Microsoft’s first Android smartphone ever, the Surface Duo, can now be pre-ordered in the United States. This day has been a long time coming as the booklet-like device in question was originally announced over a year ago. Somewhat surprisingly, Microsoft decided against upgrading its specs despite delaying it on a handful of occasions to the point that people started doubting whether the Surface Duo will ever reach the mass-consumer market.
In effect, this two-screen gadget will be releasing with the year-old Snapdragon 855 and 8GB of RAM, not a particularly impressive pair of key specifications for a product priced at $1,399, which is more expensive than pretty much every other smartphone on the market bar the odd foldable experiment. Then again, Microsoft insists this isn’t a smartphone at all, just a new productivity tool that happens to accept Nano-SIM cards, not unlike one of Apple’s iPads.
The company already signaled it intends to release the Surface Duo 2 (Surface Duo Duo?) in the near future, so this novel product range still has time to mature. But in the meantime, it is difficult to describe what kind of demographic is Microsoft targeting with the Surface Duo, especially seeing how most of its key functionalities are already covered by more established Surface-series devices.
