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 inventive {hardware} streak. The corporate was seemingly hungry to innovate, with a bullish need to orient the smartphone market in a brand new course.

The Floor Duo was a novel 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 wonderful construct high quality, a pretty 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.

Not like 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 gas 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 big 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 incorporates 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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Microsoft

Now, the Floor Duo and its youthful sibling, the Duo 2, characteristic prominently within the Microsoft Graveyard of killed-off services and products. The tech big’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 believe we’ve seen what dual-screen use brings, and we’ve examined hundreds and hundreds of situations with hundreds of individuals. We measure so many alternative issues. We measure the mind exercise. We measure how folks really feel. We ask hundreds of questions, and we’ve an unbelievable consumer analysis crew, human components crew, from an inclusive design standpoint, said Panay in a Vergecast interview in the course of 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 rationale why I (and plenty of others) desire twin monitor setups over ultra-wide setups — the destructive area acts as a demarcation, enhancing multitasking and decreasing cognitive load.

This dual-monitor paradigm of the PC world interprets extremely nicely over to cellular: particular person Android apps are capable of ‘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 setting that runs circles round competing foldable telephones at the moment 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 consider the corporate would have carved itself a piece of the foldable telephone 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 a protracted and storied historical past throughout the cellular computing scene, from Home windows CE, to Home windows Cell and Windows Phone, and lots 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 novel 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 boldness to blast its revelation each close to and much.

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