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Microsoft's Surface Duo is a big-picture product

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Microsoft’s first Android phone could be hugely significant, but plenty of people are bound to write it off quickly and miss the point.
I’m gonna go ahead and call it: The reviews for the Surface Duo, Microsoft’s long-under-development and finally-ready-for-release first Android phone, aren’t gonna be glowing. To wit (brace yourselves, phone nerds): The Duo uses an older-generation processor instead of the latest and greatest high-end chip (gasp!). It lacks near-field communication (gulp!), which means it won’t work with most in-person mobile payment systems. And it has but a single camera on the inside of its portfolio-like folding body (grunt!) — one that, unlike with the typical top-dollar phone of today, doesn’t appear to be a focal point of the product. This isn’t a standard phone launch, in other words. And if you want to appreciate the Duo’s potential significance, you have to break yourself out of that standard phone mindset. At its core, the Duo is a dual-screened phone, with two 5.6″ panels connected by a 180-degree-pivoting hinge. The screens aren’t flexible or foldable or rollable or anything like that; they’re regular displays, which means the durability and longevity downsides that plague the more sensational but less practical foldable phones of the moment aren’t at all present. That foldable phone comparison is actually pretty important — because that’s also a significant point of distinction for the Duo, especially compared to what most other Android device-makers are currently doing. As I said at the start of this year, while lots of companies are coming out with foldables, Microsoft is coming out with a smarter twist on the concept — and, most critically, coming up with a genuine reason for it to exist. To quote my all-time favorite writer: That’s apparent in the Duo’s software development kit, which cleverly allows app-makers to go beyond the most obvious multitasking possibilities and to offer up some productivity-oriented advantages that wouldn’t be present in just any ol’ dual-screen setup (hi, LG!).

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