![]() ![]() The specifications on the Duo were not terrible, but they were also not good. Of course, none of that will matter if the phone is a midrange phone and you’re still trying to sell it for $1,400. So, shrink down the screens to a more manageable size, keep the exquisite build, fatten it up so you can include the basics every phone needs, and for the love of Pete, just sell us a phone, Microsoft. Most people can barely afford a single phone in their pocket, so if you’re trying to sell a second device that cannot replace a tablet, cannot replace a laptop, and cannot replace a phone, and by the way, it’s over $1,000, that’s going to be a problem. Further, you can market this as a secondary device for productivity on the go, but you will not sell a lot of them. Unfortunately for Microsoft, a $1,400 device that fits in your pocket, accepts a SIM card, and can make and receive phone calls is by definition a phone. If this is not a phone, you don’t need NFC, or 5G, or an IP rating. This allowed Microsoft to make other compromises on its not-a-phone. As stunning as the remarkably thin and light design was, you simply couldn’t hold a device that big to your ear comfortably for any amount of time. It was far too big to hold up to your head and have conversations. The Surface Duo was not a phone in the traditional sense. Shrink down the screens to a more manageable size, keep the exquisite build, fatten it up so you can include the basics every phone needs, and for the love of Pete, just sell us a phone, Microsoft. Did Microsoft design this thing and then realize that it wasn’t up to snuff with the rest of the landscape, and create the not-a-phone conversation to cover that up? Or did Microsoft go into this project with the not-a-phone expectation, only to produce a product that spectacularly lived up to that description? The latter would be forgivable the former, not so much. ![]() What’s not clear is whether the “not-a-phone” conversation was the chicken or the egg. Microsoft tried hard to convince us that the Duo was not a phone, but rather a productivity device you could use on the go. It solves 80% of the problems the Surface Duo ran into last year. This is the first item on our wish list because if Microsoft does this right, it’s basically the only item we need on the list. Make it an actual phone Jeremy Kaplan/Digital Trends So, when Microsoft announced a new event next week with all signs pointing to the premiere of a Surface Duo 2, we had some thoughts about what we’d like to see from Microsoft’s next not-a-phone, and we’ll start with that label. Microsoft eventually put the Duo on a fire sale earlier this year for as little as $400 at some outlets, and to be perfectly frank, it was still hard to recommend at that price. Microsoft surface duo 2 for sale software#Microsoft tried to control the narrative with a system of embargos designed to make consumers ooh and ahh over the hardware so much that we would pay no attention to the mediocre software wizard behind the curtain. It was brought down by a too-high price, software that was buggy (believe it or not, we’re being excessively polite), and poor internals. Fitbit Versa 3īut, as we noted in our review, the Surface Duo was pretty much a disaster from launch. ![]()
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