Customer Ratings & Reviews

Since the new software updates I've zero issues, this phone is awesome!

We bought two phones one has a flickering screen.. Best Buy said we can bring it in and it would take a week to order another one..Not impressed with customer service Best Buy has to offer.

Not a lot of apps utilize the screen aspect ratio. Had charging issues week 1. Phoone screen freezes constantly and have to turn off and on. I would steer clear until second version and see how that is.

Multi purpose. Tough one to be used as a primary phone.

Love the phone great size hope they make a watch to work better

Cool phone and a lot of great features! Would highly recommend

So many things you can do and can do two things at once.

Overall I'm enjoying this phone-slash-tiny-laptop. It's got some unique capabilities and it's pretty fun to use. In spite of the size, when folded it isn't really much larger than my previous phone and it fits very nicely in men's pants pockets. It's on Android 10. It has only the most basic apps installed, plus a few Microsoft and Google apps. I decided to set it up as new rather than transfer my settings over from my existing phone, so I had to install a bunch of applications. It is kind of nice that it doesn't come loaded with OEM junk. It starts with the Edge browser. I installed Chrome because that's what I've been using on my android phones, but Chrome was crashing and locking up particularly when logging into commerce sites. The edge browser is pretty good. I prefer how Chrome handles multiple tabs. Using the gestures does take some getting used to. I already went through that when migrating from Android 9 to Android 10, but the dual screens gives it a whole new level. Some of the gestures are mirrored. I find myself accidentally backing out of stuff when I try to tap controls in some apps. With a certain amount of finesse you can do the right gesture, like the difference between flipping pages in an ebook or minimizing the app. When ebooks work right, they are incredible. It's awesome to be able to read a novel in book mode with one page on the left and another on the right, just like a real book. Spanning the ebook across both screens is super fussy and takes some practice, but it's worth it. Unfortunately, not all books seem to work that way. There's a generous amount of space on the screen, and it's viable for working on docs and spreadsheets. It's cool to be able to use the two sides as dual monitors, with different apps running side by side, like using OneNote to take notes while browsing web pages. It comes with a few sample side-by-side combos called "groups" set up for you, where you hit one shortcut to open two apps side by side, so there's some cool potential there. The performance is a little bit wonky. Sometimes the home screen glitches -- icons become unresponsive, background image disappears, stuff like that. It's pretty rare, and I hope it gets fixed over time. I had high hopes when installing games on it, but I found that the touch is a tiny bit laggy, so it's really hard to play Zen Pinball on it. It's really hard to get the timing right on the flippers. Using it as a phone -- well, I'll have to get used to that. Answering a phone when it's folded isn't awesome. Are you supposed to carry it folded with the screen sides out? The first time the phone rang, I panicked and couldn't figure out where the mic or the speaker were! Now I usually use bluetooth headphones and it works great. The camera isn't awesome. It reminds me of phone cameras from like 5 years ago in terms of speed, sharpness, and picture quality. There's only one camera, so you have to think before you can switch between normal and selfie. I had a problem with text messages -- it could send texts but it couldn't receive them. I had to contact Verizon tech support, and they were able to fix it on their side. The tech said they reset the text messages -- I don't know what that means, but the messages started coming in right away while I was on with the agent. I like this phone and I'm really happy I have it. I feel like an early adopter, so I expect to deal with some wonkiness as it matures. Note -- I received this phone from Best Buy as part of the Tech Insider Network Program for the purpose of writing an honest, unbiased review. I did not buy it.

love my new surface duo. Still trying to get used to it.

I'm glad to be back to Microsoft, and still have android :D

I no longer use my laptop. The Duo does everything I need.

