Should you still buy a Surface Duo?

After three years of support, Microsoft has cut  off the first Surface Duo from security updates, effectively bringing the device to  the end of its life as a smartphone. What’s worse, with the combined scaling back  of Microsoft’s niche products and departure of Panos Panay, it likely also means the end of  the Surface Duo line for the foreseeable future. As someone who’s been using Duo devices  since the 2020 launch—and finds them much more useful than any other smartphone  form factor—it suck

s to see that happen. Still, I kinda get it. These devices are fantastic but have had  software issues since launch, contributing to them never selling in high volume outside  heavily-discounted, second-hand marketplaces. When I demoted my Duo 1 from primary  my device status about two years ago, I left mostly frustrated with the continued  software issues I kept coming across. Nothing was overly dramatic or stopped  from using the device altogether, but small quirks like which screen was active

,  accidental screen touches, and occasionally sluggish performance made me more than ready to  spend more time with the Fold 3 I’d just gotten. My entire first year with the device  was spent with Android 10 though. For those unfamiliar, Android 10 was not  designed with dual screens or foldables in-mind. Microsoft literally duct taped as many  extra features and compatibility use cases as they could to the unoptimized  OS without forking Android altogether. The jankiness I felt was reflective 

of the jankiness they’d created. However, an Android 11 update in  early 2022 baked a lot of those features directly into the operating  system—reducing a lot of the stability issues present after the Duo’s  bugs at launch were squashed. Now, it’s on an even more  optimized version of Android 12, with most of those initial  issues nowhere to be seen. Given that—and the fact that you can  find one of these for less than $300 these days—should you still buy a Surface Duo? To answer that question

myself,  I reactivated my Surface Duo, and then I shifted to using it as  my only phone for about three weeks. My immediate reaction was a reminder as to why  I enjoyed the device so much in the first place. Physically, it’s a stark contrast from the  Surface Duo 2 I typically use on a daily basis. It’s much lighter, much thinner,  and provides a stronger illusion of a tablet split down the middle  than the curved glass of the Duo 2. While nowhere near as premium-feeling  as its successor, it fe

els oddly good returning to it and having the screen fold  back flat due to the lack of a camera bump. Of course, that missing bump  is a double-edged sword, since the camera on the original  Duo is pretty much unusable. The external camera on the Duo  2 has been extremely important for quick photos or scanning  menu QR codes at restaurants. As it was back in the Android 10 days,  the camera here might as well not exist due to the acrobatics needed to  use it as a right-handed person. (Though, t

o be honest, i’s not  the biggest loss in my book.) As for usage on a daily basis, I haven’t noticed a ton of differences in general performance  compared to either my Duo 2 or my Fold 4. Even as someone who regularly forgets to  close apps and often runs battery saver to delay charging as long as possible, the Duo  is still an incredibly snappy phone despite powering two displays and its Snapdragon 855  SoC being over 4 years old at this point. It just goes to show that most people  could proba

bly buy older phones and still be happy with the general performance. A lot of the smoothness may also come from  the fact that this is running Android 12, which is far less cumbersome  than Android 10 was years ago. While I wish the Duo were getting  additional OS updates in the future, I’m actually completely fine with the  state of Android 12 on this device. Over the past few weeks, my only re-occurring  issue has been the device occasionally not wanting to rotate back to portrait mode while

auto-rotate  is enabled. Otherwise, it’s been smooth-sailing. If there were a time machine to  send this version of the device back to reviewers in 2020, I think  it would’ve reviewed much better. Most days, the performance feels on-par with  any modern Android phone—albeit with two very nice 4:3 AMOLED displays. Enabling  Niagara Launcher has even made this a really solid one-handed device when folded back. Broadly-speaking, it feels good to  use in a way that’s difficult to fully describe to a

nyone hasn’t gotten  their hands on a Surface Duo yet. The flat, wide screen lends itself to one  of the best keyboard experiences on Android. The width fits my (kinda large) hands perfectly. And there’re little things like being able to  read more text in a single line or propping it up in tent mode to easily watch the  timer on my French press that feel like unique experiences that make my day easier  and are only capable with a Surface Duo. That’s not to say the Surface  Duo is now perfect th

