**The Microsoft Surface Duo: A Dual-Screen Smartphone with Promise**

As I held the Microsoft Surface Duo, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and curiosity about this innovative new device. With its dual screens, thumb keyboard, and unique folding mechanism, I was eager to put it through its paces and see what it could do.

**The Frustrating Foldable Screen**

One of the first things I noticed when using the Surface Duo was how finicky its foldable screen could be. When I'd try to use an app pair, such as YouTube and Twitter, while folding the device in half, I'd often find that one or both of the apps would disappear altogether. It seemed like a simple matter of unfolding the screen and continuing to use the apps, but somehow, it just didn't work out that way. I found myself repeatedly trying to fold the screen back open and starting over again, trying to figure out what was going on.

**Photos and Notes: A Study in Continuity**

I decided to try using the Surface Duo as a digital note-taking device, and I was pleased to see that photos and notes seemed to maintain continuity even when the device was folded in half. That is, until I tried to switch between them. When I double-tapped on the screen to turn it over, the note would disappear, leaving me staring at an empty space. It was a bit disconcerting, to be honest. But when I turned it back over and double-tapped again, my notes reappeared, intact.

**A Thumb Keyboard Perfection**

However, there was one aspect of the Surface Duo that truly won me over: its thumb keyboard. As a big note-taker, I love being able to quickly jot down thoughts and ideas without having to pause and adjust the screen. And the Surface Duo's keyboard was perfect for this purpose. I could sit the device flat on my lap and just start writing, knowing that the phone would continue to respond accurately even as I scribbled away.

**Camera: A Mixed Bag**

I also got a chance to try out the Surface Duo's camera, which features an 11-megapixel sensor. While it wasn't spectacular, I did appreciate its use of an accelerometer to switch between portrait and landscape modes when I turned the device on its side. And with an integrated flash, it could double as a reliable flashlight in low-light situations.

**The Verdict: A Promising but Flawed Device**

Overall, my experience with the Surface Duo was mixed. While there were some delightful little features and use cases packed into this device, I couldn't help but feel that it lacked a bit of polish and refinement. The foldable screen, in particular, seemed to be a work-in-progress, prone to disappearing apps and inconsistent behavior.

**A Future Device?**

Despite its flaws, I do think the Surface Duo has some real potential as a secondary device or even as a tablet-slash-smartphone hybrid. With more updates and refinements, it could become a truly compelling option for those looking for something new and innovative. As it stands now, however, I think I'll stick with my main phone and use this as a supplementary device.

**Final Thoughts**

I did manage to get some great video footage of the Surface Duo's features in action, including its peek functionality, which allows you to quickly see what's on the screen without having to fully open it. And when I took it apart (just kidding – I wouldn't really do that!), I was impressed by the quality of the materials and build.

If you're thinking of buying this device, I'd love to hear from you in the comments! Have you had any experiences with the Surface Duo? Do you think its flaws are worth overlooking for its unique features? Let me know what you think!

**Rating:**

I give the Microsoft Surface Duo 3.5 out of 5 stars. While it has some great features and a unique design, its finicky foldable screen and lack of polish hold it back from being a truly top-notch device.

