How do you solve the problem of a folding dual screen phone with no external display? If you’re Microsoft and you’re hyping up the Microsoft Surface Duo, you do it by allowing simple details to be discerned simply by opening the device slightly.
The hype is starting to build for Microsoft’s first in-house phone for years, the Surface Duo. Rumoured almost from the moment Microsoft shuttered the Windows Phone business it purchased from Nokia, the Surface Phone first became a reality at last year’s Surface launch event with the promise of actual 2020 availability. Since then we’ve seen one being tested on public transport but the information pipeline out of Redmond has run a little dry.
Well, until last night, when Twitter user @h0x0d sent out this video:
Peek pic.twitter.com/vnawzLrf6k
— WalkingCat (@h0x0d) February 26, 2020
If accurate, it’s an interesting take on how you handle those smaller notification needs, and certainly a different take to, say, the tiny screen on the outside of the Samsung Galaxy Fold or the flip-screen approach of phones such as the Motorola RAZR or Samsung Galaxy Z Flip.
The way that the notifications then expand out into the full dual screen display of the Surface Duo does look quite neat, and let’s face it ” in 2020 at least, buying a foldable phone will at least be 50% about showing off what it can do to your friends.
A lot could change between now and when Microsoft lets the Surface Duo finally hit store shelves.
When the Surface Duo was first revealed it was suggested it would be running on a Snapdragon 855, but that would seem a little retrograde for what’s going to be a premium device, especially with LG announcing its own second-generation dual screen phone overnight, the LG V60 ThinQ running on a Snapdragon 865.