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00:00Hey what's up, MKBHD here, and this is the Surface Duo, screen on, in all of its super
00:10sweet hinge, well built, ultra thin glory.
00:14It's an amazing piece of hardware, but actually using it, as I have been for the past two
00:18to three weeks, is a bit of a mixed bag.
00:21So I'm just going to come right off the top and say it, I don't think most people should
00:24buy this, and that's fine, I think there's a lot of pretty cool devices out there that
00:29just aren't right for most people to buy and use, and that's alright.
00:34But now that you know that, right off the top of the review, I want to approach this
00:37a little bit of a different way, a little more conceptual, and just highlight the good,
00:42the bad, and the ugly.
00:43Which actually for Surface Duo I'm going to adjust a little, it'll be the good, the meh,
00:51and the bad.
00:52Because there are some really good pieces and some really good ideas, then there's some
00:56meh stuff that didn't really quite work out, and then there's some really bad too.
01:03But the most interesting thing is, almost all of this comes from it being a first generation
01:07device.
01:08This is the first Surface Duo, it's the first foldable phone from Microsoft, it's the first
01:13Android phone from Microsoft, it's the first dual screen pocketable device with no cover
01:19screen like this, the first razor thin phone with a 360 degree hinge, and two 5 inch displays
01:26like this.
01:27So it's the first at a lot of things, but the thing is, it's the second generation
01:31of most things that's the most interesting, or at least the most telling.
01:35Like that's when you get to see all of the learnings about what went well and what didn't
01:39go well, and what they can change versus what they can't.
01:43That's what's exciting.
01:44I'm literally already looking forward to Surface Duo 2, like a lot.
01:49But let me just show you what went well and what didn't with this one.
01:57So what's the good?
02:00Well if you remember the first impressions video where nobody was allowed to turn it
02:03on, I was raving about that hardware and that hinge, and I am sticking by that.
02:09The crazy thinness is obviously the first thing that strikes you, it's barely thicker
02:13than a USB-C port on each side.
02:16And then the 360 degree hinge, it's awesome.
02:18It has this smoothness, but also firmness to it where it can stop in any position.
02:24That's just awesome.
02:25Props to the hinge engineers.
02:27And the result is all these postures, these different modes that you can hold or prop
02:32up the device.
02:33There's book mode, horizontal with one screen on each side, kind of like a book like this.
02:38There is compose mode, so keyboard on one screen, content on the other.
02:42Single screen mode, thanks to the hinge, flip it all the way around 360 degrees, pick a
02:47screen.
02:48There's also tent mode, and peak mode.
02:51And right as you get into all these postures, things do get pretty complex because now the
02:55device is responding to a variety of orientation changes and state of fold changes.
03:01And we'll get more into the bugs, of course, later in this video, but when it works well,
03:06it's really cool.
03:07It's really nice.
03:08You can open up an app on one screen and literally do anything you want on the other
03:12screen.
03:13You can read two things at once.
03:15You can watch a video on one screen and take notes on it on the other screen.
03:20You can move the video to the other side and move the notes back to the other side.
03:25You can just mess around.
03:26You can close something and multitask while the video keeps going.
03:30You can always switch what screen something is on or even drag to the middle and span
03:35it between two screens.
03:38Now, not every app looks good spanned across both screens.
03:42Matter of fact, most don't.
03:44Like right now, it's up to developers to get in and update their apps and take advantage
03:49of this multitasking experience, which may not happen very quickly depending on how
03:53popular this is.
03:54But if you look at Microsoft's suite of apps, the 365 suite, Outlook is a really good example
03:59where you span it across and you get email on one side and you can use your calendar
04:03and view single events on one side and the calendar on the other.
04:07It's great.
04:08So for me and Surface Duo, I found I tend to start by opening it up in book mode and
04:13then I slowly get into whatever I'm doing, which is usually just on one side.
04:17And then it's kind of awkward having the other side just kind of staring at me with
04:20nothing happening, wasting power.
04:22So I often switch over to single screen mode and use it like that.
04:25And that's cool.
04:26It keeps the volume rocker and the power button on the right hand side.
04:29It's not bad.
04:30Basically, it's just a little wider than normal for typing, which I will again get to in
04:35a bit.
04:36But hey, there's always compose mode for when I need to do some really extended typing,
04:40like crafting a beautiful tweet with no typos or, you know, writing an email.
04:45It's really the best example of this.
04:47And Microsoft knows multitasking is a huge upside for Surface Duo, but Samsung does it
04:52too on the fold, is the app pairs.
04:54So they call them app groups and you can launch two apps at the same time, two different
04:58apps and you can come up with all sorts of sweet combos and great ideas for how to use
05:03these.
05:04All you got to do to make one of your own is pick an app, hold it down, select app group,
05:08pick the second app to pair them together, then pick which screen you want each one to
05:12be on, then create it.
