What I learned at the Surface Duo Demo and Q&A

     

Microsoft recently had some Q&A and demonstration of the Surface Duo in action, these demonstrations are open to the public, so I went to one; here's what I learned from the entire experience 

 
 

 
 

I do want to clarify that the event was through Microsoft teams not in-person, Microsoft teams has improved since the pandemic. Basically, Microsoft sends you a link and you just the teams meeting simple as that. The Q&A section had an exceptionally good interface were moderators spotlighted questions and answered them in an ordinary fashion and although the was only 2 moderators they tried their best to answer most questions so I'll include a log of their answer to my questions.  

This Q&A really did enlighten me about how Microsoft thinks about the Duo. The Presenter focused on the benefit of 2 screen and how it's convenient to still have a single screen when you need it. For example, ingredients to a recipe on the left and a grocery list on the right, common examples of real-world uses. 

 

So, what did I learn? 

I learned that the Surface Duo can't use both screens while in tent mode, there goes my Disney+ on one side for me and Netflix on the other side for my brother: sad. I also learned that the Microsoft feed will work like the iPhone feed where you have widgets curated to your choice, Microsoft and third-party alike. Also, like iPhone you can slightly swipe down on the home screen for a universal search UI, you can search both the device and the web using this UI. I'm sure Bing is the default out-of-box but I'm sure you can change the default later. 

One other surprising tidbit is the fact that they mentioned that the Surface Duo will support the classic three-button Android navigation, I'm not sure how spanning will work without gestures but I suppose that's a question best left to the reviewers.  

 

 

Speaking of spanning Microsoft did clear up some confusion surrounding the feature that allows an app to use both screens in conjunction as one and not two. They mentioned that all apps support spanning but some apps support "enhanced" spanning. The difference is that all apps can span the screens but they'll just run with a big bar in the middle, enhanced spanning will sperate both screens for example outlook will have emails on one side and content of said emails on the other side. I asked for a list of apps support enhanced spanning, but they responded that they could only guarantee that Microsoft's own apps will support enhanced spanning.  

 

 

Compose mode was also shown and Microsoft revealed that any software keyboard will support compose mode, not just SwiftKey, although I'm sure SwiftKey will be better in some way. Your phone integration is also extremely rich and better than the Samsung integration, Microsoft was confident enough to use Your Phone for the entire software presentation, that said something, and I have to say it was smooth through and through. 

 

 

I learned a lot at this event, and you can too, here's a link:https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/workshops-training-and-events/surface-duo. I hope you can enjoy these events as much as I did. 

 

 

Best, 

BenTechCoder