**Subscribe for More!**

If you liked this video, be sure to subscribe for more content from me, Erica the Technology Nerd! I'll be uploading new videos regularly, covering everything from smartphones to laptops to smart home devices. Thanks for watching, and I'll catch you in the next one!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody this is erica the technology nerd likes to film stuff and this is the microsoft surface duo so this is launch day i just ran out to best buy and purchased this and i really just want to start using it so let's just get right into the unboxing so there's a little tab right here so this is a 1400 phone and let me say this right now this is an investment in what's to come this is not a phone for the average consumer per se i really think this is a device to play along with the fixes and to be part of a paradigm shift this is a device that will be fun to watch and not necessarily to own and use but i want to be part of that and that price tag is 1400 so here it is right here the impossibly thin device set that aside now this doesn't come with anything fancy you see it says surface duo bumper although they do give you a bumper to protect this thing so i'll apply that it should apply with the sticker got some documentation and also a charging brick and right here you have a spot for the usb c cable and that is all that is in the box i do have myself a handy dandy surface pen so that should work with this device as well let's go ahead and pull all the packaging off that is probably the most delightful part of getting any device there you are okay and oh yeah let's get this puppy set up shall we there's a power button right here volume rocker here and fingerprint sensor powered by android now this guy is very much running on last year's specifications know that understand that know that this doesn't have some things in it like wireless charging and nfc it's very much meant to be a very thin device and also it probably was supposed to be released earlier than what we're seeing now let me get this set up i will be back with you momentarily okay so i set this all up and i spent about an hour with it and my first impression of it is that i really like this this is different this is something that's new even though it may not be like the newest concept of two screens it just it feels great this is a product where i really already want to see the second generation because this this does feel kind of prototypey i think it feels really great when you slap it shut and also feels great the other way when you slap it shut but as far as materials i i kind of questioned durability a little bit this outside part to me i believe this is polycarbonate this really looks and feels like plastic this white part on the outside i'm sure that the rest of the body the chassis has metal in it but i can see that i've already gotten a little bit of staining here with my thumb just constantly holding it like this or like this i've also got a black cleaning cloth here and i won't use this with this because i'm worried that this is going to stain it so people who put this in their jeans let me know are you guys seeing staining with the body on this and then also the frame is sandwiched between two glass slabs and they're pretty much glued on here as you can see the way that this looks worries me a little bit i can see actually into the phone right here this looks like it might be something that's on the circuit board it's so thin that it can't contain everything that's in here and it's solid it's not wanting to come up or anything but it really looks like a first generation product so taking a look here at system settings you can see that it says android 10 so we're on android 10 and this did get a day one update so that's really great so when you're setting it all up it has you do an update the first thing that you're going to want to do after that is to update google play and all the services and all of the apps because chrome was really freaking out at first it was actually quite hilarious i thought that perhaps i had broken it or did something i don't know but it turns out that chrome was just bugging out and once i updated chrome and everything else it was it was fine so all my quibbles i'm having right now i'm really hoping software wise that they're going to be worked out over time now already i'm already finding that i have a bit of a workflow going here i like to fold it back this way this feels most familiar to me and also the most comfortable i really like using the keyboard full screen this way so we'll see if i end up breaking out into truly using a two app configuration or if that's something that i use once in a while it does take a little bit of getting used to but the app pairs are really quite cool so if you touch right here you can see i've got twitter and also youtube on the other side i thought i was really clever you can see i called it you twit very proud of that i'm really glad to see that compared to playing with it last week this feels like something i can actually use now and this is reflecting what i'm seeing a lot of other people saying when i was at best buy when you tried to go home by swiping upward it just wouldn't respond and now that's that's no problem whatsoever so now app spanning is working really quite well and you can see that we've got the whites here and one thing that i'm noticing right off the bat is that the color temperature is ever so slightly different between these two panels it's not glaringly obvious but the one that i saw in store was the same as this one so this one's a little bit warmer than this one is going ahead and spanning here when comparing them both though side by side i don't really see a lot of differences to the eye with the calibration the colors look really pretty similar so i really don't think that there is anything to worry about something else you notice about the screens that makes me quite happy is that they're very much