05:14And just like that, I'm feeling like an absolute productivity machine, pulling out the Surface
05:19Duo, flipping it open, launching a calendar and email at the same time.
05:23And yes, that's easily my most common app group.
05:25It's just so good.
05:26It makes so much sense with the dual screens.
05:28Typically, when you're multitasking on a phone, if you even do this at all, you're like dragging
05:33two different windows around sort of abstractly and even on the fold, you can do three at
05:39once.
05:40But how many people are really doing that?
05:41With this, it's just kind of staring you in the face.
05:43Like you have to multitask.
05:45So that's what it does well, really well, and that's the core of what makes it a Surface.
05:50So now let's get into the stuff that is meh.
05:55So the bezels, a lot of people out here are really not feeling it.
05:58I definitely wish they were thinner, but you also have to realize the side bezels are actually
06:03a measure against accidental touches.
06:05That's about as thin as you could get them without starting to touch the screen all the
06:08time.
06:09But I just think the top and bottom bezels are a little thick.
06:13Then pocketability.
06:14So, okay, it is two 5.6 inch displays, but as you can tell, they're very wide for if
06:19it was a normal 5.6 inch phone, plus those bezels.
06:23So the whole thing is shaped like a passport that you might be more likely to put in a
06:27back pocket.
06:28So for me, it does stick out a bit in the front pocket.
06:32I've kind of gotten used to it, but at this point, there's some big phones out there
06:36and this one sticks out above all the rest as a little bit tough on smaller pockets.
06:41Maybe a little bit narrower would have been more palatable.
06:43And then typing overall.
06:45Yeah, it's all right.
06:47It's a mixed bag, like I said.
06:48So the compose mode where you're just typing on the bottom screen and you have whatever
06:52content on the top screen, that's fine.
06:54And Microsoft, they partnered with SwiftKey on this keyboard for Android that sort of
06:58smartly adapts to whatever posture you're in and shifts the keyboard accordingly.
07:02So if you're in book mode, you can't really type with one hand all over that one side
07:07screen.
07:08It shifts the keyboard over and on one side, you can reach all the keys.
07:12It's still way slower than two-thumb typing, but it's better than nothing.
07:17The only bummer here is other third-party keyboards don't have this optimization yet.
07:22So my keyboard of choice is Gboard and it just looks silly trying to span across the
07:26whole thing.
07:27So typing was hit or miss.
07:28Gotta use SwiftKey.
07:29And then performance.
07:30It's, you know, look, we knew it wasn't going to be the best performer.
07:34It was in development for a whole year.
07:36So it has last year's specs, Snapdragon 855 and six gigs of RAM.
07:41It's not going to benchmark the highest.
07:42We knew that.
07:43But I think just using it, you start to see performance issues.
07:46And I think my biggest performance issue here was just overall fluidity at 60 hertz.
07:51And sure, that's partially because I am coming from other smooth, high refresh rate flagships,
07:56including the new Galaxy Fold actually.
07:58But I'm also just noticing a ton of little hiccups and lags while just moving around
08:03and multitasking.
08:04I think this device that's geared specifically for multitaskers could have hit us with a
08:09little bit more than six gigs of RAM.
08:11Like if it was me, I would have wanted like 12 gigs of RAM in this guy.
08:14But yeah, if you're used to flagship performance or any other high-end performance from an
08:19expensive phone, you kind of get it here.
08:22But overall, meh.
08:24And then battery life is also, you know, kind of middle of the road.
08:28Better than I thought it would be actually.
08:29So standby time is pretty good.
08:32It's a 3600 milliampere battery.
08:34So I find when I'm opening it and using it like two screen multitasking, I can start
08:40to bleed through battery pretty fast and I can kill it in a day.
08:44Now when I'm switching to one screen mode, which I did more often than not, which by
08:48the way is kind of rough with some car GPSs, like if you try to put it in your dashboard,
08:54it's kind of silly.
08:55But either way, when I'm using it one screen, I'm not drawing power from the back screen
08:59as much.
09:00So I'm actually getting better battery life when I do that.
09:04And right now I'm at half battery at 1.30 PM.
09:06It's acceptable, but again, you know, you don't have wireless charging.
09:10You only have 18 watt fast charging.
09:13So overall the battery, meh.
09:16But then we get to the bad, like the stuff that it's truly terrible at.
09:21I don't throw that word around very often, but when you get this first gen stuff, sometimes
09:25you're just going to not have things go well, right?
09:29And so I'll even try to explore a little bit why I think some of these things went
09:33so bad.
09:34So first of all, the speaker.
09:42The speaker is absolute trash and I think it's pretty simple.
09:46There's just not enough room in here for some great speakers.
