![]() ![]() If the Duo makes email and Slack and Zoom weirder, I'd just reach for a normal-feeling smartphone or tablet or laptop instead - which is what I've been doing. The first Apple Watch was so slow at opening apps that I just went back to the iPhone instead. When new devices are this tough to use, you stop using them. Scott Stein/CNET Stage 4: I miss my old comfy phone The camera app and camera on the Surface Duo are really frustrating and slow, too. Finding others in Android's app drawers isn't as convenient. A quick-launch dock of six apps on the bottom of the screen is meant to help, but I want more than six apps at the ready. Some of the multitasking flow reminds me of multiple apps on the iPad, using a little handle on the bottom to move an app to one screen or another, or holding it over both to expand it out. It's just plain weird on the Surface Duo at the moment. I keep coming back to the keyboard because that's my main way of being productive: writing and taking notes. But again, any attempt to type makes the keyboard fly up and either take over one app completely or interrupt the flow. Zoom works, and Zoom plus a browser or window to read things in is OK. until I get hamstrung by popping the keyboard up in one window or another and trying to either thumb-swipe or flip the phone and type. I try Slack and Gmail, which work together fine. The laggy feel of my review Duo and its early software, plus the weird interface, make navigation a serious challenge. Really, it's just Microsoft's suite of apps, some of which need a Microsoft 365 subscription to unlock all the features. ![]() Two different screens suggest you'll find ways of making apps work together, and there aren't many that play nicely like this. I get the idea of a bigger screen you can unfold or tuck into your pocket: That's the promise of a Scott Stein/CNET Stage 3: How do you use this, exactly? It's often not in the place I want it to be. ![]() By trying to seem like an everyday phone times two, the Duo ends up ducking some of the bigger interface questions I still have, but it doesn't really solve them. It could be that it's still evolving to a new interface. And again, when all I want to do is open an app, or throw one app to another screen, or close it up again and make it single-screen, the Duo can't keep up with me. A more recent update prerelease has fixed a lot of the totally broken issues, but there's a persistent lagginess and problem with screen orientation that's throwing off the whole experience for me. The early software on the Duo review unit I've been using was sometimes so frustrating, I wanted to stop using it. Not all of the Android parts feel ready for the Microsoft Surface Duo parts. This boots up like an Android phone, because it is an Android phone. I get a brief tutorial explaining the swipes and gestures to move around, and there are two sets of sign-ins: one for my Microsoft app ecosystem, the other forĪnd Android. Surface Duo needs those tools, that unique software, that special touch. It's perfectly fine at that - but that's not why you'd get a Surface Duo, is it? (Scanning something like Twitter or Slack is helpful, but multitasking with keyboard input can get weird.) And if the dual screen stuff gets frustrating, well, it can be folded over and used as a single-screen phone. The bonus screen can come in handy as an extra help at times, although I found I needed it less than I'd expected. It can stand up at multiple angles, which normal phones can't do. There are some things the Duo does do well: Its feel and shape are compelling. In particular, the sense of flow that the Duo aspires to - that feel of things working well together, the device not getting in the way - hasn't been there for me. My time using the Surface Duo has been a rough ride through what feels like not-fully-baked software, and so far it most definitely has not convinced me of the value of dual screens. But if only the experience was as good on the inside. While I've never found dual-screen phones appealing, the Surface Duo arrived promising a well-thought-out argument for being useful.įrom the outside it looked promising. (And yes, it's a real phone with aĪnd everything.) And it costs $1,400 (about £1,070 or AU$1,960). The Microsoft Surface Duo seems at first like the perfect little device for this new work-from-home world. ![]()
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