Microsoft's duo 2 surface 2, at $ 1,499.99, works, and it does not work like the others.Portable Android Phablet on a double screen, the duo 2 is aptly named: it practically requires that you are looking at two windows at a time.Without a real external screen and with a frame between screens, it is not like other foldable phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3 at 1,800 euros.The form factor is probably too radical for most people, who want to keep a phone on their heads for calls, and send texts, take photos or play games on one screen.But if you want an alternative to the permanent use of the task selector on your Android phone, the duo 2 could suit you.

Refined material

The surface duo 2, as its name suggests, is the second in its range.The first model was a disaster, lacking in basic features such as primary rear cameras and launched with unacceptable bogué software.It’s typical of Microsoft, right?Like Windows 1.0 or PC back 1.0, Microsoft is nothing if not coherent.But Microsoft also still.We therefore now have the duo 2, which corrects the problems of the original duo while remaining in a separate class.

To put it simply, the surface duo 2 always looks like nothing else on the market.When closed, it is closed, without real screen or outdoor display.The device is made up of two thin and rounded panels connected by a reliable hinge, which remains open regardless of the position in which you want to place it.With its 3.6 inches wide, it is not comfortable in the pants of pants;You have to have it in the pocket of a jacket or a bag.And at 10 ounces, it has a lot of weight, so again, it is better for bags than for pockets.The rear has an important bump for the new three -cameras system.

To display your notifications without opening the phone, Microsoft introduced a "look bar" along the edge of the duo that displays notifications.When you charge the phone, the gaze bar fills according to the load level.If you press the power button, it displays the time in (very) small characters, as well as the number of missed calls and SMS.

A relief power button on the right edge, just below the volume buttons, includes the fingerprint sensor.There is a USB-C port for loading and/or headphones on the background that worked with my Samsung-C Samsung-C headphones;The phone comes with a cable, but neither the headphones nor a power adapter.

See how we test the phones

The duo has two 5.8 -inch screens, 1,892 x 1,344 pixels, which operate independently or as a single 8.3 -inch panel.There is a break in the middle;Although it is smaller than that of the original duo, because Microsoft now uses curved screens that approach each other, it always creates a notable gap in an extensive image.You really don't want to play games or watch videos through the gap, unlike the smooth screen of the Galaxy Z Fold3.You really want to use one at a time, or have two open windows.

The screens are absolutely magnificent: they are super clear with 401 pixels per inch, a maximum brightness of 800 nits and a refresh rate of 90 Hz.It is a pleasure to read small texts on these screens, even if you have to have good eyes - I noticed that the Office Experience on the duo has no mercy for those who have a blurred vision.

I did not have the opportunity to test the new Slim Pen 2 surface ($ 130), which recharges by induction from the phone when used with an additional loading cover of $ 65.Four other covers are available in black, blue, orange or white for $ 39;They do not allow the pen to be loaded, however (the pen is delivered with its own small USB reception station for recharging).

The duo 2 of the basic, at $ 1,499, has 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage;You can also get it with 256 GB for $ 1,599 or 512 GB for $ 1,799.There is no microSD card location, so choose judiciously.

Beyond Bendy

The 360 -degree hinge from the duo allows him to make a lot of towers that you do not see on other phones.If you fold it completely, you get a very large unique phone phone.The screens are not perfectly flat compared to the other, so that the device ends up being a real headache in terms of width and thickness to its widest point (unless youDo not have big hands), but that gives you a position to one hand.

The duo has six main modes:

Table-Tente mode is the real revelation for me;It is ideal for playing games by leaning on a Bluetooth controller, watching videos or making calls in loudspeaker mode, and no other phone can do the same thing without a bulky crutch case.

Relatively few applications use both screens intelligently.The Amazon Kindle application, when you slide it on the two screens, displays two pages, as if the device was a book.This is not the case with the Kobo Books application: only one page covers the two screens, which is illegible.Microsoft Office works well in double screen mode;For example, you can browse OneDrive on the left and preview the selected documents on the right.The integrated camera application displays your gallery on one screen and the viewfinder on the other.Asphalt 9 uses a screen for its mini-card while the main game takes place on the other screen.

But overall, these are two screens for two things.I found it productive to enter the results of benchmark (right) in an Excel (left) spreadsheet, or to scroll through an index of press articles (right) as IOpen and lily (left).