The Surface Duo presents a new phone form factor, and is arguably just as exciting as that first generation iPad was, but for obviously different reasons. Folding phones aren’t new, so to speak, but they aren’t yet mainstream and still very expensive. The Surface Duo, though, is not a folding phone with a folding screen—it is in fact just two screens sandwiched between two very thin pieces of glass and metal. It is not unlike the LG V60 in its dual screen case, providing you two screens (if you want) for your normal phone activities. Where this differs, though, is the fact that this dual-screen phone is built around, well, its dual screens. Sort of, anyway. The Duo’s design is second to none—and truly unique. Imagine a tiny Moleskine notebook, and you’ll be pretty close to the size and form factor. I think it’s fair to call the two sides of the device ‘impossibly thin,’ because it's really, really compact for having two screens...it is not the thickness, for instance, of two independent phones. One of the sides is barely thicker than the thickness of the USB-C port which it sports. The edges are sharp...almost uncomfortably so. Depending on how you have it opened or folded, it’s easy to get uncomfortable holding it without repositioning your hands. If the sharp edges aren’t your style, you at least have the hinge, which is by all accounts one of the nicest hinges, on any device, ever. Opening and closing the de-vice is super satisfying. I’d describe this device, possibly, as having ‘the most premium hardware,’ which is saying a lot with so many quality devices that are out there today. It only comes in one color, which I’m OK with, and the only hardware issue that I really found was that the SIM tray when pushed in doesn’t lie flush with the edge of the device. I mentioned its size similarity to a small pocket notebook...what’s most notable about each side of the device is that the screen is much wider than a cell phone screen typically is. I’m sure we’ve all been frustrated by narrow screens and tiny key-boards, but it was interesting how difficult it was to adjust to a slightly wider keyboard without making too many typing errors. Folded flat, the Duo gives you just over 8 inches of screen real estate, separated by narrow bezels and the gap in the hinge. This is not something you’d want to watch a video on in ‘full screen’ mode because that gap in the center is not ideal...but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some other ways where the gap is utilized as a positive de-sign component. More on that later. Buttons on the side are minimal, and all of them like on the right edge. There is a power button, volume rocker and a fingerprint sensor; the fingerprint sensor is re-markably responsive and quite enjoyable to use, and the volume rocker has what I would call ‘backward’ volume controls based upon the orientation of the device. This is something that seems to be inherited from the Surface tablet lineup, and it really, really annoys me. The screens themselves are really nice. They don’t have high refresh rates, and they have big bezels on 3 sides (top, bottom, outside), but they are clean and crisp and really nice to look at. Touch responsiveness was also good, but I think the janky gesture management had a negative impact on that experience. The camera is passable for a budget phone—not for one that is $1500. Camera performance was one of the biggest disappointments, and it was just kind of weird to use it since there is only one camera on the whole device (on the right screen). It was nice to have a full screen as a view finder, but once you have it, even if the quality of the photo was decent (which it’s not), the camera software is very slow and shutter re-sponse lags terribly. The speaker is only marginally better than the camera, but just like the camera, there is only one—which is a huge waste. It gets plenty loud, but is probably only usable in a pinch...stick with earbuds or headphones on this. The hardware is very much first-gen hardware, and again—that’s totally OK. De-spite the negatives, it’s possible that you aren’t bothered by a bad camera or a bad speaker, and to be honest, this is a device seemingly aimed at professional multitask-ers more so that one intended for digital media enthusiasts...and that is made more clear when you dig into the software. This is an Android phone—but not stock Android; there is a Microsoft skin over An-droid here that is arguably necessary. I don’t think that stock android on this device would make it feel like a Surface product...so probably why the skin is there. The biggest concern when it comes to software, though, is around optimization for the Duo’s dual screens. Sure, you can multitask, and opening two different apps on two different screens is neat—but what about a single app across both screens simultaneously? Well, it’s good and bad. There are a handful of apps—14 by my count that come pre-installed—that are optimized to make use of the Duo’s screens simultaneously. These apps won’t surprise you—Microsoft Outlook, OneDrive, OneNote... I think you get the theme here. Any