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Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

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Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#111

Post by sulkie »

fortran77 wrote: post #69
scarface74 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Microsoft is much better at handling an ecosystem than Amazon. As far as I can tell, MS is using standard Android with Google Play Services(?) Amazon was trying to create its own ecosystem.

Amazon has a nice suite of services. A phone that has Music, Books, Shopping, Cloud Storage for Photos, and a few key apps (Uber, Lyft, popular games) but somewhat constrained otherwise, would be great for Seniors or people who don't need a high-performance general-purpose computer in their pocket.

Perhaps, but I believe that not being able to install one or two crucial apps (e.g. banking) would be a deal-breaker for a good portion of those people.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#114

Post by H1Supreme »

swiley wrote: post #71

Another android phone. These are all just wrappers around the latest qualcomm snapdragon with whatever twist the hardware manufacture wants to add. Basic functionality in all of them will be badly broken and there's more or less nothing you can do to fix it. At least the iphone ships with an ssh client and scripting environment now. (not that I'm an iphone fan, it has it's own problems.)

> At least the iphone ships with an ssh client

I use the Termux app to SSH on my Android phone all the time.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#115

Post by pweezy »

sp332 wrote: post #110
mwsfc wrote: post #77

Between this and the Samsung Fold it feels like we have entered into the netbook (form factor) era* void. We're past peak smartphone development and are in this space where manufacturers are stumbling around for the next "it" device but creating nothing that is truly revolutionary. Yes, there are "some" use cases where a larger screen on my mobile device would be useful…. But by-and-large I still want it to fit in my…

It shouldn't double the device thickness. You can have normal cellphone thickness on one side and just enough for a display on the other.

I suspect the main reason this type of device tends to be more symmetrical in thickness is to carry an additional battery, needed to power the second display without shortening the total battery life of the device.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#116

Post by sixstringtheory »

mwsfc wrote: post #77

Between this and the Samsung Fold it feels like we have entered into the netbook (form factor) era* void. We're past peak smartphone development and are in this space where manufacturers are stumbling around for the next "it" device but creating nothing that is truly revolutionary. Yes, there are "some" use cases where a larger screen on my mobile device would be useful…. But by-and-large I still want it to fit in my…

I think the future is less/no screen. Typing on these folding phones seems like a worse experience. Typing at all isn't really natural, and neither is staring at planar, glowing glass.

I think the future is conversational computing. I don't own an Alexa/HomePod/etc (yet... maybe some open source on prem thing at some point), but I think that's where the puck is moving. It's just that today their capabilities are somewhere around a rotary phone vs. an iPhone. Better than a telegraph (which I guess in this analogy is _typing_ your words into a document) but still very rudimentary. All it needs is time and effort.

Similar to HomePods, we have AirPods and their equivalents. The phone is just a conduit through which can pass the data necessary for the OS to talk with you, to do what you need.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#117

Post by spdionis »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #116
mwsfc wrote: post #77

Between this and the Samsung Fold it feels like we have entered into the netbook (form factor) era* void. We're past peak smartphone development and are in this space where manufacturers are stumbling around for the next "it" device but creating nothing that is truly revolutionary. Yes, there are "some" use cases where a larger screen on my mobile device would be useful…. But by-and-large I still want it to fit in my…

I think the future is less/no screen. Typing on these folding phones seems like a worse experience. Typing at all isn't really natural, and neither is staring at planar, glowing glass. I think the future is conversational computing. I don't own an Alexa/HomePod/etc (yet... maybe some open source on prem thing at some point), but I think that's where the puck is moving. It's just that today their capabilities are some…

Except when you can't reply to a message on your phone cause you don't want people around you to hear that.

Let's be real, "conversational computing" may work in movies, but in reality you don't want people in the office or on the street hearing your interactions with your phone.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#118

Post by m0zg »

acd wrote: post #113

Microsoft has always been very good at making hardware! It would be interesting with oled/lcd on one side and eink on the other side.

This is often said by people who have never owned their hardware. I bought a Surface Book when it first came out. I disagree. It looks good on the photos if you've never used it, but it was kind of flimsy and buggy AF. I took it back for a refund 3 days after purchasing it. And it's a flagship device. I can only imagine what happens at the lower end of the product range.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#119

Post by cstross »

mwsfc wrote: post #77

Between this and the Samsung Fold it feels like we have entered into the netbook (form factor) era* void. We're past peak smartphone development and are in this space where manufacturers are stumbling around for the next "it" device but creating nothing that is truly revolutionary. Yes, there are "some" use cases where a larger screen on my mobile device would be useful…. But by-and-large I still want it to fit in my…

Except the netbook form-factor has seen an unexpected revival in the past two years, with machines from GPD and One Netbook (and other Chinese manufacturers) showing up (although they're metal unibody machines, some of them ultrabook spec rather than netbook, and vastly more powerful and useful than their 2007-11 predecessors). E.g. One Netbook just announced the One Mix 3 Pro, with a quad-core Comet Lake i5, 16Gb RAM/512Gb SSD:

https://liliputing.com/2019/09/one-mix-3-pro-is-the-first-mi...

These aren't cheap (like the original netbooks), but they're pitched against the low end of the ultrabook market, for folks who need a better keyboard/typing experience than a Surface Go.

(Disclaimer: I own a One Mix 3S, predecessor to this new version and I rate it quite highly, except for support from the manufacturer which is patchy at best.)

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#120

Post by subjectsigma »

eduren wrote: post #56
pier25 wrote: post #47

Personally I don't see the attractive in dual screen devices unless we reach Westworld-like devices that are super thin and can go from phone to large tablet that can potentially replace a laptop. Otherwise it's just a thick phone that converts to 2 phones... In case anyone hasn't seen Westworld: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3dD7jOLaes

Agree. I love the design behind the Westworld folding tablets. I don't see myself jumping aboard the train until we get at least a little bit closer to that form factor.

There's an interesting subtlety in Westworld devices that I didn't notice until now, though - they're insanely durable. Dust, blood, hard impacts, slamming the device closed, etc don't seem to damage or impede them at all which simply wouldn't be true of real devices. I think foldable devices are inherently more fragile than smartphones which are already too fragile IMO and thus they'll never work, but few people seem to care about that right now.
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