There is a particularity that makes me stumble.If you leave an application but it stays in memory, it reopens in the same position as before.This means that if you play with the settings on the left screen a while ago, you have forgotten and you route the application while waiting for it to be on the right screen, it s'will open on the left screen.

This applies to certain uses of secondary windows which are a little confused.I often wanted to have two open edge windows, and open a link on the other screen, but sometimes, by pressing "open in another window", the link opened on the same screen, not in theother edge window.Microsoft says that this is due to the fact that the system tries to respect if I did a non -edge activity on the other screen, but I found it unpredictable and unreliable.I want the same click to always do the same thing.

There are still occasional bugs and crashes, but nothing comparable to what I saw on the original duo.Sometimes when two Edge windows are open, press "Open on the other screen" on one of them leads to the other window closed.Excel has planted a few times.But all of this is more slightly annoying than unacceptable.

The software could also be improved.Sometimes the screens do not turn when I expect it, or a window returns to a single screen while I try to drag it to distribute it on both.Microsoft says it is really difficult to understand when a phone with so many postures wants to rotate, and I understand that.

The company has done its best to make the factor of bizarre of the duo fairly easy to type.In general, you use a touch keyboard that is congested on one side of the screen you use at that time, which I prefer on the divided keyboard of Samsung or to the middle of the screen on the Z Fold3.If the phone is kept as a laptop, however, a full screen keyboard often appears on the lower screen while you do things on the upper screen.It can be great if you have thick fingers, but it can also be a little disorienting when you work on two web pages, that you click on a text entry field on the bottom screen, and the screen of the screenlow is at the top to make room at the bottom keyboard.

Oh, one more thing: if you connect it to a USB-C monitor, it will pilot it without problem, and the "extended" window mode presents the right appearance report so as not to appear weird on an external monitor (unlike theMost mirror telephone screens, which are either too vertical or too horizontal).This is not quite the Samsung Dex mode, which looks like a desktop computer, but it is another interesting tip in the duo bag.You can also control screens via Chromecast and Miracast, wireless.

Your Portable Xbox

The duo is a rather wild game device.It is associated with Xbox Bluetooth controllers, works with Xbox Game Pass game streaming and has some double -screen tips that appear when you are in the Microsoft ecosystem.

If you only play Google Play games, it is better to do it on one screen.Try to cover the two screens, for me, puts too much content on the Bezel.Human impact, in particular, generally places your character in the center of the screen, and it's just weird.GENSHIN is not the most fluid to which I played here, with a few jumps, but it is good.

The duo's strength is revealed when you start playing with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate ($ 14.99/month) or a dedicated Bluetooth controller.With a controller, the table tent mode allows you to put the phone for a game experience in a leaning position.Without controller, the lower screen becomes one, which allows you to have all the appropriate buttons and triggers.

The Xbox Game Pass streaming is imperfect, but I found it surprisingly good.You certainly need a solid internet connection, and all games are not ideal for the device.The quasi-RPG idiot The Good Life was played perfectly, and Halo swayed with APLOMB.But the controls of Need for Speed: Heat were too soft to be pleasant.The high -end Ruglielike Children of Morta was appreciated, but some texts were too small to be read.

The device has two speakers for games, music and video.They are not particularly memorable, neither outrageously silent, nor excessively strong, and they are about as dull as most of the phone speakers these days.

A lot of power

The duo surface is equipped with the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor as the other Android smartphones of the moment.It works with a personalized version of Android 11 which had to be strongly modified for the unusual equipment of Microsoft.That said, Microsoft promises frequent updates to features and safety.For the next major version of the operating system, Android 12, Microsoft says it "works".

In terms of benchmarks, the surface rule applies: when it's good, it's very very good, but when it's bad, it crashes.Our Benchmark Pcmark Work has planted several times, but other benchmarks have given identical results (geekbench) or better (Basemark Web and Gfxbench) than those obtained on the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold3.

The battery is a great weakness, however.With the two active screens, one reading a video and the other scrolling a web page, I only got 5 hours and 25 minutes of use.By deactivating one of the screens, I reached 10 hours in video playback on a single screen, but I always have the impression that the battery life will be lower than that of other single screen phones like theGalaxy S21 Ultra (11 hours, 20 minutes) and Apple's iPhone 13 Pro Max (18 hours).The Galaxy Z Fold3 also does not have the best autonomy (11 hours, 25 minutes).

