With Floor Duo, Microsoft (briefly) had the foldable type issue found out

When Microsoft’s then-Chief Product Officer Panos Panay took to the stage and unveiled the original Surface Duo in October 2019, I used to be elated.

For the primary time for the reason that launch of the unique Surface PC hardware in 2012, it felt like Microsoft was on a artistic {hardware} streak. The corporate was seemingly hungry to innovate, with a bullish need to orient the smartphone market in a brand new route.

The Floor Duo was a singular product — each then and now — with its dual-screen type issue, its use of Google’s competing Android working system, and its deal with productivity-driven use instances.

Regardless of glorious construct high quality, a lovely bodily design language, and razor-thin dimensions, the Floor Duo began life from a rocky vantage level. The period of book-style foldable phones was simply kicking off, and each shoppers and product reviewers eyed Microsoft’s dual-screen imaginative and prescient with skepticism.

In contrast to different foldable smartphones, the Duo (and later, its second-generation successor) featured a big hinge down the center of its two screens, and lacked an exterior cowl show altogether. In a world the place versatile OLED panels, uninterrupted inside actual property, and exterior shows have been changing into the norm, the Floor Duo more and more got here to be seen as a pariah.

So as to add gasoline to the hearth, Microsoft botched the preliminary Floor Duo roll out from a software program standpoint — early builds of the corporate’s bespoke Android pores and skin have been unresponsive, bug-ridden, and completely unrefined, placing a damper on the product line’s launch.

Whereas these early software program woes would be largely sorted out, it was too little, too late. Attempt as Microsoft did to unfold the phrase of dual-screen smartphones and their deserves, the tech large in the end pulled the plug on its Floor Duo line with out ever launching a third-generation product onto retailer cabinets.

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  Floor Duo

  Microsoft’s first-generation dual-screen smartphone, which contains a foldable design and runs on the Android working system.

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  Floor Duo 2

  Microsoft’s Floor Duo 2 is the corporate’s second-generation dual-screen smartphone, with bigger shows and improved cameras over its predecessor.

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With its dual-screen ambitions made public, the corporate ought to’ve held its Floor {hardware} head up excessive

Microsoft

Now, the Floor Duo and its youthful sibling, the Duo 2, characteristic prominently within the Microsoft Graveyard of killed-off services. The tech large’s dual-screen smartphone ambitions have been unceremoniously laid to relaxation, regardless of the beforehand strong-held conviction that two screens are certainly higher than one.

“I feel we’ve seen what dual-screen use brings, and we’ve examined 1000’s and 1000’s of eventualities with 1000’s of individuals. We measure so many various issues. We measure the mind exercise. We measure how folks really feel. We ask 1000’s of questions, and we’ve got an unimaginable consumer analysis staff, human components staff, from an inclusive design standpoint, said Panay in a Vergecast interview throughout the launch window of the unique Duo.

Microsoft might have misplaced religion in multi-screen cellular setups, however I stay a robust believer within the type issue. Intuitively, the compartmentalization of particular person duties inside their very own distinct areas makes all of the sense on the earth. That is the explanation why I (and plenty of others) want twin monitor setups over ultra-wide setups — the detrimental area acts as a demarcation, bettering multitasking and decreasing cognitive load.

This dual-monitor paradigm of the PC world interprets extremely nicely over to cellular: particular person Android apps are in a position to ‘do their factor’ irrespective of each other, and with out falling into the pitfalls of clunky split screen software solutions. The Duo’s heart bezel is a feature and not a bug, and it makes for a productiveness surroundings that runs circles round competing foldable telephones presently available on the market.

If issues had performed out in a different way, and Microsoft had doubled down on its dual-screen Duo ambitions, I firmly imagine the corporate would have carved itself a bit of the foldable cellphone market in due time. We have seen the likes of Google — a fellow software-first tech titan — use its deep pockets to fund large promoting campaigns, brute-forcing its Pixel hardware into the general public eye.

Microsoft has an extended and storied historical past inside the cellular computing scene, from Home windows CE, to Home windows Cellular and Windows Phone, and many extra alongside the way in which. If the corporate needs to reestablish itself within the notoriously cut-throat handset market, it wants to take action by providing a singular product that stands out from the gang. The answer is obvious: Microsoft is aware of that two screens are higher than one, and it must develop the arrogance to blast its revelation each close to and much.

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