Microsoft seems to have
forgotten all about it as it wrapped up its Surface event today with a rather
curious announcement - the Surface Duo. The Surface phone that has been rumored
so often in the past finally materialized, but it's not what anybody expected.
It's an Android device has two 5.6” screens and bezels that seem to come
straight out of 2012.
No, it’s not one of those trending foldable screens
- these are two separate panels with a gap between them and while the demo
clearly showed you can stretch a singlr app or image across the two it will
always look awkward. The second screen is, instead, meant for typing and gaming
controls - a concept we already have on the LG Dual Screen or the ROG Phones’
Twin Dock.
You’d think that with Microsoft merely rehashing
ideas that are proven not to work it’s at least going to try and capitalize on
the upcoming holiday season with the Surface Duo, but that’s not the case. The
device isn’t coming until the end of next year, which will allegedly give the
company and developers time to create exclusive apps to leverage on the two
screens. It will also give just about every other company time to develop an
actual foldable screen phone, which doesn’t have nasty gaps in the middle, but
maybe Microsoft has something in mind.
The company didn’t reveal any specifics about the
phone, but it did confirm its hinge will be of the 360 degree variety, so you
can fold the screens both on the inside and on the outside. We’ll perhaps get
to learn more about the Surface Duo in the next thirteen months unless the
company comes to its senses, scraps it and moves its R&D efforts to stuff
that might actually be useful.
