Microsoft has announced that the Surface Duo will begin shipping September 10 for $1,399.
The Microsoft Surface Duo, the dual-screen smartphone unveiled last October, brought good news and bad news for eager fans in a blog post on Wednesday. The good news is it will ship September 10. The bad news is it’s very expensive. Microsoft will be charging $1,399 for the base configuration of its dual-screen Duo with 128GB of storage (add $100 for 256GB). You’re not getting much for your money other than the pleasure of being first. It has last year’s top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor, just 6GB of RAM, a relatively small 3577mAh battery, and a single 11MP camera. It’s also quite heavy at 250 grams, and not all that pocketable at 145.2mm x 93.3mm x 9.9mm (versus 164.8 x 77.2 x 8.1mm for the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra). It’s more like a tiny touch-screen laptop than a phone, though you can use it to make calls. But with Android 10 onboard rather than Windows—even a heavily skinned and specified version—the Surface Duo’s competition will be the latest luxury Android phones. On that note, the Duo costs more than the just-released $1,299 Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, even though it has less-powerful specs. The Surface Slim Pen, which seems central to the experience, costs extra and can’t be stored on the device. The Duo also doesn’t support 5G, Wi-Fi 6, nor will it have an NFC chip for contactless payments. To start it will be limited to United States customers on AT&T and T-Mobile at launch.
