Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 183 posts

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#171

Post by robocat »

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.

> would be great for Seniors

How do seniors learn to use devices?

Mostly from peers or mostly from children? If from peers, how do they seed the ability?

I can't see how you could get seniors to start to use a "dumbphone" specific to them, unless the UI was spectacularly easy to use.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#172

Post by patagurbon »

gonehome wrote: post #147
Namrog84 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Microsoft has their enterprise hardware, but not sure what they're thinking about otherwise." Do you consider the hololens exclusively enterprise?

Yeah - is that not the case? There’s also magic leap, but I found their hardware pretty disappointing and I’d be surprised if they survive to actually be a serious player in AR platforms.

Only for now I believe. I think they're just pushing enterprise for the early editions. Glorified dev kits essentially.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#173

Post by i-am-cjc »

ijidak wrote: post #104
chooseaname wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still my holy grail of computing device. I want a portable device (phone) that gives me a phone style interface when portable, but when docked, a desktop-like experience. Yes, there have been efforts, but I want this to be mainstream and well thought out.

Agree! Will somebody please make this! I want to simply have a keyboard and screen that "looks like a laptop" but the brains is actually in the phone in my pocket! And then when I have a proper dock, I just get a larger monitor(s) and larger desktop keyboard. But the brains are still in the phone! The key benefit (of the dumb laptop, especially) is I still want a laptop on the go, but.. 1. Why manage data flow across…

I have a NexDock that I think was a kickstarter a few years ago that is a dumb laptop (hdmi in, usb for charging, bluetooth keyboard and mouse) that could be plugged into a phone. Used it for Raspberry Pis and Intel Compute sticks for a while.

I am hoping I can do this with the librem5 and a dock.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#175

Post by WorldMaker »

EnderMB wrote: post #169
WorldMaker wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they make a single-screen phone for Android when the market is already saturated with them? (It's silly enough for them to make a dual screen phone for Android when all the existing OEMs are already trying to hype future foldables or multi-screen beasts.)

I wouldn't call the high-end Android market saturated. There are a number of players, but it's a market of compromises. If you want a stock Android experience, you go away from Samsung. If you want a headphone jack, you go away from Google and OnePlus, etc. The Surface range is good because it packs so much functionality into a nicely designed package. The same design principles, with a full feature set, would sell l…

The high-end Android market is about as saturated as it can get, because multiple generations of hardware sales keep showing new high-end options dropping out because high-end users (mostly) just want iOS and buy iPhones.

Most high-end phones for Android don't sell like wild fire. AT&T and Verizon stores (among others) are pretty clear that Android is "cheap" and the iPhone is luxury/high-end.

I don't think Microsoft has an answer for that existing market dynamic here for Android phones. There doesn't seem to be enough of a value proposition that Microsoft might have anymore luck as Android device competing against the iPhone.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#176

Post by Sandr »

It's hard to find words to thank JAMES after I was ripped off twice, I got his contact from a colleague and he works like a magician. Got my fiancé phone hacked and I had access to all his lies. Contact him Via the following bellow….. EMAIL;Jamesethicalhacker@gmail. com, or Jamescyberhacker6@gmail. com or TEXT,CALL and WHATSAPP ON :+1(775)374-4344 Trust me he will deliver a perfect and untraceable job for you.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#177

Post by Sandr »

It's hard to find words to thank JAMES after I was ripped off twice, I got his contact from a colleague and he works like a magician. Got my fiancé phone hacked and I had access to all his lies. Contact him Via the following bellow….. EMAIL;Jamesethicalhacker@gmail. com, or Jamescyberhacker6@gmail. com or TEXT,CALL and WHATSAPP ON :+1(775)374-4344 Trust me he will deliver a perfect and untraceable job for you.yuj

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#178

Post by wayfinder »

WorldMaker wrote: post #162
Faark wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are describing is the usual problem of establishing a two sided market. You need users to make app developers care. You need apps to get users in the first place. From what I remember, MS already had to build some apps themselves / offer significant financial incentives [0]. This seemed hardly sustainable and thus the death of the product was, while disappointing, not a surprise. So yeah, you don't need a co…

You can't get users for a product no one can buy. Calling it a conspiracy was largely a gag, but if anything it was a conspiracy of dunces. Verizon refusing to sell and refusing to allow on their network the Lumia 950 because of a hissy fit that they didn't like how the previous flagship performed and that Microsoft got an almost favorable AT&T deal for the 950 was dumb on several levels. AT&T getting bored with thei…

I don't think people were ever going to buy in to the platform. I liked Windows Phone, but it had basically no substantial feature that made people think "wow, it's worth it to drop Android and iOS for /this/."

You got Android if you overwhelmingly wanted the customization. You got an iPhone if you overwhelmingly wanted something that was smooth and worked well. I tried WP for a while and I missed nothing major by switching away.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#179

Post by erikpukinskis »

nesky wrote: post #135

Is the split screen device market a new upcoming segment or is it supposed to be replacing an existing one? I've never thought that I need two iPhones or two iPads connected to one another in a book like fashion like this. Who's the market demographic for this type of product?

The only way it makes sense to me is this:

Apple designed the iPhone to be a pocketable one-handed companion device to a real computer.

People started using them as their only computer. The changed the design parameters enough that it made sense to offer a less pocketable device with a much larger screen.

The thesis is: maybe that market can be segmented even further, by adding an even less pocketable segment with even more screen space.

Re: Microsoft announces new Surface Duo phone

#180

Post by pizza234 »

EnderMB wrote: post #170
pizza234 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Surface Laptop unfortunately doesn't work as tablet. I'm very "disappointented" by the event, as it seems that the Surface Book series is dead. If this is the case, I guess that the reasoning has been that who want a powerful machine just buy a regular laptop. It's a shame for those who use the SB both as tablet and dev machine (which is the intended audience). At this point, it's not sure how the SPX will be usa…

I'm interested in how many people actually use their Surface Book as a tablet. I know a load of people with the standard Surface that use it like a tablet, but very few people that regularly use their Surface Book's detachable tablet functionality. I can probably count the number of times I've ever wanted to take the laptop apart on one hand.

I use it a lot! The SB tablet is the state of the art (sadly, because evidently there have been no advancements). Nothing is so light: even the Surface Pro X is inferior (13.5"/730g vs. 13"/770g). This comes from the interesting design choice of stripping as much as possible from the tablet itself (the Surface Pro instead, is intended to be more functional, when in tablet form, since it's coupled with lightweight bases).

In the past, I used it primarily to read electronic versions of several paper magazines; this format is (IMHO) best read on a large screen - the sweet spot is around 14, so 13.5 is the closest (I reckon the 15" is too big; the SB laptop form factor has a bulky design).

In the present, I use it for studying (textbooks, mostly) - for textbooks, even 12.x" is fine, so even a Surface Pro would do.

Having said that, I like it as a tablet so much that I've pretty much ditched the base and bought another laptop for development. The SB laptop form factor just sucks (IMHO), as it's very bulky, and Microsoft has an insane pricing strategy, that makes it unjustifiably expensive for developers looking for a serious dev machine. Nowadays it's more competitive due to being old, but the 16 GB models have never been competitive, both in price and form factor, to competitors like the Dell XPS.

Of course, I don't imply that many people use it this way because I do, so I really don't know the general use cases :-)

Post reply on HN