in sync when scrolling maybe just the hair just the tiniest hair off but the scrolling experience really is very nice when you span an app so if i spam twitter here the scrolling experience is nice and seamless although there is quite a seam so i'm a little bit confused as to how i'm going to be consuming media on this device you can definitely fold it this way and have at it and you can see that there's quite chunky bezels here and actually i'm a fan of bezels i think that they give something to hold on to but i'm not used to seeing my screen so boxed in i feel like i want more screen real estate so what i've actually been doing lately is just uh you know opening it this way and spanning the app all the way across and of course then you can just make it full screen and you've got this lovely bit here that just cuts out all the pixels right here but it's a fully functional image i don't know some of you might think this is completely unacceptable the interesting thing though is that this part right here obstructs the ui for the play button but thankfully if i just tap here i'm still able to control pause and play pause and play so that's nice but weird very very odd i really do like that i can flip it over and do a double tap thingy here and it switches screens you can turn it over again do a double tap although the accelerometer is all freaking out everywhere so this this takes a bit of finessing if you will now because this is a brand new thing to me i'm doing quite a lot of what does this do what does this do what happens if i do that how about that i'm really not sure what to expect and this takes a lot of exploration and oftentimes what i expect it to do it doesn't do and i'm sure this just needs a lot of optimization such as when you use an app pair so you've got youtube and twitter what happens if you fold it in half so fold it in half and you continue using youtube excuse me twitter and then if you turn it over you would expect that youtube would still be on this side uh it's not so where did youtube go sometimes youtube is there and other times it's not i don't know what the mechanism is here photos notes folded in half so you got photos still turn it over double tap now you've got notes no home screen but notes turn it back over double tap now here's the home screen what happened to photos what if i open it back up again there really is no continuity between screens when it's folded in half i think the big thing for right now is really trying to find a use case for all the things that this cool dual screen thing can do it's pretty awesome that you can sit here and use this thing as a laptop although it's not as reassuring as a real keyboard so i don't think i would actually ever use this what i actually like is the thumb keyboard now i'm a big note taker so it's really nice that i can just sit this flat open it up full screen and just start writing with my pen hello you can see it continues between screens just fine although i don't know why anybody would do that check that out that's interesting if you start here and you try to draw to the edge it stops short but if it detects that you're going to be continuing it tries to continue all the way sometimes yep there you go yeah don't do that just no now i really haven't played with the camera very much it's an 11 megapixel camera just a single camera i do appreciate that it's got an accelerometer on it so that when you turn it this way it automatically switches and you can see hello and then i can turn it back and then there's what i'm looking at 4 3 aspect looks kind of squat but this is a 4 3 aspect screen of course i'm tempted to sit here and grab it and hold it and then i've smudged up my camera lens really bad and it doesn't always react at this point the way that you would expect it to like it's like hello right now are you there it still thinks it's supposed to be here but maybe that's because i'm touching the screen so if you're careful and not fiddling your fingers on the screen it seems pretty faithful to switch but i just marked up the camera again meant to use very much in this orientation so you don't get fingerprints everywhere so this is this is a camera for taking pictures of documents and other little things but you're not going to be using this for much quite honestly i am really glad to see that we have the flash here because you can use this as a flashlight see from the lock screen just as you would any other smartphone so that's just a little thing that i was happy to see so so far i really like this i see some definite potential in it i don't really know where i would use a lot of these use case scenarios truly there are some delightful little things packed around the device such as being able to peek to see what's going on in there so you don't have to open it all the way if you want to see what's going on and that matters to me because that's kind of a hassle if you're going to be using this all the time and taking it in and out of your pocket just seriously keep it open like this maybe put some screen protectors on the front it'll just become a 4-3 aspect chunky monkey but so far overall i don't really want to use this as my singular main device as a phone i kind of like using this as a tablet that i would grab on the side yep i'm almost hitting dead so this is a good time to wrap up the video you can see the screen has dimmed and i can't find the option to turn up the brightness all the way okay so i want to spend more time with this and i'm sure after several more updates this will start making more sense again this feels very much like a prototype device and you're paying 1400 for the privilege of having said prototype and testing it out for microsoft and them learning from you that's what this is so i'll keep this little friend as a secondary device and i'll get back to you with more so this has been erica the technology nerd who likes to film stuff please rate comment subscribe ask questions let me know what your