Thoughts on Microsoft’s horrible phone: a review and retrospective.

October 2, 2019 will forever be one of my favorite days in technology history. It was a day that set the stage for a revolution in the way we use our phones and computers — not to mention the next chapter in the development of Windows. Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay took the stage to unveil Surface Duo, Surface Neo, and the Windows 10X. For once, it felt as though we were moving forward in the world of consumer electronics.

Fast forward a year to October 2020 and you’ll see that we ended up with an operating system on life support, a dead computer, and what can be best described as a half baked, rushed phone. More on Surface Neo and Windows 10X in another post.

Surface Duo (left) and Surface Neo (right) on display at a Microsoft hardware event on October 2, 2019. (Sarah Tew/CNET)

I bought a Surface Duo on a steep discount about two years ago, and last week I finally decided to swap my SIM card over use it for a week as my only phone after relegating it to being nothing more than a glorified e-reader. Here’s the good, bad, and meh of using a disused and discontinued folding phone pioneer.

The good

Possibly the most striking feature of Surface Duo has nothing to do with the advanced multitasking features or other software, it’s the hardware itself. The first thing you notice is the thickness — or lack thereof. At just 9.9mm (0.39in) folded and 4.95mm (0.195in) unfolded, the device is strikingly thin. Surface Duo exudes the feeling of being a flagship device even with a plastic frame. It’s rigid, strikingly thin, and quite light compared to its contemporary competition.

The screens are also high resolution and vibrant, if a bit dim in direct sunlight. Battery life was also great, and this is after two years of light use. I could easily get through a day and a half on a single charge if I really wanted to, and Duo lacking a 5G modem is probably a big factor in this.

Say what you will, Duo still sports a strikingly sharp design five years after its announcement, even with the protective bumper installed.

The bad

The dual 5.8 inch OLED screens look great, but actually using them is quite the spoiler. They’re unresponsive and a weird aspect ratio. I can excuse a weird shape, but Duo was actually supposed to be a Windows device. Therefore, the screens only had a driver compatible with Windows 10 and 10X for the vast majority of its development as it was supposed to be a smaller counterpart to Surface Neo. Ever heard of Project Andromeda? Needless to say, they had to hastily develop an Android driver and it fucking sucks. Good luck tap typing, stick to swipe. Oh, it also lacks both wireless charging and NFC. No Google Pay for you!

That isn’t to mention the abysmal camera. This once again comes back to the fact that Duo was supposed to be a Windows 10X device, so it has the bare minimum for Teams calls and document scanning. Pictures are okay-at-best in bright sunlight, but the minute so much as a cloud rolls in you’re off to Noise and Motion Blur City. Colors also don’t have the sort of “pop” you’d expect from even a five year old flagship.

A collection of images taken using my Surface Duo in various lighting conditions.

The meh

The multitasking experience is cool, but the phone really lacks the performance to do more than Edge and Google Docs at the same time. Discord and Moshidon gets pretty laggy. With only 6GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 855 processor under the hood, it performs about as well as any other flagship from 2019 — ignoring the fact that it came out in 2020 with year-old specs. All this comes to a point when you’re out and about and only getting 4G service on what was a $1,200 phone just four years ago. In some places you can really tell it isn’t up to snuff with 5G capable phones.

Return to normalcy

As I write this section I have had my SIM back in my Pixel 7 for a few hours, and almost immediately I had some thoughts. I love — well, thought I loved my Pixel. Spending the past week using Duo has reminded me once again that phones used to be fun, but they’re really all the same nowadays. Sure, you can buy a Pixel for the camera, an iPhone for the ecosystem, or a Smasnug if you like fake pictures of the Moon, but you’re really getting a similar experience across the board with candy bar phones. Even iOS and Android are more siblings than cousins these days.

The Nokia Lumia 520 (left) and Microsoft Lumia 640 (right) are two of my favorite phones of all time, and I miss them both dearly.

Surface Duo feels like the last of its kind. I was an avid Windows Phone user for years, starting out with the venerable Nokia Lumia 520 then riding Windows 10 Mobile into obscurity on a Lumia 640. I liked Windows Phones because they were different, and Microsoft (née Nokia) weren’t afraid to take a chance with a funky design or gimmicky features. Even the software itself felt whimsical in a way that remains unmatched with its fluid animations and live tiles that looked great even on a low end handset. Microsoft knew — hell, they still know — how to make a fun phone. By god I miss it.

Duo deserved better, but you can’t fix the mistakes of the past. You can only look to how you can change the future. Make phones fun again damnit.

Editors note:

This post was edited for clarity and grammar after publication.