Duo-take: Here's what the media is saying about Surface Duo

Still, the Surface Duo has something a lot of other gadgets lack: vision. It feels like a phone that was designed with a mission instead of simply being a tech demo, and with Microsoft seemingly having gone all-in, it's a vision that could turn into a very enticing reality.

But to focus entirely on those drawbacks right now is a mistake. The Surface Duo seems best viewed as a first step — an ambitious move toward creating a new kind of product category and a bold attempt at fleshing out the ever-expanding and increasingly platform-agnostic Microsoft ecosystem. It doesn't seem like a stretch to compare this beginning to the start of the primary Surface line, where the earliest model was reviewed as being intriguingly different and incredibly promising but not fleshed out enough to be worth buying.

The real question will be how well Surface Duo, and devices like it, improve productivity on the go, and whether two mobile screens is truly needed. These devices will ultimately require some hardware advances to really pull off the vision. But if consumers agree with Microsoft, Samsung, and others that two screens are better than one then we're witnessing the future being built. If not, we're witnessing unique attempts to try and reshape mobile devices. At the very least, mobile phones are suddenly getting exciting again. As Panay would say, we're pumped to see where this all goes.

I did get enough of a sense of the Surface Duo to come up with an initial impression that's pretty much a dumbed-down version of Panay and Nadella's lofty explanations of the device. With its two oversized screens and the multiple ways you can hold it for different sorts of work, it should be the best pocket-sized device ever designed for using Microsoft's Office apps, assuming bugs don't get in the way. That alone gives it a more coherent mission than many newfangled phones, which—even when they're cool—sometimes struggle to be something more than a brag-worthy novelty.

Clearly, if you're looking for a killer camera, the Duo is not going to be it (the lack of a camera bump is a telling giveaway). But if you're thinking about the Duo in the context of the strange COVID-19 world we live in, the transforming form factor — being able to have a phone that opens up into a tablet, that can run two apps at once, and connect seamlessly with Windows PCs — makes a lot of sense. More people are working from home, moving from room to room, from desk to sofa to bed, quickly shuffling inside and out. A transforming device that accommodates these behaviors is more sensible than before.

Microsoft is counting on users seeing the Duo as filling an untapped niche. But for people used to thinking about carrying no more than two devices -- usually a PC/tablet or phone -- where does the Duo fit? In its first iteration, with a seemingly mediocre 11 MP camera, an older Snapdragon 855 processor and a relatively heavy form factor (about half a pound), the Duo is not going to replace my Pixel 3XL Android phone. And with a total screen size when open of 8.1 inches, the Duo is just too small to replace my PC.

Microsoft isn't doing itself any favors by kneecapping Duo at the starting block, which I fear may hurt its successors, too. The good news is that the company didn't turn its Surface line into a billion-dollar business by throwing in the towel after a single generation. I await the inevitably poorly named Surface Duo 2.

For Microsoft, the Surface Duo is about trying to strike out with something genuinely new in an age where most phones look the same, and the ones that don't haven't taken off.For whatever criticisms you level at Microsoft, the Surface Duo is a type of device none of its peers are offering. Whether that's good or bad will be up to you.