experiences are if you bought this thing also let me know how this is faring as far as staining if you have any other information and have a good night you guys byehey everybody this is erica the technology nerd likes to film stuff and this is the microsoft surface duo so this is launch day i just ran out to best buy and purchased this and i really just want to start using it so let's just get right into the unboxing so there's a little tab right here so this is a 1400 phone and let me say this right now this is an investment in what's to come this is not a phone for the average consumer per se i really think this is a device to play along with the fixes and to be part of a paradigm shift this is a device that will be fun to watch and not necessarily to own and use but i want to be part of that and that price tag is 1400 so here it is right here the impossibly thin device set that aside now this doesn't come with anything fancy you see it says surface duo bumper although they do give you a bumper to protect this thing so i'll apply that it should apply with the sticker got some documentation and also a charging brick and right here you have a spot for the usb c cable and that is all that is in the box i do have myself a handy dandy surface pen so that should work with this device as well let's go ahead and pull all the packaging off that is probably the most delightful part of getting any device there you are okay and oh yeah let's get this puppy set up shall we there's a power button right here volume rocker here and fingerprint sensor powered by android now this guy is very much running on last year's specifications know that understand that know that this doesn't have some things in it like wireless charging and nfc it's very much meant to be a very thin device and also it probably was supposed to be released earlier than what we're seeing now let me get this set up i will be back with you momentarily okay so i set this all up and i spent about an hour with it and my first impression of it is that i really like this this is different this is something that's new even though it may not be like the newest concept of two screens it just it feels great this is a product where i really already want to see the second generation because this this does feel kind of prototypey i think it feels really great when you slap it shut and also feels great the other way when you slap it shut but as far as materials i i kind of questioned durability a little bit this outside part to me i believe this is polycarbonate this really looks and feels like plastic this white part on the outside i'm sure that the rest of the body the chassis has metal in it but i can see that i've already gotten a little bit of staining here with my thumb just constantly holding it like this or like this i've also got a black cleaning cloth here and i won't use this with this because i'm worried that this is going to stain it so people who put this in their jeans let me know are you guys seeing staining with the body on this and then also the frame is sandwiched between two glass slabs and they're pretty much glued on here as you can see the way that this looks worries me a little bit i can see actually into the phone right here this looks like it might be something that's on the circuit board it's so thin that it can't contain everything that's in here and it's solid it's not wanting to come up or anything but it really looks like a first generation product so taking a look here at system settings you can see that it says android 10 so we're on android 10 and this did get a day one update so that's really great so when you're setting it all up it has you do an update the first thing that you're going to want to do after that is to update google play and all the services and all of the apps because chrome was really freaking out at first it was actually quite hilarious i thought that perhaps i had broken it or did something i don't know but it turns out that chrome was just bugging out and once i updated chrome and everything else it was it was fine so all my quibbles i'm having right now i'm really hoping software wise that they're going to be worked out over time now already i'm already finding that i have a bit of a workflow going here i like to fold it back this way this feels most familiar to me and also the most comfortable i really like using the keyboard full screen this way so we'll see if i end up breaking out into truly using a two app configuration or if that's something that i use once in a while it does take a little bit of getting used to but the app pairs are really quite cool so if you touch right here you can see i've got twitter and also youtube on the other side i thought i was really clever you can see i called it you twit very proud of that i'm really glad to see that compared to playing with it last week this feels like something i can actually use now and this is reflecting what i'm seeing a lot of other people saying when i was at best buy when you tried to go home by swiping upward it just wouldn't respond and now that's that's no problem whatsoever so now app spanning is working really quite well and you can see that we've got the whites here and one thing that i'm noticing right off the bat is that the color temperature is ever so slightly different between these two panels it's not glaringly obvious but the one that i saw in store was the same as this one so this one's a little bit warmer than this one is going ahead and spanning here when comparing them both though side by side i don't really see a lot of differences to the eye with the calibration the colors look really pretty similar so i really don't think that there is anything to worry about something else you notice about the screens that makes me quite happy is that they're very much in sync when scrolling maybe just the hair just the tiniest hair off but the scrolling experience really is very nice when you span an app so if i spam twitter here the