Microsoft Announces Surface Duo - An Android Dual-Screen Device
by Andrei Frumusanu on October 2, 2019 12:15 PM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Microsoft
- Surface Duo
Today at Microsoft’s Surface event in New York, alongside new laptops and various other Surface devices, we saw the company announce a new kind of device; the new “Surface Duo”. The new device more or less loosely described as a phone, is a clamshell dual-screen phone with a full swivel hinge design.
The design of the phone at the moment look relatively simplistic, but we were certainly shown just prototype devices. The interesting design aspect was that the device lacked any kind of external features aside from the Windows logo – particularly missing from the device was any kind of rear camera.
On the “inside” – or rather more aptly, on the side with the screens, we did see the device have an earpiece speaker as well as a camera. It’s possible Microsoft where is envisaging you using this single camera in all scenarios and would be relatively practical given you can use the opposing outwards facing screen as the viewfinder.
The screens themselves has two 5.6” screens which when unfolded amount to a diagonal of 8.3”.
The device is running a customized version of Android as the OS.
Currently the prototype devices are said to be running Android 9 Pie with a Snapdragon 855 SoC – although these specifications are sure to change until the device’s actual launch.
Much like the Surface Neo, this has been pretty much just a teaser pre-announcement of the Duo as the devices aren’t scheduled to come out until the holiday season in 2020.
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s.yu - Friday, October 4, 2019 - link
Half joke. It's a fat enough device to be fitting a jack in with absolutely no issue, and removing it is simply greed.I don't really need such a device, but if I do, I might tolerate 2 C ports, add another and forget about the jack.
GreenReaper - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link
"If you bought this, you may be interested in the Surface Ear . . ."s.yu - Friday, October 4, 2019 - link
Nope, sticking with my CIEMs, and the PHA55BT if necessary.Valantar - Wednesday, October 2, 2019 - link
So does the mention of the Surface Neo in the article mean there are more articles coming covering the rest of the lineup? This launch is very weird, seems like nobody is really covering it. Where are the tech specs? Where are the image galleries? Or did they only invite Youtubers this time?name99 - Wednesday, October 2, 2019 - link
That's not the "weirdest" part. The eroding irrelevance of Intel to anything below the datacenter was on full display here.QC and AMD get full billing, lot's of talk about how great their specs are, and how willing they both are to add silicon, like an NPU.
But Intel will, one day, deliver Lakefield (apparently with *one* large core at a time when iPhones get two, and iPad Pro's get four large cores), and if Intel is one day going to add an inference NPU to its cores, it hasn't said anything yet.
Feels like MS (at least the part of MS that cares about Surface) has a feeling for the way the wind is blowing.
I wonder if they've already discussed with AMD and TSMC the extent to which those two can deliver something like Lakefield -- small physical volume, het cores? Size/packaging-wise I suspect it's fine; the real problem is that AMD doesn't have a great small core, at least not right now.
Topweasel - Wednesday, October 2, 2019 - link
AMD doesn't have a really small core. But Zen is supposed to pair down really well into a small core mostly by getting rid of L3. Super efficient and even more on N7 and at least with Apple you are seeing ARM cores battling AMD and Intel for size. So a Semi-custom turned retail embedded Ryzen setup with 4 ULW l3 cacheless Zen cores with like a Vega 3 level GPU would probably fit the bill for any real request for small cores.Raqia - Wednesday, October 2, 2019 - link
The Pro X seems like the Surface that MS wants to make. The other Surface products they unveiled today seem like compatibility fall backs while the Pro X tests the possibility of gradually weaning the ecosystem off of x86 (it may not); they also appease users who need every last ounce of power or app compatibility.coburn_c - Wednesday, October 2, 2019 - link
Holy crap they finally made the Courier. Only a decade behind schedule!Quantumz0d - Wednesday, October 2, 2019 - link
Really Funny how people are attracted to this Pile of shit.Allow me to fill the gap
First of all this is M$ we are talking, I wonder all the people who are cheering are enjoying their Windows 10 installation which constantly updates and breaks things so that they get Enterprise get stable releases. And how the latest fiasco of removing Local Account option from the Installation.
Next they blasted Win7 and 8.1 with Telemetry crap and bloatware on Win10 pre-installed like Candy Crush and ruining Windows permanently with As A Service model, esp enforcing Office platform to 365 subscription removed offering of a Standalone Office 2013/2016 type installs and forcing Click to Install office 2019 which works only on Win10.
Then let us take a look back at history, the death of Windows Phone, guess how the developers never showed interest when Nadella came to power ? Chevron Unlock, I don't know if the AT people know the Regedit and .cab extension execution on Windows Phone making it truly powerful pocket computer back in the day, that guy destoryed the developers who are doing that hacks by sending C&D lawyers to their homes and brought the whole site down and restarted by making a 99USD fee for development and removed options to hack and run Registry edit etc, google "Chevron Unlock XDA"
And how Surface lags and throttles all the time and battery issues to the goddamn garbage pricing, plus UEFI needing certification from Linux flavors. They have an Internal policy of "Embrace and Extinguish" and this perfectly suits with WSL agenda they have, the CEO wants to take all the OS installations on Enterprise from Linux to this WSL Windows by making the Kernel and Hypervisor and Containerization.
Quantumz0d - Wednesday, October 2, 2019 - link
UEFI Class III has Flash Write Protection and disable CSM by ruining the BIOS controls this is already in place with all the BGA trash on the Notebook market no more CSM options so no more Win7, low level firmware to ship their Spyware tracking (LinkedIs is their own, they support NSA data collection program) and their Edge is now Chrome backed essentially killing options of Firefox by joining hands with the bigger enemy creating a tighter grip on the Internet. and Computing Hardware.
Their Win10X which is supposed to run on Custom Intel chip will be a castrated OS which can only run UWP garbage or run x86 in a container which won't have any controls on the Low level HW of the Computer, they killed USB3.0 drivers for Win7 and bribed Intel/AMD to run the new HW only on 10 and enforcing all the people to run their spyware junk with perpetual unstable OS by removing options.
The Chip will be custom like the AMD one and you won't control anything or tune it's performance, I suspect the ARM flavor won't have any kernel source or even if it has expect a custom Bootloader with ton of UEFI and million other Fuses that Qualcomm provides to enable a perfect chastised product.
And here we are people/normies are losing their mind. Sad that these revelations won't be popular as all are subverted.
Finally coming to HW, this doesn't have an SD slot for Expansion or running an OS on a Sideloader device like Switch or HTC HD2, or extra space for contingency storage, enforcing OneDrive bs. This one doesn't have a 3.5mm jack nor any Media consuming features except the shitty Surface Wireless buds which need another bloatware app (Bose app had some spyware issues, and all BT sets have this BS apps system to use and offer inferior sound massively low quality just for no wires, esp the Drivers they use and the Bitrate they have, even Sony true wireless junk doesn't have their own LDAC, forget AptX which is max 320kbps and AptXHD at sub 550Kbps without using BLE) It's a joke when all these companies are emulating Apple in building their own walls for Orwellian bsand draconian drama from BGA HW, (Oh the SSD on the new Pro X is a proprietary junk from the looks of it.) But yeah the Sheep are too much invested in these junk vs the last bastion left, DIY PC market.