Surface Duo - the end of an era

 

This blog entry is way overdue - I promised to update on my original Surface Duo review in 2022.

I've recently retired my Microsoft Surface Duo, I unfortunately had to.  I got it for my my birthday in 2022 and it has been my favourite mobile phone ever, bar none.  Unfortunately it started playing up, overheating and the battery wasn't lasting more than a few hours.  Repair wasn't really an option - Microsoft didn't make this device to be opened and mended, support is due to be stopped probably this year or early next and you can't buy a new one for love or money.

It's a crying shame Microsoft bottled it again - they really don't seem to have the sticking power for the mobile phone market.  I loved the Microsoft Windows Phone OS.  It never took hold, to be fair, and developers failed to produce variants of their apps for it.  That was a big deal to many users, but the small amount of business apps that were available worked fine for me.  I wrote about my Windows phones here back in March 2017 and if you stick to the end you'll see I was actually right about what Microsoft would do,

I actually battled on longer than most with the OS.  When I dropped the Hewlett Packard phablet and broke it I bought a second-hand one off eBay.  What tipped me over the edge was when WhatsApp was discontinued - it was and is our family go-to messaging platform.  So I moved to a OnePlus 7 mobile phone, which was pretty cool and then on to the Duo 2 when it was launched, as described in the earlier blog post.

If it had a fault it was too slippery if I wore Chinos or linen trousers.  It would slip out of my pocket as soon as I sat down.  I sourced a felt slip to hold it in place and that was the big problem solved.  In the three years (nearly) it's been in daily use it hasn't lost its sheen.  It still looks brand new apart from the corner bumpers, which did start to show their age.  I would have replaced them but Microsoft stopped selling them.  The internal screens are spotless and they've never seen a screen protector.

Everyone who saw it commented.  It looked and was cool.  It should have been a runaway success, but wasn't.  The reason, no, the fault is Microsoft.  They never marketed it properly.  I only ever saw one other Surface phone in the wild and that was a battered version 1.  Clearly they saw it as the aspirational professional phone and it fitted the bill, but the cool executives getting their phones on expenses clearly stuck with Apple products.  Most normal people prefer to pay a bit less for their phones, I guess, and you probably wouldn't know they existed unless you got lost on Microsoft's online store or you bumped into me in the street.

Compare and contrast how Microsoft have marketed the Surface Pro laptops, like the one I'm typing this on, my third so far (the first suffered a fatal drop onto the drive and the second one is upstairs in working order.  There just happened to be a really good offer earlier this year for the 1Tb version and I'm a sucker for storage).  Surface Pro laptops are so popular in part, I'm speculating, because every other laptop on TV is a Surface Pro.  I've read somewhere that Apple don't let TV and film companies allow bad guys to use Apple products, I'm guessing Microsoft aren't as sensitive about these things.  If Microsoft had flooded the film and TV world with Surface Duo 2s I reckon they would have been able to drop the price and shifted loads.  But they didn't and last year they broke up the team working on the Surface Duo 3 and announced they were ceasing support for the OS as soon as they legally could.

All of this is a crying shame and I was endeavouring to keep the Duo going as long as I could - my banking apps would probably stop working as soon as support stopped for starters but the battery situation brought the timetable forward.

As it happens OnePlus launched a folding phone called the Open earlier this year and I stumbled across a sweet deal with a decent discount, plus they offer seniors, veterans and a host of other categories an additional discount on top.  If you're in the market for a OnePlus product, check out their discounts - it could be worth £££s.

The Open is good, very good in fact, but bulkier than the Duo and just not as cool, partly because you only have to open it for certain applications.  Don't get me wrong, it's a great phone, but I was really looking forward to eking out the last few months of the Duo and welcoming version 3.  But it was not to be, I'm over it now.  I'll post a review of the Open in a little while.

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It takes two - the Surface Duo

 I'm a bit of a Microsoft fan these days.  That wasn't always the case - I can recall a time when I felt they were dominating the world and I have an aversion to monoliths.  Now it seems that the world is divided into four or so massive monoliths I'm never going to win that particular argument.

In the  past I've backed the underdog - for a while I was a Palm champion, extolling the virtues of their products.  I wrote a large part of the Journeymen on the T5 while shuttling between north Wales and Arkansas on a project using a Palm keyboard.  It was the tiniest laptop you ever saw.  I loved the T5, arguably the precursor to the smart phone that was smashed by the iPhone appearing at about the same time my T5 was dying.  Repairs were impossible, new models unlikely, so for a while I played around with middle-market Android phones.