ough. While a ton of the software  gripes have been demolished, there are still a fair few  hardware-related gripes remaining. One that keeps bugging me—and bugged  me years ago as well—is how often it’ll register a back gesture when  scrolling up or down near the hinge. That’s partly due to the flatness of the  folded design leading me to choke up on the device quite a bit for my default  grip. Given the width of the screen, that usually means my thumbs are closer  to the edges when scrolling a

webpage. That grip also has the knock-on effect of  occasionally generating unwanted touch input when I brush the screen with my palm while reaching  for a button on the opposite side from my hand. Another awkwardness is that the Duo still  doesn’t have the ability to select which display stays active by default when folded  back—a feature the Duo 2 had at launch. The software seems way better than  it used to be at detecting my intent, but every now and then it’ll make a  wrong prediction that

requires me to pause and double tap the screen I want  to keep active before continuing on. I’ll even occasionally see the device watching  for the double tap at unexpected times, leading to the active display suddenly  switching due to my finger placement. It doesn’t happen often, but  it’s extremely frustrating when it does—especially since this  problem never happens on my Duo 2. And, on the topic of differences with its sequel. There’s the unchangeable fact that the Duo 1  only has a speake

r behind the left display. As a right-handed person, that makes audio feel more distant while listening to  something while the device’s folded. Similarly, while the device is unfolded,  having the audio coming from only one direction makes watching videos on  the right screen a bit more awkward. Putting all these factors together makes for  some really mixed feelings about the Surface Duo. On one hand, I love the form factor and  using it on a daily basis is a complete joy. Given the opportunit

y to use this or my Galaxy S20  for a year, I’d choose the Surface Duo every time. The software has improved by leaps and bounds  since it was my primary device years ago. In its current state, it looks nothing like the frustrating mess that many reviewers  originally got their hands on in 2020. In fact, to judge this device by its reviews alone would be a disservice to what  Microsoft has accomplished here. Yet, with the software issues mostly solved, the remaining issues that feel baked  into

the hardware are even more obvious. How the screen folds, feels, and stays active  seem so clearly fixed in the Duo 2 that—even with many more feature updates—I’m not sure  how much better the Duo 1 could have gotten. And, those remaining issues, while  not a deal-breaker for me, could make for a lot of frustrations for a lot of people. Even with that in-mind, I think there are  some clear reasons why the Surface Duo might be worthwhile to more than a few people even  after it stops being a good

primary device. But, before I get into why the Surface  Duo might still be worth your attention, a word from our channel partner Mint Mobile. Quick question, are you one of those folks  whose cell phone plan is just way too expensive? Maybe you have a long-term contract  with your service provider that locks you in for a few years by threat  of massive fees if ya quit early? I was definitely like that years ago,  and—let me tell ya—it wasn’t fun. Luckily, Mint Mobile is here to help ya  out wit

h a different kind of cell phone plan that requires no contracts  and starts for as low as $15 per month—while still providing the same great  coverage as the larger cell phone carriers. While revisiting the Surface Duo itself, I’ve  taken the device all over Chicago’s North Side and pitted Mint’s cell bandwidth against the  weight of cloud streaming via GeForce Now. And, let me tell ya, even with  the Duo being a bit too old to make use of Mint’s expansive 5G  network, it didn’t drop a beat. Pl

us, it was extremely easy to set up. The time between checking out on  their website with my Surface Duo and launching a game on GeForce Now using  their cell service was less than 10 minutes. Given how finicky my Surface Duo  was to get service for back in 2020, the complete ease of installing one of Mint  Mobile’s eSims was a breath of fresh air. Better yet, if you’re watching this  video before the end of October, 2023, they have a special  promotion going on for new customers where all their

plans are  only $15 for the first three months. Whether you have a phone of your  own or feel it’s time to upgrade, they’ll have ya covered either way. If you’re interested, just go  to trymintmobile.com/gamexdata as shown on the screen and linked in the  video description for more information. To start delving into why the Surface Duo  still might be worthwhile to consider, I think it’s worth mentioning that  it’s…uh…actually not a smartphone. In fact, here’s how Panos Panay initially  describ

