I continue to be fascinated at the cack-handed way Microsoft have launched the Surface Duo. I've just spotted Ian Betteridge's thoughts on the Surface Duo from March 2021:
Yes, the cost here is ridiculous – £1300 at a time when the price has been reduced to $999 in the US – but I've always loved Microsoft's Surface line and was curious about it. […]
Overall I think Microsoft is on to something with this form factor, but I really wish it was larger and a tablet rather than smaller and a sort-of phone. Microsoft is absolutely correct not to market this as a smartphone, because it never really feels like one -- but it does feel like a tiny, interesting and highly usable mini-tablet.
I hope Microsoft will persist with the form factor, but selfishly I mostly want them to do that to plant the idea in someone in Apple's head that they really need to sort out1 the iOS/iPadOS windowing model.
- Not that they need to be told that, I know, but it feels as if the whole "let's fork iOS and create an iPad variant" thing has not come close to achieving what some of us iPad users were hoping for and that's just a crying shame. ↩