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What Job is the Surface Duo Doing?

Posted by Matt Birchler
— 1 min read

Surface Duo: Windowing Is The New Lapability – Tech.pinions

As I wrote back in October, it would be a real shame if we just measured Surface Duo against traditional smartphones and decided that it wasn’t worth the investment because of what might be perceived like hardware shortcomings such as the camera system, or the lack of 5G support. The team set out to launch the best productivity device for users who spend most of their day in Microsoft 365 apps.

This may sound crazy to most of us in the Apple community, but there certainly are plenty of people who will have this pitch ring true to them. Hell, I’d love to get one of those to play with because it’s really interesting hardware.

But…

This isn’t going to light the world on fire. This really feels like a product that’s going to be a “second phone” for most owners, and at well over $1,000 that’s going to keep it seriously niche. Although:

For the Surface team, Duo will test what users will be willing to do with the form factor and give a good indication of what can be done for Neo and other products with dual screens and eventually folding screens.

Microsoft knows this is not going to be a top-selling phone this year, it’s a product aimed at learning how people use a device like this.