ed the Surface Duo back in 2019. I'm super clear. I'm super clear. You're gonna talk, you're gonna talk  about it as a phone. And, I get that. And, you're gonna talk about  it as a communication device. And, for sure, it does both of those  things incredibly well, for sure. For sure, you can text, you can  write. You can do what you want. But, make no mistake, this product is a Surface. While it has the hardware and functionality to be used as a smartphone, it’s  fundamentally something differen

t. In fact, I think only my wife Emily (behind the camera) has the phone numbers  associated with either of my Duos. As with my Surface Pro 9, they mostly have SIM  cards to have internet access away from Wi-Fi. That’s fundamentally different from my Fold 4  which I’ve used to make the occasional phone call, attend business meetings, or text  folks who don’t have chat apps. That might sound a bit awkward to anyone  who’s ever stared at the large price tag of a Duo 2 or considered one of the Surf

ace Duo  devices as an upgrade to their old smartphone. But, in reality, using either device  feels more akin to a pocketable, dual screen Android tablet than anything else. And, I think it might be worthwhile for  other folks to keep that in mind while considering the Duo 1 long after  Microsoft’s support has ended. Let’s dig into that a bit  more by first addressing one of Microsoft’s key selling points: productivity. In my first video on the Surface Duo, I praised  the device for being the on

e Android device on the market that really excelled at using multiple  apps at the same time. That hasn’t changed. Over the past few weeks with it as my primary  device, it’s still been as good as always for doing whatever multitasking I need it  to do—whether that’s having Pocket Casts open on one display and X open on another,  quickly browsing Outlook with an optimized dual screen view, or looking something  up while YouTube plays off to the side. To this day, Samsung is still probably the  o

nly other brand that’s made huge strides toward usable multiapp functionality with its  Fold line, but using split screen on my Fold 4 still feels more cumbersome than opening  two apps at once on this 3 year-old device. At launch, the Duo also came with baked in Surface  Pen support—which continues to be amazing and has curiously expanded further to Wacom pens (or at  least the pen I bought years ago for my XPS 15). All of which has made this a  kinda great sketch pad over time. While not speci

fically optimized for Duos,  apps like Clip Studio Paint and Medibang can be arranged to fit menus or references  on one screen while sketching on the other. I’d love the screen to be a bit  larger for sketching in general, but it’s still super effective if  I want to quickly jot an idea down. On top of all that, there’s the broadest use case that isn’t going to change as long as most  apps support Android 12, and that’s reading. Kindle, Play Books, Shonen Jump, and OneDrive’s PDF reader all  pe

rfectly span across both displays. Like many apps out there, that’s not because  all of them are specifically optimized but because their tablet views present text in  a way that feels natural with the hinge. The flat, high contrast displays look  great while reading books in general. Meanwhile, the 4:3 aspect ratios of the displays  feel only a touch wider than a pocket-sized novel. I could honestly see someone picking up a  Surface Duo solely as a compact Android eReader. For comics especially

, it’s a joy to use and the perfect size  to kick back and dig into a new series. Heck, even news articles feel better on  the Duo than any other devices of its size—save for maybe a mini tablet  or the inner screen of a foldable. Considering that I scroll while reading, spanning an article across both displays in  portrait provides this illusion of reading on a much larger tablet. It’s extremely  comfy, despite the large hinge gap. For tablet-y sorta productivity use cases, the Duo’s kinda a pe

rfect device that allows  me to get done what I need to get done. And, it being pocket-sized makes it convenient enough that I can easily travel  with it as a secondary device. But, as most of y’all could probably guess, the greatest use case is probably  as a retro emulation device. With its Snapdragon 855 SoC,  it’s the most performant Android emulation and cloud gaming device  currently available under $400. It’s more than capable of PS2, Wii, and Gamecube emulation—though the first two  migh

t come with a few more asterisks overall. Those retro emulation chops are backed by  incredibly solid 4:3 displays that will either eliminate or greatly minimize black bars seen  while playing games without widescreen patches. The built-in 4G modem also gives  it a leg up over other emulators in its price range. Attaching a Bluetooth  controller makes services like Steam Link, PlayStation Remote Play, and GeForce Now a  lot more useable without a Wi-Fi connection. Though, for services like Remot

