We have bad news for non-US Microsoft fans: The incoming Surface Duo is underspecced, overpriced, and over there Microsoft has followed the Surface Duo price and ship date with some detailed specs that will leave all but the company's most determined fans struggling to say much more than: "Is that it?" Those that hoped for something powerful under the hood are to be disappointed: The Snapdragon 855 at the heart of the Duo is… fine, but …
The size of the battery had me thinking only one part of the device contains a battery. I've done some digging and Pocket Lint say there are two batteries, which makes it surprising they couldn't fit in more capacity. Guess they made it very thin because it doubles up in thickness when closed and pocketed.
Both their 360 and X1 controllers are also fantastic and hold up remarkably well years later, especially in comparison to Sony's controllers. It's weird that Microsoft can't seem to deliver anywhere near that level of reliability with their $200 Elite line of controllers, which basically fall apart after a few months.
I'm typing this on one of their Internet Pro keyboards - non ergo, but with all the necessary media/browser keys, both USB and PS/2 connectors, and a (USB1, unpowered) hub built in. Still ticking along nicely with nary a fault after about 20 years. And I hold their mice - most of them - in pretty high regard. Credit where it's due.
Nothing will change my opinion that their software's shite, however.
You mean legendary as in the printing on the key caps starts to fall off within a couple of weeks of use? For such an expensive keyboard to do this compared to under £10 keyboards or those from OEMs such as HP or Dell where the printing is still OK after 10 years? Just not acceptable. The mechanical side is solid enough and keeps on running, but every one that I've seen has had to be replaced due to the key caps, that and because of the design of the thing (unavoidable) being incredibly dirty too.
I used the original Natural keyboard for 7 years, none of the key caps fell off.
I replaced them with Natural Multimedia keyboards in the early 2000s and threw them out last year, all keycaps were still intact, even if a few were worn smooth.
I also have 2 Natural Ergonomic 3000s, no problems on either. Same for my Surface Ergonomic and the Sculpt Ergonomic keyboard. I recently upgraded that to the current Ergonomic keyboard released at the end of last year.
All have between hundreds and thousands of hours of typing behind them and none of them have lost key caps.
Why would anyone be irritated by not being able to buy this? Seems like you should be happy that valuable retail shelf space isn't being taken up by overpriced tat.
It seems like MS has its thumb out trying to hitch hike while standing on the train tracks, as far as mobile goes.
This new, "innovative" Microsoft is just copying every idea it sees. The whole Surface lineup is trying to capture Apple's "luxury goods" magic, and its Microsoft store is a pretty close copy of the App store or the Play store walled gardens (though the Play store walled garden has a gate). They've achieved 90% of the market for traditional PCs, so you'd think they'd realize they know how to do "Windows," but they keep trying to copy everyone else. They even copied Ubuntu's twice a year release schedule and nomenclature (they just removed the hyphen to make things less clear), though they missed the LTS bit. They're not innovating... they're demonstrating a corporate example of "monkey see, monkey do."
I call BS. Jobs tried to poison the well with Tablets because Microsoft beat him to it. Mr Calligraphy was forced to tell the world that no one wants a stylus. Apple basically had to wait for Jobs to die to start doing an Apple Pen etc.
The Surface came out of frustration with OEMs making grey boxes and mobile grey boxes. Far from copying everyone else, Apple, Google , Amazon etc are full of ex Microsoft people doing stuff that was initially done inside Microsoft.
Kind of true in some ways. I once used a touchscreen (stylus only) slab PC running XP tablet edition. Other than being entirely setup for mouse and keyboard, and while the extra applications that came with the XP tablet edition tried to help with this through the improved, but still awful, on screen keyboard and the handwriting input, the rest of the OS was mouse and keyboard only. Mostly mouse only of course.
Many years later the relaunch of a less capable device was touted as the first of its kind. Hmmm.
Tablets with a stylus are a niche for Apple, a single digit percentage of iPad Pro buyers get the stylus.
Apple showed Microsoft what people really wanted in a tablet, after Microsoft had failed three times over a decade and a half to create a tablet market. You can't give Microsoft credit for being "first" with making a tablet based on their failed efforts and canceled products. That would be like giving GM credit for creating the modern electric car market in 1996, despite the EV-1 being killed in 1999 and GM ignoring electric cars for nearly 20 years after.
The $200 wireless headphones is a dead giveaway here that that's exactly what's going on. I believe that's the same price point Apple sells the Airpods at, which after release just a few months later Google announced theirs at the exact same price.
Of course, it was no coincidence that was the same year both companies removed headphone jacks from their mobile offerings. Even though it's a scammy move, still a pretty good marketing decision.
This just seems like Microsoft's a day late and a dollar short to the party. Anybody who bought into the overpriced earbuds that do the exact same thing as a $15 wired pair but worse in literally every way, probably already own them. And if they're going to buy more, they're probably going to buy into their brand. How many suckers does MS think are still out there who will buy this crap?
And assuming it's the usual $200 = £200, that'd be the same price as those popular Sony ones sell for too. Which means that they've all gone and matched the price point that I've told myself I'll be prepared to buy some wireless earbuds at once it's halved.
It's probably also because being cheap they employed US-only designers therefore the mechanical and electrical design only permits usage in the US. There's a reason that so many devices are available in the US and "rest of world" variants. The US devices typically have to use US only radio circuitry which I understand is more expensive compared to equivalent for the rest of the world (probably patent and scale of production related) and any cost savings they can make at the same time to counter this are often taken. As a result the US variant of a mobile device is often slightly less well specificed than the rest of the world variant, or slightly more expensive, but this can be hidden in exchange rates.
Does anyone in their right mind still want a Microsoft mobile device? After what they did to the beautiful Lumia series? I recently put the hammer to my old Lumia 950. I needed it as a backup, but once that was no longer the case, I did what I set out to do the moment I replaced it, I utterly destroyed the piece of #%^@$@% (it's a shame we can't post pictures here, it was quite a show! the battery exploded, filling the area with a cloud of white smoke).
Microsoft have proven themselves incapable of creating a good value mobile device, anyone still buying them is delusional.
Please keep this device to yourselves. It is as has been said, over priced, underspec'd and basically shite when compared to what is out there.
I will admit that there might be a few small niches where this is perfect but the SOC is positively ancient and the battery capaicty stinks.
Just take a look at the latest Lexus ux-300e
https://insideevs.com/news/438425/lexus-ux-300e-opens-online-reservations-uk/
It's design is from 2015 (and that is being kind)
Using CHAdeMO is DOA when Europe has gone CCS. Where are the 350kWh CHAdeMO chargers? {cue sagebrush blowing in the wind}
The on board charger is 2013 tech level.
etc
etc
etc
I see much of the same with this device. If it had been released in late 2018 or early 2019 then maybe but in the second half of 2020 and USA only???
Memories of the Zune come flooding back.
Almost all of us have one, they all look nearly identical, they do what you need them to do. I get that new ones need to come out fairly regularly, but just how many £1000+ phones are they selling? Are that many people really paying £60 per month on 24 month contracts just so they can tell their friends that they have the latest Hoodat Universe 14X with more processing power than all of NASA and a camera that can fill TakTek with 8k 120fps drivel? Meh!!!! There has been nothing new in smartphones since forever it seems. Everyone is talking up 5G but it's just a small speed increase,.... if you can get it.
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