app with a sidebar is, in theory, a good fit for the Duo, but even that is a bit of a stretch because sidebars are typically not occupying half of your screen at any given time. Another 25+ apps that come pre-installed are notably not optimized for the Duo, which is frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect all apps to be optimized, but surely the Edge browser app would be included here...or the Bing app...or Google’s video calling app which shares the device’s name (but is not related... I just find this ironic more than anything else). Other than single-app use, though, there is obviously a huge advantage to having two apps open simultaneously—like YouTube and News, for instance, or Outlook and Teams...and you can create what are called app pairs that will automatically open your desired apps on your desired screens with the press of an icon. But, there is some weirdness to the software experience for sure. The gestures, as I said above, are kind of strange; sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. I also found that when opening an app on one screen, then another over top of it, both of those apps had to be ‘minimized’ by swiping up from the bottom to get back to the home screen on that side (although it didn’t occur consistently). Performance of the software was fine, but not great. This only has 6 GB RAM onboard, which is just not enough...now and then things would get laggy, which wasn’t helped by Microsoft’s inclusion of a year-old Snapdragon processor. Sigh.... It was really exciting to get to try out the Microsoft Duo which was provided by Best Buy as part of the Tech Insider Network. Reviewers in this invitation-only program are provided products for the purpose of writing honest, unbiased reviews. So, even though I didn’t buy this—it’s still a device that I think is really fun, and really compel-ling. It is most definitely not for everyone, but it does make you think about how much you actually use your cell phone as a phone, compared to all the other things you do with it. Because the screens are so wide, it can look a little ridiculous next to your ear, but with wireless earbuds becoming so popular, it might be something you’ll not see or experience very often. So, maybe it’s not the best phone—but it doesn’t make it a bad device. It’s clear that Microsoft is marketing this to a particular type of user; not necessarily the cutting-edge tech enthusiasts, who will undoubtedly seek it out, but for the work-ing professional that can benefit from a folding, pocket-sized device that can be used for multitasking. In fact, until the Duo, I’ve not found a non-laptop mobile device that offers the flexibility that the Duo does in two-app multitasking (even the iPad Pro, which multitasks well but is a bit finicky at times and doesn’t allow for quick swapping of apps the way the Duo does). So, it seems that, if you’re looking for a non-laptop mobile device that offers flexi-bility in two-app multitasking, the Duo is a really good (but truly, the only) option. Sadly, the software experience is a bit buggy, which I expect to improve over time as more units are sold and more feedback is received. At the end of the day, though, I found myself enamored with the Duo, at least in part because it is a first-gen device, but mostly because it’s just fun to use it, provided you can get past some of its shortcomings. Some might automatically pass on this because it’s the first version of the device and the kinks need to be worked out—and they do, believe me—but I still think this could be a good phone for someone who can really benefit from its ability to multitask, who wouldn’t be as bothered that some of its fea-tures (phone, camera, speakers) are less than flagship quality. And, it’s not like users of this phone will have to wait for a second generation, because many of its issues are software-driven, which can be handled (in theory) with updates.

The Angel of cell phones. A must have for my collection

This this is Amazing .Hands down best devise ever !!!!!

great product and very user friendly! bright screen -

Best cellphone ever. I used it and like it so much .

My Surface Duo I is honestly a piece of junk. I've had too many issues with this device and don't recommend it to ANYONE. I should've just went with the Galaxy Fold 2. I have 2 Microsoft Surface Pro 7 and both of them are awesome, so I was expecting the same thing. NOPE. Screen - non responsive too often and has gone black on multiple occasions. It will still show the time..but nothing else. Lock screen - won't unlock too often Its great for multitasking...WHEN IT WORKS, which is about 20% of the time. Save your money, or buy something better.

Still buggy and needs a lot more work from the app side to be a usable daily phone. wish I would have waited to buy this once it figures out what it actually wants to be.

Too janky. For the price tag it wasn't worth it for me. If it was cheaper, I could justify the issues vi had with it. It is a nice device though. Love the form factor.

Software is too buggy and filled with glitches. Returned it after one day.