e Play  that have adequate portrait modes, that Bluetooth controller may not even  be necessary for slower-paced games. The touch controls on those sorts of apps fit  naturally on the lower display while playing. Heck, Xbox Cloud Streaming even still offers  a small library of touch input-enabled games with control schemes specifically  meant to be used with the Surface Duo. Unlike many devices without integrated  controllers, the Surface Duo shines as a really comfortable, versatile gaming devi

ce  even when I leave my controller at home. None of which is even the main reason  to pick one of these up as an emulator. The main reason is for DS emulation.  As I’ve said over the years, the only way better than the Surface Duo to  play most DS games would be to get a 3DS. Even then, the Duo has larger  screens, more accessible cheat codes, and a ton more quality of life features than  something like Twilight Menu on the 3DS. A couple years ago, I replayed Pokemon Black on my Duo with touch

controls and event  items enabled and it-it was a blast. As much as I enjoy my New 3DS XL,  it pales in comparison to the big, beautiful screens of my Surface Duo. Like, honestly, for anyone who’s  been clamoring for retro emulation manufacturers to release dual  screen handhelds, this is it. Even if a company like Retroid announces  a new dual screen Android device tomorrow, it likely won’t be as polished,  powerful, or sleek as a Surface Duo. And, that kinda brings me to my final thoughts. If

the Surface Duo’s viewed as another  smartphone that could replace whatever smartphone y’have on hand, it’s  no longer really worth buying. The form factor makes it incredibly interesting,  but the hardware feels more like a beta version of the Surface Duo 2—which is actually a  very good (albeit expensive) smartphone. Combined with the fact that regular  security updates from Microsoft have ended, there’s no way I could recommend that  someone pick up a Surface Duo as their primary device—even

if I’ve largely enjoyed  revisiting it over the past few weeks. That perspective seems flawed though. Unlike most other devices in the smartphone  category, if I removed the 4G antennas and ability to make phone calls from the Surface Duo,  its main selling points remain largely the same. Folks considering the Surface  Duo these days should instead think of it more as an Android tablet  that excels for specific use cases. Do you need a dedicated electronic  organizer to manage meetings and quick

ly jump between social media  accounts? The Surface Duo’s for you. Do you want an Android eReader that fits in your pocket and feels snappy to  use? The Surface Duo’s for you. Do you like Android emulation and have been  specifically looking for a device that can handle both touch controls well and DS games as  they were intended? The Surface Duo’s for you. Meanwhile, if none of those main points  sounded appealing or you aren’t looking for a secondary Android device in  your life on top of your

smartphone, then it’s fine to leave the  Surface Duo in the past. Though, it’s worthwhile to  remember that at the end of its life the Surface Duo was actually  a surprisingly good Android device. For as many times as dual screen experiences  have been attempted on Android, the Surface Duo is the first time that experience  has actually yielded something more impactful than stapling a secondary  display onto a standard smartphone. The form factor, use cases, and flexibility  built into the devi

ce’s design is something unique that—I hope—folks interested in  consumer tech will remember fondly the next time a company dabbles  into dual screen technology. Those are my thoughts though.  I’d love to know yours! Looking back at the past three years of the  Surface Duo, what’s the lasting impression you have of the devices themselves?  Let me know down in the comments. As always, if you found this video interesting  or informative, go ahead and click that like button and then get subscribed

for  more dual screen content in the future. While the Surface Duo’s design seems  to live on via the Pixel Fold line, the Microsoft dual screen line seems to be  done for now—Microsoft please prove me wrong. But, heck, given that the Duo 2’s slated  to have its final updates a year from now, I might need to plan a similar  video for it next year. But...we’ll see. This video was provided in part thanks to Mint  Mobile providing me with three months of their unlimited plan for free to use my Duo

without  disrupting service on any of my other devices. I’ve been having a great time using it. Their  service has been great, and there’ll be a link in the description if you’d like to try them  out for yourself while supporting the channel. That’s gonna be all for this video  though. Until next time, catch ya later!