09:49Like it's a thin body.
09:51They're not really top or bottom mounted like you might expect to find them.
09:54It's just at the top here in the earpiece, in the slot up there.
09:58That's it.
09:59Absolute maximum volume.
10:01It sounds like a normal smartphone speaker at 50% volume and inside a tin can.
10:06Like it's pretty brutal.
10:07Not enough room for a good speaker here.
10:09And then the camera.
10:10So the camera is in fact terrible.
10:12The quality is trash and we kind of knew it would be already because it's like the opposite
10:18of what the Zenfone is doing.
10:20So on the Zenfone 7, the huge main camera swivels around and becomes like basically
10:24the world's best selfie camera.
10:27On the Surface Duo, you swivel around the selfie camera and it becomes possibly the
10:32worst main camera you can have.
10:34At least the worst I've seen in a $1,400 phone anyway.
10:37And you know, Microsoft does call it an adaptive 11 megapixel camera.
10:41So it can tell when it's taking a selfie and optimize for faces versus when it's taking
10:46a regular photo.
10:47But yeah, all the optimization in the world isn't going to save this.
10:50You're not going to make a webcam feel like a big optically stabilized sensor.
10:56It's just not going to take good photos.
10:58But look, it's not just the quality of the photos that's bad.
11:01It's also just the ergonomics of taking a photo.
11:04There's no back camera like we've established.
11:05So every time I want to take a photo of something in front of me, I have to do this.
11:10Flip it around, unlock it, open the camera app, and then it's going to be in selfie
11:14modes.
11:15Now I have to try to swivel it around and get it to flip.
11:18And by the time I'm doing all this, half the time the shot is gone or I don't even feel
11:22like taking a photo anymore.
11:24So it felt like it actively discouraged me from taking photos and videos.
11:28And really the worst bug is trying to get it to switch to the front viewfinder.
11:32You're supposed to be able to double tap to get it to switch, but it still stays in that
11:37selfie mode so often.
11:40And pretty much anywhere else in the UI, you can force it to switch screens at any time
11:44by double tapping the off screen.
11:46And it usually works great.
11:47But I guess in the camera, it's not listening to the double tap and the accelerometer is
11:52difficult to get it to switch.
11:54It's rough.
11:55And then there's a flash up there in the top bezel.
11:58Just to...
12:00Why is there a flash?
12:01Is anyone really using this for nighttime photography?
12:03But look, Microsoft, they know their audience, right?
12:06This is the same company that has the biggest, most advertised feature of their new earpods
12:12is the ability to swipe through PowerPoint slides.
12:15Like the Surface Duo Buyer doesn't really take a ton of photos and videos and stuff.
12:19It's not a big deal.
12:20This will be fine for the occasional video chat, scanning documents, maybe a selfie
12:26once in a while.
12:27But I think the point is just leaving it at that is sacrificing what most people would
12:33want, which is like a nice set of cameras on the back for what they've already decided
12:38they want, which is a nice thin device with a 360 hinge that folds flat.
12:43And I think that's going to hold it back.
12:45I mean, don't get me wrong.
12:46I still raved about how thin it was and the hardware and how much I love it.
12:50And I like that I could get creative and prop it up in tent mode and get videos of myself
12:54without needing anyone's help.
12:56Even though the videos were garbaggio quality, that was kind of cool.
13:02But the theme that I'm getting at here is overall practicality suffering at the expense
13:08of folding it in half is the thing that's holding back all first generation folding
13:16phones.
13:17It's the challenge for all of them.
13:18And it's definitely happening here with Surface Duo.
13:20This phone has no wireless charging, no IP rating, no real ecosystem around it, very
13:26little app support out of the gate, and even a lot of the little things you might hope
13:29for in a phone of this price.
13:32No 5G, no headphone jack, no high refresh rate, no super fast wireless charging, not
13:39great haptics.
13:41Practicality is clearly suffering to achieve this form factor.
13:44But in future generations, when this actually improves and they're able to add back those
13:49things, that's when foldables will actually have a convincing future.
13:53When it's not like you're sacrificing and sacrificing but you happen to get it to fold
13:58now.
13:59When the fold is just another feature, that'll be a sweet future.
14:04That's the day, that's what I'm looking forward to.
14:07So, you know, you do file this first one in Do Not Buy, but keep an eye on it.
14:13I really think they're on to something.
14:15I like the dual screen thing.
14:17It's the same reason I sit in front of dual screen monitors at my desk instead of an
14:21ultrawide.
14:22It's because the productivity, the staying in your flow, the compartmentalization of
14:27having two screens.
14:29It works.
14:30It's real.
14:31And so I'm looking forward to the next Surface Duo, and that's the review of the first one.
14:35Thanks for watching.
14:36Catch you guys in the next one.
14:38Peace.