed cloud video games from Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Quite a little bit of the Surface Duo 2’s utility boils down to at least one contradiction: The Surface Duo 2 is handiest when used with two screens. Ergonomically, nonetheless, it’s most snug when solely utilizing one. It merely isn’t that snug to carry the Duo 2 within the “book” orientation for a protracted interval, whereas navigating and interacting with content material. Part of that’s because of the edge. While the Surface Duo 2 isn’t that skinny, there’s a form of “palmability” facet to it the place the Duo 2 leans into your fingers just like the Surface Pro 8’s kickstand digs into your thighs. (The bumper might resolve this.) You’ll discover the scale and weight nearly instantly. The digital camera bump tends to overbalance it in some eventualities, too. This is a comparatively large cellphone.

Physically, I think most individuals choose to make use of a cellphone both one-handed (almost unimaginable throughout each screens) or two-handed, with one hand holding the cellphone and the opposite swiping and touching. You can actually fold the cellphone again alongside itself, although you’ll solely be capable of use the right-hand display screen, because the left shuts off.

Of course, that additionally signifies that the one option to take a photograph is with the Surface Duo 2 unfolded, making you appear like a kind of weirdos who take pictures with their iPad. Yes, you possibly can type of cheat by holding the cellphone in panorama mode, in order that it appears to be like (properly, form of) that you simply’re taking a photograph with an odd cellphone. There’s actually no cool option to take a portrait photograph with the Surface Duo 2.

Mark Hachman / IDG

The 90Hz shows on the Surface Duo 2 really feel like a pleasant compromise between battery-sucking high-refresh-rate shows and slower, laggier screens. Scrolling was typically clean and lag-free.

Is the Surface Duo 2 a profitable productiveness cellphone? Largely, sure

Those are the negatives. If the Surface Duo 2 does one factor proper, it’s that engaged on twin screens — with sure apps, below sure circumstances — is revelatory. The Duo 2 permits you to drag one app over one other, “grouping” them. When the group is launched — say, an e mail app alongside your calendar — the association makes good sense. Chatting with a good friend on one display screen whereas a playoff sport streams on one other? Fantastic…till you get carried away and rotate the cellphone into panorama mode. Then the Surface Duo 2 will put your chat app on the highest display screen and the keyboard on the opposite, hiding your stream till you compete your message.

Microsoft in all probability expects reviewers to gush a bit right here about how properly all of it works. Let’s put it this manner: If you possibly can grok why a second monitor provides to your productiveness, you intrinsically perceive the Surface Duo 2’s core attraction. The Duo 2 is much less efficient when an app spans each screens: held like a ebook, the small hole between the shows remains to be a bit distracting. On the opposite hand, nothing pressured me to make use of it like that, so I didn’t.

Mark Hachman / IDG

I’m torn on the brand new Glance Bar, an edge-mounted notification bar vaguely just like the 2014 Galaxy Note Edge. When closed, a sliver of the curved glass peeks out. Tap the facility button (or simply anticipate a name) and a bit icon will mild up, displaying you may have a missed name. There’s actually no discreet option to see who referred to as or left a message, although, so that you’ll nonetheless be pressured to open your Duo 2 regardless.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Inking is surprisingly good. While the one ink-centric preloaded app on the Surface Duo 2 is OneNote, pairing with a Surface Slim Pen 2 was easy, palm rejection simply labored with out the necessity for any setup, and the ink jitter was minimal.

There’s additionally one different factor I actually like concerning the Surface Duo 2: its surprisingly superb fingerprint reader. The reader is constructed proper into the tiny sliver that’s the energy button, and it constantly acknowledged me straight away. Opening the Duo 2, brushing my finger throughout the facility button and unlocking the cellphone/hiding notifications felt unexpectedly highly effective for somebody used to the “will it or won’t it” fingerprint reader on a Galaxy S20+.

