With Surface Duo, Microsoft (briefly) had the foldable form factor figured out

Summary

Microsoft’s foray into the foldable phone market was disappointingly short-lived.
With its Surface Duo hardware line, Microsoft declared dual screen setups to be superior to their single screen counterparts.
We might not be getting a Duo 3 anytime soon, but the notion of dual-screen mobile computing continues to entice me in many ways.

When Microsoft’s then-Chief Product Officer Panos Panay took to the stage and unveiled the original Surface Duo in October 2019, I was elated.

For the first time since the release of the original Surface PC hardware in 2012, it felt like Microsoft was on a creative hardware streak. The company was seemingly hungry to innovate, with a bullish desire to orient the smartphone market in a new direction.

The Surface Duo was a unique product — both then and now — with its dual-screen form factor, its use of Google’s competing Android operating system, and its focus on productivity-driven use cases.

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Despite excellent build quality, an attractive physical design language, and razor-thin dimensions, the Surface Duo started life from a rocky vantage point. The era of book-style foldable phones was just kicking off, and both consumers and product reviewers eyed Microsoft’s dual-screen vision with skepticism.

Unlike other foldable smartphones, the Duo (and later, its second-generation successor) featured a large hinge down the middle of its two screens, and lacked an external cover display altogether. In a world where flexible OLED panels, uninterrupted internal real estate, and external displays were becoming the norm, the Surface Duo increasingly came to be seen as a pariah.

To add fuel to the fire, Microsoft botched the initial Surface Duo roll out from a software standpoint — early builds of the company’s bespoke Android skin were unresponsive, bug-ridden, and entirely unrefined, putting a damper on the product line’s launch.

While these early software woes would be largely sorted out, it was too little, too late. Try as Microsoft did to spread the word of dual-screen smartphones and their merits, the tech giant ultimately pulled the plug on its Surface Duo line without ever launching a third-generation product onto store shelves.

Surface Duo

Microsoft’s first-generation dual-screen smartphone, which features a foldable design and runs on the Android operating system.
Surface Duo 2

Microsoft’s Surface Duo 2 is the company’s second-generation dual-screen smartphone, with larger displays and improved cameras over its predecessor.

Microsoft Surface Duo 2 vs Surface Duo photo 1

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Microsoft’s decision to ax the Surface Duo line was shortsighted at best

With its dual-screen ambitions made public, the company should’ve held its Surface hardware head up high

Microsoft

Now, the Surface Duo and its younger sibling, the Duo 2, feature prominently in the Microsoft Graveyard of killed-off products and services. The tech giant’s dual-screen smartphone ambitions were unceremoniously laid to rest, despite the previously strong-held conviction that two screens are indeed better than one.

“I think we’ve seen what dual-screen use brings, and we’ve tested thousands and thousands of scenarios with thousands of people. We measure so many different things. We measure the brain activity. We measure how people feel. We ask thousands of questions, and we have an incredible user research team, human factors team, from an inclusive design standpoint, said Panay in a Vergecast interview during the launch window of the original Duo.

Microsoft may have lost faith in multi-screen mobile setups, but I remain a strong believer in the form factor. Intuitively, the compartmentalization of individual tasks within their own distinct spaces makes all the sense in the world. That’s the reason why I (and many others) prefer dual monitor setups over ultra-wide setups — the negative space acts as a demarcation, improving multitasking and reducing cognitive load.

Microsoft may have lost faith in multi-screen mobile setups, but I remain a strong believer in the form factor.

This dual-monitor paradigm of the PC world translates incredibly well over to mobile: individual Android apps are able to ‘do their thing’ irrespective of one another, and without falling into the pitfalls of clunky split screen software solutions. The Duo’s center bezel is a feature and not a bug, and it makes for a productivity environment that runs circles around competing foldable phones currently on the market.

If things had played out differently, and Microsoft had doubled down on its dual-screen Duo ambitions, I firmly believe the company would have carved itself a chunk of the foldable phone market in due time. We’ve seen the likes of Google — a fellow software-first tech titan — use its deep pockets to fund massive advertising campaigns, brute-forcing its Pixel hardware into the public eye.

Microsoft knows that two screens are better than one, and it needs to develop the confidence to blast its revelation both near and far.

Microsoft has a long and storied history within the mobile computing scene, from Windows CE, to Windows Mobile and Windows Phone, and plenty more along the way. If the company wants to reestablish itself in the notoriously cut-throat handset market, it needs to do so by offering a unique product that stands out from the crowd. The solution is clear: Microsoft knows that two screens are better than one, and it needs to develop the confidence to blast its revelation both near and far.