Then I jumped on the Windows phone - surely the kiss of death when I adopt.  I bought a top end HP Windows phone to complement first my Surface RT laptop, then my first Surface Pro.  The RT didn't die - my son-in-law is trying to get it to run on Linux at the moment, but it did become a problem as nobody was supporting the ARM chipset, hence the move to a grown up Surface Pro.

I'd evaluated the first instance of the Surface Pro for a former employer as a device to use carrying out fire safety audits of commercial premises and at the time thought  it too bulky and heavy - the later generations addressed that.  I'd still have my Surface Pro 4 if it wasn't for the paving stones outside my front door.  Them and gravity.  So I bought my second Surface Pro a while back, a V6.  I've also found  myself on my third keyboard - unintentional experiments with the first two demonstrated that Coors is a poor lubricant and single malt whisky even worse.  I'm still using the original Surface Pen but the nib is looking ropey these days - since lockdown I've been teaching engineering students science and maths on the Surface Pro with the assistance of Microsoft Whiteboard. That pen has seen some use and is soon to be replaced.

Anyway, back to the Windows phone - I loved the way it worked, how it integrated with my Surface Pro, my diary, my life.  I stopped writing books on mobile phones a while back but if any phone would support that, the HP would.  I guess I got what Apple aficionados get with the Apple environment but without the crowds or the self affirming back slapping and knowing glances.  I don't think I met more than half a dozen other Windows phone users in the time I was using the HP, and none seemed as keen as I was.  Eventually the first HP went the way of the first Surface Pro - landing face down on my patio out back.  Is it me, or is it just gravity?  Newton has a lot to answer for in this household.

I bought a second hand model on eBay and that worked but eventually Microsoft gave up on the Windows phone idea, which was a bummer for me, and then WhatsApp stopped supporting it.  I replaced it with a OnePlus T8, which is kind of cool, love the pop-up selfie camera and I've skinned it with a Windows overlay so it works as an Android but fits in with my MS toys - sorry - equipment.  I've still got the second-hand HP in a drawer in the shed, it hasn't even hit a hard surface or had alcohol poured over it.  There's still time.

Microsoft have seemed to come to terms with exiting the phone software arena, and have embraced Android in an anti-Apple kind of way.  They produce the skins I mentioned that lets  me use my Office 365 software seamlessly, access the OneDrive and apart from a lack of Windows tiles makes me feel all Microsofty inside.  And after a few years of leaks, rumours and even an official announcement ahead of the pandemic, they're returning to the fray with a Surface branded phone.

Patent leaks over the last few years showed Microsoft were interested in creating some sort of folding phone but they've moved away from the Samsung approach and in a ballsy way have bucked practically every trend by linking two screens together with a brace of hinges.  They are, it must be noted, very good at high tech hinges as anyone who has used a Surface Pro or a Surface Studio will attest.  They don't even call the new device, the Surface Duo, a phone.  It's clearly pitched as a computer with two screens, smart features and - oh, by the way, it takes calls too.  Finally someone has realised that the majority of phones today are used for anything other than making and receiving phone calls.

Given the spec it is feasible that I could end up writing my next novel on a Duo, a la Palm T5, but at the current price - about £1400 in the UK - I would need something in addition to the current offering.  I know Microsoft make a special hinge for the Surface Studio - they call it the anti-gravity hinge - given my track record with tech I could do with that technology being extended to the rest of the device before I shell out that much money!

An alcohol repellent product would be a boon, too.

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Why I've stuck with Windows Phone

A couple of weeks ago Microsoft announced they were exiting from the mobile business.  It wasn't a huge surprise to many phone users - they had been thoroughly thrashed by Apple and Android for years, had lost huge amounts of money through their Nokia venture and the app store has never amounted to much.

However, over the last few years I've become a little attached to Microsoft products.  I bought a Surface RT when it was on offer and my Nexus 7 suffered a terminal crack while on holiday a few years ago.  Then, when it was time to renew my mobile contract I picked up a Nokia 830 running Windows 8.1 and found a system that seemed to join up in a way that worked for me.  Shortly after my wife bought me the original Microsoft Band.  It's no Apple Watch, but it complements the setup perfectly.  Then I replaced the RT with a Surface Pro 4, and 18 months later still enjoying it hugely.