Mark Hachman / IDG

There’s only one factor I’d prefer to see, and that’s for one thing to occur once I plugged the Surface Duo 2 right into a Thunderbolt dock. For an organization that attempted and failed with Windows Phone’s Continuum 5 years in the past, that’s a bit disappointing. It leaves Samsung’s Dex as arguably the king of “your phone as your PC” implementations.

Is the Surface Duo 2 the following Windows cellphone?

No, not likely. Besides the multitude of preloaded Microsoft-authored Android apps — from Bing to OneNote to Outlook to To-Do to “Start” information, all of which might be downloaded on different Android telephones — there’s little that explicitly screams “Windows.” Some apps (just like the Surface app and Surface Audio, which connects to the Surface Headphones) are particular to the Surface Duo 2, nonetheless.

There’s one exception. Microsoft’s Your Phone Companion permits you to connect with a Samsung cellphone or Surface Duo out of your Windows 10 PC, permitting you to see messages and notifications, view and switch pictures, and place calls. Your Phone additionally helps you to to remotely launch Android apps in your cellphone and “run” them in your PC, which is a quite marvelous function we talked about in our Windows 11 review. Unfortunately, even with the suitable permissions turned on and on the identical wi-fi community, the distant display screen entry simply confirmed an enormous inexperienced blob. Worse nonetheless, the cellphone’s efficiency dramatically slowed whereas that function was lively.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Honestly, you’d anticipate extra from Microsoft on this regard.

Does the Surface Duo 2 resolve the issues of the primary Surface Duo?

One of the issues reviewers and clients had with the first-generation Surface Duo was with the quite a few bugs that cropped up. And sure, they’re nonetheless right here. I skilled quite a lot of cases the place the cellphone refused to change from portrait to panorama mode. A digital camera app shot a picture the wrong way up as a result of it refused to reorient itself. The SwiftKey keyboard lagged, and didn’t fill the display screen in panorama mode. (The latter was in all probability a design alternative.) The Surface Duo 2 stored popping up a message that I may change an app from one display screen to a different by double-tapping, after which didn’t change once I double-tapped. In the ESPN app, the app’s navigation buttons (“Scores,” “Watch,”, and many others.) overlapped with the Duo 2’s navigation buttons, stopping me from interacting with the app’s navigation. (Locking and unlocking the Duo 2 solved that problem.) We talked about the Your Phone Companion bug above.

To be honest, a number of the cellphone’s issues might be fastened by merely understanding it higher. The Surface Duo 2 runs Android 11, and I discovered gesture navigation — swiping up in numerous locations to entry both the app drawer or the working apps — to be astonishingly troublesome. Switching the cellphone to make use of Android’s “soft buttons” on the backside of the display screen made a world of distinction. You understand how Android 11’s button navigation features a “switch apps” button? Each display screen has its personal record of apps to change between, which feels a bit odd.

A surprisingly helpful tip is that swiping towards the middle of the display screen from the left or proper edge is the equal of the “back” button, and permits you to navigate with out readjusting your fingers. It’s additionally honest to say that the twin display screen might be even be understood as a “modality,” or just one other option to work together with information. It’s completely okay to make use of the Surface Duo 2 folded backwards on itself, then open it when crucial.

Yes, the Surface Duo now consists of NFC, which labored with the Google GPay app. Weirdly, the Surface Duo appears to “lean” towards the right-hand display screen, which homes the digital camera and tends to open apps by default. When utilizing NFC, although, you faucet the left-hand display screen to the reader.

How does the Surface Pro Duo 2 evaluate?

The lack of a good digital camera in all probability sounded the dying knell for the unique Surface Duo. Without a good digital camera, shoppers merely gained’t hassle shopping for a brand new cellphone. With the primary Surface Duo, there was simply one digital camera, and the machine needed to be oriented appropriately to take selfies in addition to regular pictures. With the Duo 2, there’s lastly a correct rear-facing digital camera.

