The Surface Duo 2 is a discontinued

dual-touchscreen A dual-touchscreen is a computer or phone display setup which uses two screens, either or both of which could be touch-capable, to display both elements of the computer's graphical user interface and virtualized implementations of common input de ...

Android Android most commonly refers to: *Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), a mobile operating system primarily developed by Google * Android TV, a operating system developed ...

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

manufactured by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. Announced during a hardware-oriented event on September 22, 2021, it is the successor to the original

Surface Duo The Surface Duo is a discontinued dual-touchscreen Android smartphone manufactured by Microsoft. Announced during a hardware-oriented event on October 2, 2019, and officially released on September 10, 2020, it is part of the Microsoft Surface se ...

Specifications

Hardware

The Surface Duo 2 uses a similar folio form factor to the first-generation model, although it is slightly thicker to accommodate a larger battery, and now offered in a new black color option. It features a pair of 5.8-inch

OLED An organic light-emitting diode (OLED), also known as organic electroluminescent (organic EL) diode, is a type of light-emitting diode (LED) in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is an organic compound film that emits light in respon ...

displays with a 90 Hz

refresh rate The refresh rate, also known as vertical refresh rate, vertical scan rate or vertical frequency in reference to terminology originating with the cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), is the number of times per second that a raster-based display device displa ...

, with their innermost edges being curved over the side. This is used as part of a new feature known as the "Glance Bar", which allows notifications and other content to be displayed along its spine. As with the Surface Duo, it supports

Surface Pen The Surface Pen is an active stylus and digital pen developed by Microsoft for its series of Surface computing devices. It is designed to showcase the pen computing capabilities of Microsoft's Windows 8/ 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11 operatin ...

styluses, including the concurrently-unveiled Surface Slim Pen 2. The device uses the

Qualcomm Snapdragon Snapdragon is a suite of system-on-chip (SoC) semiconductor products for mobile devices designed and marketed by Qualcomm, who often refers to these SoCs as "mobile platforms". They typically integrate central processing units (CPU) based o ...

888 5G system-on-chip, adding 5G and

near-field communication Near-field communication (NFC) is a set of communication protocols that enables communication between two electronic devices over a distance of or less. NFC offers a low-speed connection through a simple setup that can be used for the boots ...

(NFC) support that was not present on the original Surface Duo. It also has an increased 8 GB of RAM compared to the 6 GB of its predecessor, dual speakers, and a fingerprint reader in its power button. The Surface Duo 2 has both front and rear-facing cameras, with the rear camera array featuring a 12-megapixel lens, 16-megapixel wide-angle lens, and a 12-megapixel telephoto lens.

Software

The Surface Duo 2 launched with

Android 11 Android 11 is the eleventh major release and 18th version of Android, the mobile operating system developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google. It was released on September 8, 2020. The first phone launched in Europe with Android 11 ...

. An update to Android 12 L was released in October 2022, adding

Windows 11 Windows 11 is a version of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released on October 5, 2021, as the successor to Windows 10 (2015). It is available as a free upgrade for devices running Windows 10 that meet the #System requirements, Windo ...

-inspired design elements and other new features.

Reception

The Surface Duo 2 received a mixed reception. ''The Verge'' praised the Duo 2 for having more competitive hardware than the first-generation model, including a faster processor, more RAM, and 5G support (although still lacking features such as

wireless charging Inductive charging (also known as wireless charging or cordless charging) is a type of wireless power transfer. It uses electromagnetic induction to provide electricity to portable devices. Inductive charging is also used in vehicles, power tool ...

), and its software for being "undeniably better than it was on the original at launch". However, the reviewer noted issues with touch input response, web browsers such as

Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge is a Proprietary Software, proprietary cross-platform software, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft and based on the Chromium (web browser), Chromium open-source project, superseding Edge Legacy. In Windows 11, Edge ...

and

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

did not support displaying multiple pages on the two screens, and felt that its cameras were exceeded in quality by even cheaper devices such as the

Pixel 5a The Pixel 5a, also known as the Pixel 5a with 5G, is an Android smartphone designed, developed, and marketed by Google as part of the Google Pixel product line. It serves as a mid-range variant of the Pixel 5. It was officially announced on A ...

. In conclusion, it was felt that "between the bugs and inherent awkwardness of the form factor, the Duo 2 is just a difficult device to live with day to day, much like its predecessor." As of October 21, 2024, the Surface Duo 2 was discontinued by Microsoft and the last security update was October 8, 2024.

Timeline

References

{{Microsoft hardware Foldable smartphones Microsoft Surface Products introduced in 2021