The duo 2 promises a quick charge of 18 watts, but I did not find that it was quickly loaded during the tests.Connected to a 20 Watts Samsung-C Samsung-C charger, it took three hours to fill your tank.

Reliable connectivity

The Duo 2 surface is equipped with the same Qualcomm X60 modem that you will find in other leading smartphones this year, including the Samsung Galaxy S21 and the iPhone 13.It gives him two years ahead of the original duo.

The duo has a nano-Sim location and an ESIM;You can use both at a time, making it a double SIM card phone.The device supports all 4G and 5G bands currently used in the United States, both sub-6 and mmwave, as well as the C to come.You can deactivate 5G if 4G offers you better coverage.

Microsoft's antenna work in the first duo was solid, and I noticed the same strong reception on the Verizon network with this model.I have always had a better reception of 3 to 4 dBm on the Verizon network with the duo than with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3, and in a low 4G signal area, this could make the difference between a connection and none.

Tested on several sites with Verizon, the duo has generally exceeded Fold (but not always).On a millimeter wave connection, the duo and the Fold both reached a peak at around 2.6 Gbps, while on the "national" "national" of Verizon, the duo reached a peak at 304 Mbps.The two phones did not have a big difference in terms of millimeter reaches.

Wi-Fi 6 is supported, but not Wi-Fi 6th;The device also has Bluetooth 5.1 and NFC for mobile payments.

Holding the duo 2 facing your face to make a call is a little weird;it is very flat.A Bluetooth helmet is a good choice (there is no 3.5 mm headphone jack).For calls in a speaker in a quiet room, the Table-Tent mode of the duo 2 is very convincing, although the quality of the call is not remarkable.

Small cameras

The original duo surface did not have camera at all back.This one has three: a main camera of 12 MP, f/1.7, a 2x zoom of 12 Mpx, f/2.4, and an ultra-large 16 Mpx, F/2.2, 110degrees.There is also a frontal target of 12 MP, f/2.0.

Unfortunately, the cameras are not very good, and I met several bugs in the camera application.The application is supposed to operate by default in a very practical mode where you see the viewfinder on the right screen and your gallery on the one on the left.When you take a photo, you can see it in full screen on the left screen, which allows you to judge easily if the photo is clear or if you have to take another.

This mode sometimes launches.But other times, I got the camera application on the upper or right screen and the other screen remained on the home screen, not the gallery.Once the viewfinder appeared on the upper screen and the image was upside down.Not the elements of the user interface - it was not a problem of rotation of the screen - but the image of the viewfinder.And in low light, it goes from one camera to another, zooms out and makes the focus very slowly.

In terms of quality, Microsoft software does not seem to be up to Samsung standards.I compared the duo 2 with a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3.The photos taken with the duo are universally darker, with more deaf colors and softer details.The duo has a night mode for very low light situations and it is certainly useful, but once again, it does not create images as clear or as bright as Fold.

In a good light, the front camera of the duo is ideal for video calls.It provides very regular images that minimize shadows on your face, unlike the more dramatic aspect of Fold.In low light, the duo kept the focus on my face and practically hid all that was behind me, while the Fold was still able to bring out certain details of the background.

Are you looking for a unique phone?You found it

It was easy to criticize the first duo surface because, at the base, it did not work.The duo 2 works.It's just very strange.

The duo surface 2 is the wolverine of mobile multitasking."I am the best in what I do," he says, "but sometimes what I do is not very pretty".Yes, it is certainly possible to make the screen shared on other Android phones like the Galaxy Z Fold3, but it is far from being so easy or as obvious.If your ideal workflow on your phone involves copying and sticking a lot from one window to another, the duo is a unique tool.But if the duo 2 does things that other phones at $ 1,500 cannot do, it does not do things that other phones at $ 1,500 can do, such as offering a first -rate image qualityor be comfortable when held against your head for a telephone call.It is not really a depliable tablet like the Z Fold3.It’s a very special device.

If you are interested in duo 2, go with open eyes, your curiosity well awake and your credit card well supplied.It does not deserve our price for choosing the editorial staff, but for a certain type of multitasking mobile users, it will be a boon.

La ligne du bas

No other portable device is as versatile as the Microsoft Surface Duo 2 with double screen, but it belongs to a separate category.See the article: Review Retroid Pocket 2: Complete test and reviews 2021.It is neither a phone nor a tablet.