Microsoft - Surface Duo 256GB (Unlocked) - Glacier

Customer Images

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• See
  More

The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  A great folding phone.

  • Incentivized
  • My Best Buy® Elite Member
  • Verified Purchaser
  • Owned for 2 months

  For a first gen device, it is decent. It takes a short time getting used to the two screens however it is very nice / productive once you do get accustomed to it. I love the ability to pull up my lectures for school on one display and write notes with the pen on the bottom display. I won't go without saying the phone does glitch every now and then where a simple lock then closing the phone and reopening it will usually fix it. I do believe more time needs to be put into the software to detect orientation and folding angle. However every update appears to improve the phone. (Still waiting on Android 11 though...) The display is very pleasing to look at, nice and crisp. The camera is above average, but it could be better. The battery life has been phenomenal with light everyday use of the phone.

  • 
  • 
  • 

  Posted 4 years ago by NickyBoi

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  The Dou brings multi-tasking to a new level

  • Incentivized
  • My Best Buy® Elite Plus Member
  • Verified Purchaser
  • Owned for 1 week

  I have had my Microsoft Duo for over a week and despite being discouraged to buy it from The sales associate, I am very satisfied. Most impressive features are the multitasking functionality, tremendous battery life, seamless intergration for mirroring my Duo on my computer, and the ability to use my surface pen with my Dou. The quality surpasses the competition with the use of strong glass screens on the inside as well as the front and back cover. Fingerprint sensor to unlock the phone is the best I have ever seen. The Duo comes with a bumper for added protection. I love the fact that it integrates with my computer. I can text from my computer, open and run phone apps from my computer, and best of all I can text right from my computer. It also allows me to transfer photos and files with ease. After a week of use, I am very pleased. I did research online that was very unfavorable toward the Duo. If you do your own online research, I recommend watching videos that are no older than 2 months. This is because many updates have occurred since then which fixed alot of the issues. Quality of this phone is to notch. You definitely feel like your holding a premium device. Screens are high quality with no concerns for scratching. Quality hinge too. Camera is not bad either. Value. Assigning value to a phone is always such a personal thing. Yes it's expensive ( but not as expensive as it's competition). I am a heavy multitasking user, who was using the Note. For me the value was worth it. Ease of use. I was up and running immediately after putting my sim card in the phone. All of my contacts and data transferred with no problems using both my Microsoft info and Google info. If you want a sales associate to walk you through the features of this phone, you will be very disappointed. When I arrived, I was immediately told NOT to buy this phone and was redirected to the more expenses Samsung device. The sales associates are unfamiliar with the Duo and their training on the Duo consisted of watching a video. The in-store demo model ws not working. Very low score from me on the customer service aspect It's a dual SCREEN, NOT one large foldable screen. That is an important distinction when it comes to the multitasking aspect. I have not experienced any of the issues that I read or saw online. Flipping the camber from sefie to standard mode is working well and it has enough memory to hold all of my apps from my Samsung Note. It's runs fast and the screen scroll speed has never been an issue for me (no lag or jumping). All my Bluetooth devices connected with ease with the exception of my fossil watch. I cannot get it to connect and already ordered a new Samsung watch). Over Christmas I traveled 2.5 hrs with Google maps open on my phone, Spotify running, and my sound up all the way. When I reached my destination I still had 34% battery remaining. Camera phone quality is probably average. I included a photo. You can see textures and it handles highlights and shadow areas well. In all this is a first generation phone that will likely have some issues that get fixed with updates, but if you are a multitasking, you will not be disappointed.

  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 

  Posted 4 years ago by Kenn

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Good first-generation needing software update