scrolling experience is nice and seamless although there is quite a seam so i'm a little bit confused as to how i'm going to be consuming media on this device you can definitely fold it this way and have at it and you can see that there's quite chunky bezels here and actually i'm a fan of bezels i think that they give something to hold on to but i'm not used to seeing my screen so boxed in i feel like i want more screen real estate so what i've actually been doing lately is just uh you know opening it this way and spanning the app all the way across and of course then you can just make it full screen and you've got this lovely bit here that just cuts out all the pixels right here but it's a fully functional image i don't know some of you might think this is completely unacceptable the interesting thing though is that this part right here obstructs the ui for the play button but thankfully if i just tap here i'm still able to control pause and play pause and play so that's nice but weird very very odd i really do like that i can flip it over and do a double tap thingy here and it switches screens you can turn it over again do a double tap although the accelerometer is all freaking out everywhere so this this takes a bit of finessing if you will now because this is a brand new thing to me i'm doing quite a lot of what does this do what does this do what happens if i do that how about that i'm really not sure what to expect and this takes a lot of exploration and oftentimes what i expect it to do it doesn't do and i'm sure this just needs a lot of optimization such as when you use an app pair so you've got youtube and twitter what happens if you fold it in half so fold it in half and you continue using youtube excuse me twitter and then if you turn it over you would expect that youtube would still be on this side uh it's not so where did youtube go sometimes youtube is there and other times it's not i don't know what the mechanism is here photos notes folded in half so you got photos still turn it over double tap now you've got notes no home screen but notes turn it back over double tap now here's the home screen what happened to photos what if i open it back up again there really is no continuity between screens when it's folded in half i think the big thing for right now is really trying to find a use case for all the things that this cool dual screen thing can do it's pretty awesome that you can sit here and use this thing as a laptop although it's not as reassuring as a real keyboard so i don't think i would actually ever use this what i actually like is the thumb keyboard now i'm a big note taker so it's really nice that i can just sit this flat open it up full screen and just start writing with my pen hello you can see it continues between screens just fine although i don't know why anybody would do that check that out that's interesting if you start here and you try to draw to the edge it stops short but if it detects that you're going to be continuing it tries to continue all the way sometimes yep there you go yeah don't do that just no now i really haven't played with the camera very much it's an 11 megapixel camera just a single camera i do appreciate that it's got an accelerometer on it so that when you turn it this way it automatically switches and you can see hello and then i can turn it back and then there's what i'm looking at 4 3 aspect looks kind of squat but this is a 4 3 aspect screen of course i'm tempted to sit here and grab it and hold it and then i've smudged up my camera lens really bad and it doesn't always react at this point the way that you would expect it to like it's like hello right now are you there it still thinks it's supposed to be here but maybe that's because i'm touching the screen so if you're careful and not fiddling your fingers on the screen it seems pretty faithful to switch but i just marked up the camera again meant to use very much in this orientation so you don't get fingerprints everywhere so this is this is a camera for taking pictures of documents and other little things but you're not going to be using this for much quite honestly i am really glad to see that we have the flash here because you can use this as a flashlight see from the lock screen just as you would any other smartphone so that's just a little thing that i was happy to see so so far i really like this i see some definite potential in it i don't really know where i would use a lot of these use case scenarios truly there are some delightful little things packed around the device such as being able to peek to see what's going on in there so you don't have to open it all the way if you want to see what's going on and that matters to me because that's kind of a hassle if you're going to be using this all the time and taking it in and out of your pocket just seriously keep it open like this maybe put some screen protectors on the front it'll just become a 4-3 aspect chunky monkey but so far overall i don't really want to use this as my singular main device as a phone i kind of like using this as a tablet that i would grab on the side yep i'm almost hitting dead so this is a good time to wrap up the video you can see the screen has dimmed and i can't find the option to turn up the brightness all the way okay so i want to spend more time with this and i'm sure after several more updates this will start making more sense again this feels very much like a prototype device and you're paying 1400 for the privilege of having said prototype and testing it out for microsoft and them learning from you that's what this is so i'll keep this little friend as a secondary device and i'll get back to you with more so this has been erica the technology nerd who likes to film stuff please rate comment subscribe ask questions let me know what your experiences are if you bought this thing also let me know how this is faring as far as staining if you have any other information and have a good night you guys bye\n"