Is it as much as snuff? Yes and no. In daylight, the Surface Duo 2 stunned me with the standard of its footage. Color steadiness tended in direction of cool (or blue), however the principle digital camera and the wide-angle lens delivered outcomes that glad me. Selfies seemed nice, too. Portrait mode appeared actually iffy, although, with the digital camera struggling to lock on to the topic with the digital camera oriented vertically. A 2X optical-zoom telephoto additionally doesn’t fairly measure as much as the 3X optical zoom on an iPhone 13 Pro (which additionally prices $500 lower than the Surface Duo 2, by the way in which).

At night time, although, the Surface Duo 2 falls means behind the competitors — by years, in all probability. Microsoft informed us that that they had largely designed the picture sensor itself, tapping its Finnish engineering corps that had helped design the Lumia line. It doesn’t actually measure up.

In the pictures under, you’ll see that the Surface Duo 2 takes completely nice pictures outdoors, in broad daylight, as almost all cameras do. It’s whenever you begin asking extra of it — in portrait mode and in low-light conditions — the place it merely falls brief. In most circumstances, we shot the identical scene as carefully as we may with a Samsung Galaxy S20+, Samsung’s 2020 flagship (both $1,200 or $1,350, relying on the storage choices) for the individuals who couldn’t afford a $1,400 S20 Ultra.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Performance is great

With a cellphone that’s in all probability getting used for productiveness, internet browsing, and streaming video at the beginning, it’s onerous to argue that efficiency benchmarks will matter. Inside the Surface Duo 2 is a Snapdragon 888 5G, a processor that’s used within the Samsung Galaxy S21 sequence, amongst others. Compared to the Samsung Galaxy S20+, my every day driver with a Snapdragon 865 processor inside, the Duo 2 nonetheless felt a bit laggier when navigating via the interface.

In normal, the Surface Duo 2 is considerably quicker than the Samsung Galaxy S20+, Samsung’s 2020 flagship (both $1,200 or $1,350, relying on the storage choices) for the individuals who couldn’t afford a $1,400 S20 Ultra. We in contrast the 2 utilizing the Geekbench 5 benchmark for Android; the Surface Duo 2 reported a rating of 1,107 in single-core efficiency and 3,478 in multicore efficiency — that’s 20 % and 64 % quicker than Samsung’s outcomes, respectively. PCMark additionally has a cell model of its Work check, which measures office-like spreadsheet work, in addition to picture and photograph manipulation. Here, the Surface Duo 2 reported a 31 % improve over the S20+, reaching a 13,434 rating. Performance, we consider, will greater than suffice.

Battery life appears greater than adequate as properly. I charged the Surface Duo 2 up the night time earlier than, let it idle all night time, then used it for a day of pictures and understanding and about and within the workplace. It had about 20 % left on the finish of the day. Using the PCMark battery rundown check that continually asks a cellphone to carry out numerous duties with the display screen on, it lasted 9 hours 59 minutes earlier than giving up the ghost. That’s excellent. Quick charging, is simply formally supported through the Surface Charger, bought individually.

Conclusion: Cynicism remains to be justified

The previous chestnut is that Microsoft is ruled by the “rule of threes.” Like Windows 3.0, the third time’s the allure. We’d say the second time actually isn’t, a minimum of within the case of the Surface Duo 2.

Let’s face it: Some actually, actually massive firms (Apple, Huawei, Samsung, Xiaomi) have spent very massive quantities of cash designing top-of-the-line cameras for his or her smartphones. Microsoft would possibly hope that the Surface Duo 2’s digital camera is sweet sufficient, but it surely falls brief in my ebook. In different areas — NFC and 5G — they’ve checked the containers clients demanded.

Some of Microsoft’s previous Lumia Windows Phones have been good, and even nice, however these have been telephones that few purchased as Android and iOS took maintain. The Surface Duo 2 accomplishes what Microsoft got down to obtain: Develop a productive dual-screen phablet-y machine that completely works not like anything below sure eventualities. But it’s considerably awkward, nerdy, and vastly costly. And the bugs, nonetheless! I simply can’t see Microsoft convincing smartphone consumers the way in which it could possibly persuade somebody shopping for, say, a Surface Laptop Studio. On steadiness, the Surface Duo 2 nonetheless falls brief.