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • Top 25 Contributor

  Pros Thin and elegant look Seems impossibly thin Hinge is excellent Hinge stays where you put it 360 hinge rotation means it can still work like a regular phone Aspect ratio is good for web browsing More screen real estate Color calibration looks very good Screen gets very bright Battery life is good considering thinness Excellent fingerprint sensor Split screen allows new workflows Makes a great standing light Adds new functionality for apps that support it Doesn’t require app support to work The sound it makes when closing gives a sense of quality Microsoft has committed to 3 years of monthly updates Works with Surface Pen Cons Software still buggy Antennas seem weak Buttons are too sensitive Camera performance is lackluster Top and bottom bezels are massive Only one basic speaker Protective cases will be limited with the 360 degree hinge Hard to hold for smaller hands Oleophobic screen coating doesn’t work well Quick launching camera via power button requires logging in Switching between selfie and regular photo is cumbersome Screen seems to have more than usual glare No NFC No wireless charging It’s nice to see the smartphone industry having new and interesting options again. In this case, the Surface Duo chooses an arguably safer route of two separate screens versus a folding screen with the belief that multitasking is more useful than just a larger screen. When reading this review, please keep in mind that it is being rated based on a new category of devices, not directly to other smartphones. Comparing it standard phones is not a completely fair comparison because it is doing new things completely unlike traditional smartphones. In fact, Microsoft never even calls it a phone. It’s a new category of device that can function as a phone. Design The first thing that strikes you when opening the box is how thin this device is. Videos on the internet already show you this but seeing it in person helps you realize this even more. When opened, one side is barely thicker than just the metal portion of a USB-C plug. The design is an aluminum frame with gorilla glass 5 on the screen sides and back sides. This not only helps make the device reasonably rigid for its thinness, but also makes it look more premium with the chrome windows logo beneath the glass. It has a volume up and down rocker, power button, and a fingerprint sensor all on the same side. The hinge side is curved polished metal. Its operation has a slight resistance that allows it to maintain whatever position it is placed while still moving smoothly. The other sides are all squared off edges. The smooth side feels so nice in the hand it makes you wish Microsoft would allow more curves in their design language. Curves on all sides would mean no matter the way it was held it would never dig into your hand. For an experiment, you can hold the spine of the Duo in your palm and feel how the slight radius feels comfortable. Switch to the other side and you will feel it dig into your hand. New use cases It would be hard to describe every way you can use the Surface Duo as this new form factor adds quite a bit of functionality, but there a few standout cases with some not already shown in promotional videos. First, as a phone you have two options. You can leave it closed and flip the hinge 360 degrees when answering. This might be slightly safer but doesn’t allow one handed operation. The other is just leaving it unfolded in your pocket. All the glass is the same so leaving the screens on the outside is not any more dangerous than on any other slab phone. In the end, cellphone usage is probably its weakest usage but it is still very much usable. Texting on the other hand is good but could be great if they could work out the software kinks. If you use the messaging app full screen then the keyboard becomes a full size keyboard on the bottom and your message thread show up on the top, much like the slider phones in the early days that were made for heavy texting use. Browsing the web is another surprisingly pleasing thing to do. It might be hard to imagine how browsing the web on a regular smartphone isn’t good until you use a screen in the Duo’s form factor. You get more text on the screen while keeping it larger. Images don’t have to be stacked in a column and can be side to side more like on desktop without looking tiny. Dual screen mode is a no brainer. Just choose your two apps and put one on each screen. This doesn’t require special apps support and works just fine. The question is how often is spanning both screens usable. Some apps don’t really benefit from the full screen experience, such as YouTube. It just distracts as it often puts a vertical line right in the middle of the person’s face. Apps like Google News work well full screen if you rotate the phone 180 degrees. The app doesn’t understand the second screen, but you can scroll through far more articles and when reading an article, you can see more of it. The hinge doesn’t detract from the experience much either since it just blends in as a horizontal line between text. What is surprising is the gap is so close, that if Microsoft was able to shave maybe 2-3mm off the width of the spine, this format might even be usable in full, dual screen in most cases. One interesting way of using the Duo hasn’t seemed to be mentioned by anyone so far is my favorite and the most unique. It makes a great flashlight stand. Any smartphone today has a flashlight option but since the Duo has two screens, you can prop up that light however you wish to help you out. No need to awkwardly prop it up against something and have it fall down. Just position the hinge in the best position and either stand it up or lay it down and you have the perfect work light. This sounds like a joke but this has already proven itself on several occasions to be very handy. Of course, there could be many more use cases if apps add support and that’s a big “if”. It would be amazing to see games become aware of the dual screen and use the bottom screen for controls or inventory selection. One accidental case that was already uncovered was battleship. Some versions accidentally span the gap perfectly, so your ships are on the bottom screen and the enemies are on top. It would be great to see if this happens, but the Duo and other split screen phones would have to get some real traction for this to happen. Performance If you know of the Surface Duo, you already know it uses and older processor. In practice, this doesn’t seem to equate to any noticeable performance impact. On the other hand, the requirement of adding a separate 5G chip and the larger battery which is required for anyone using newer SOCs would have had a negative impact on the size. At this point, 5G won’t be significant for a few years and hopefully by that time the 5G modem could be included in the SOC and battery life wouldn’t be affected so heavily. As it stands now, sticking with a slightly older process has actually been good because even though the battery is very small by modern standards, the battery life is actually comparatively good. The only real question is the performance impact of having only 6gb of RAM. Other manufacturers have shown careful optimization can make it unnoticeable but only time will tell. Stability and concerns The following observations are after the latest update. First of all, the Duo currently experiences random temporary freezes. You just have to wait for a few seconds before things work again. Next would be the gesture bar and navigation. Some of the issues are related to understanding the new way gestures work but other times it is an actual problem. For example, the gesture bar randomly disappears leaving you with no way to do anything. Other times it stays on the side even when you rotate. Other times when you open an app in full screen and click on the link the entire app will rotate 180 degrees from where you were for no reason and won’t rotate back. Often the notification shade will retract back up immediately after you pull it down causing a tug of war. Another would be quick launching the camera via a double tap on the power button. If you click on the camera icon on the screen you can jump straight to the camera but the “quick” method of double clicking the power button requires you to log in. Until this is fixed quick shots will be harder than they already are with this format. Most gripes are software related and could be fixed via a future update. Microsoft has committed to 3 years of monthly updates so hopefully these glitches are just the result of a premature launch. This leaves us with the hardware issues. First, the power and volume buttons are just too sensitive allowing accidental activation. Next is the vibration motor. It’s not the worst but sometimes you can hear it vibrate inside the case. The single speaker is inadequate. Finally, there is the camera. Taking photos in lower light take several seconds only to come up with a grainy or blown out photo. Daytime shots lack detail and skin tones look pale. Others have shown with good AI, great pictures can come from a basic camera. Hopefully Microsoft could work some magic and improve the AI on this camera. Final Thoughts Overall, the Surface Duo is a solid reentry into the mobile space. Considering it is a first-generation device for a new category, overall quality is very good. If you are an early adopter who likes to work with new and innovative technology, the Surface Duo could suite you. For others, unless you are just itching for something completely new and, you likely be best served waiting for the next generation Duo. Microsoft has a track record of making impactful improvements in the second and third generation hardware after hearing from their customers. This product was received free of charge from the invitation-only Best Buy insider program in exchange for my honest review.

  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 

  Posted 5 years ago by CraigB