My Nokia has been running out of steam a little in recent months, I'm sure the upgrade to Windows 10 was part of that, and has been looking a little tired around the edges.  However there have been continual rumours over the last two years that Microsoft were working on a Surface phone, a device that was supposed to break the mould of the mobile world.  In the last three months the rumours have died away and Microsoft announcing it wasn't going to update its mobile platform ever again pretty much suggests the Surface phone is off the table. When Bill Gates and the head of mobile at Microsoft ditched their Windows phones for Android models it was a pretty clear picture.

But Windows mobile does pretty much everything I need from a phone.  I'm not much of an app user, hardly ever downloaded any when I last used Android, unlikely to start now.  The build set that comes bundled with the phone is all I need and although MS have stated they won't develop anything new for the phone they will keep its security updated, at least for the time being.

So I got to thinking 'what's going to happen to all those Windows phones on the production line', and had a look around at the top end Windows phones.  The one that took my eye was the HP Elite X3 - a 64Gb RAM, quad core, dual sim phablet with B & O speakers that was selling for around £700 before the announcement (still is on Microsoft's UK website).  I picked up a brand new model for nearly half of that and that'll keep me going until I really do have to revert to Android.  Who knows - perhaps Microsoft will develop a Surface phone running on Google's OS by then?

Has Microsoft Got Apple Rattled?

The release of the new Surface tablets, especially the Surface Pro, seems to have started a bit of a measured round of verbal tennis between Apple and Microsoft.  The fact that the rhetoric is restrained indicates that they are playing a serious game here.

Apple are talking up the iPad Air and are touting an Office-like clone that will run on the iPad.  That has to be a way forward and takes the iPad out of the serious toy world into real productivity arena.  Like Microsoft or loathe them, they've forced this agenda.  I've been saying for the last two years that the lack of productive uses for tablet computers has been the elephant in the boardroom.  Sure there's a lot of serious applications for the likes of the iPad and its Android cousins, but until Microsoft launched the Surface earlier this year complete with the ability to run Microsoft Office and to connect to a secure network (for the Pro version anyway), the elephant roamed unchallenged.

But the tablets that Microsoft have launched, along with similar hybrid devices based on Windows 8 by other manufacturers, have changed the game.  Although the RT version of the Surface seems to have stalled, it still represents an amazing amount of productivity for very little cost - around the price of a lesser spec iPad, but weighing only about an ounce more.  You get the touchy-feely iPad-like environment with the tablet, but also the ability to write novels, update spreadsheets, produce PowerPoint presentations with the magnetic clip-on keyboard.  Add SkyDrive with its free 7GB storage and the WiFi connectivity then you have something that is more than the sum of its parts.  The weakness is the apps; Windows 8 is playing catch up with iOS and Android, Windows 8 RT is going nowhere fast.  Because RT has only the Microsoft store available to access apps and won't run legacy Windows 7 or earlier programs it is struggling to convince.

However the Pro, at admittedly nearly twice the price of the RT, can do all of the above and more.  It is heavier, though, and thicker.  I've been using one this last week to see how it compares with traditional laptops when out of the office.  The jury's out at present, but for those situations where a mix of legacy software and business applications are required, the Pro may be the solution.  Connection to a secure intranet seems seamless and the machine is fast in use.

So can Apple catch up with the iPad Air?  Well, one area the Surface Pro is struggling is in the weight department - it is relatively heavy in use.  Apple have a track record of addressing weight issues.  The Pro does have a minimalist approach that Steve Jobs would probably approve of - power button, volume button and one USB port but when used with the new dock it seems to expand nicely.  Apple have yet to get over the USB port concept, which may hold them back.  The unknown quantity is the Office-like software being suggested.  There are a few Office clones around, with Open Office being the best well known.  It works reasonably well and produces MS Office compatible files, but I always feel I'm wrestling with it (I use it on a netbook).  Apple have an uphill battle to create an Office replacement that works on the iPad and makes users feel it is worth the effort. And good luck with printing - after two years we're still struggling to print from an iPad at home, but I find my Surface RT prints wirelessly without any apparent effort, although I suspect that was part of the 8.1 upgrade as I did struggle before.

So Microsoft have challenged Apple and their responses this week suggest that they have struck home.  Apple are getting serious about making the iPad serious.  It should also make Microsoft sit up too - Apple are a very capable company with a track recode of delivering - if Microsoft want to keep their lead in this serious tablet arena then they have more work to do.  Hopefully by the third iteration of the Surface Pro it will have the weight and thickness of the first generation RT.

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