Microsoft first revealed that it’s making an Android phone, that too a dual-screen one, at its Surface hardware event earlier last year. Now, after teasing the device on social media over the past few weeks, Microsoft today officially launched the much-awaited Surface Duo. It comes with an exorbitant $1,399 (~Rs. 1,04,999) price tag and will go on sale starting from 10th September.
The Redmond giant initially planned on launching the Surface Duo at the end of this year, during the holiday season. It seems to have rushed the launch though to deliver what it believes to be the next-gen ‘mobile productivity’ experience.
When opened, the Surface Duo offers you an 8.1-inch ‘PixelSense Fusion display’ with a 3:2 aspect ratio and 2700 x 1800-pixels resolution. Microsoft boasts that the device is merely 4.8mm thick when opened, making it the thinnest Surface device to date. It does weigh more, around 250 grams, in comparison to traditional phones.
As for the software experience, Surface Duo runs Android 10 out-of-the-box but it has been tweaked to meet the needs of the dual-screen experience. It has the Microsoft launcher on top, along with exclusive features such as running two apps side-by-side, expanding apps to use the two screens, and gestures to quickly move apps between the two screens. You can read our hands-on with the Surface Duo emulator right here.
While Surface Duo offers you a customized dual-screen foldable phone experience, it comes with a really steep price tag. Some might say that the price is comparable to or less than other foldable phones in the market, such as Galaxy Z Flip and Galaxy Fold. We, however, need to keep in mind that Samsung is using a foldable AMOLED screen instead of simply connecting two separate displays with a hinge.
