Microsoft Surface Duo: specs for the upcoming flip phone leaked

There's still a bit of time left until the Microsoft smartphone hits the market, but the conversation surrounding it has already heated up. The Surface Duo is Microsoft's latest attempt to grab the smartphone market by the horns. And on top of that, the tech giant is trying to combine two trends currently dominating the industry.

1. Integration into an ecosystem, this being Microsoft's service formerly known as Office.
2. An attempt at pioneering foldable phones.

The most recent development in this saga concerns information on some of the specs.

The Surface Duo in numbers

Windows blog WindowsCentral is reporting these specs as being used in the Surface Duo :

• Operating system: Android 10, will probably be quickly updated to Android 11.
• Display: 2x5.6-inch screens with an aspect ratio of 4:3.
• System-on-a-Chip: Qualcomm Snapdragon 855.
• RAM: 6 GB.
• Internal memory: 64GB or 256GB.
• No memory card slot.
• Camera: 11MP, f/2.0.
• Fingerprint Sensor.
• Connections: 1xUSB-C.
• SIM card slot: NanoSIM.
• Battery: 3460 mAh.
• Microsoft Surface Pen Support.

According to WindowsCentral Editor Zac Bowden, the source for these Microsoft-internal specs is known only to himself. Therefore, it's hard to assess the authenticity of this data. But they sound credible. When opened, the Surface Duo should only be 4.8 millimetres thick.

Pen Support makes the Duo especially interesting, putting it into direct competition with Samsung's Note series. Since the industry more or less settled on the common form factor of a rectangle with rounded corners, stylus phones have almost disappeared. In spite of this, Samsung has created a small, but nevertheless profitable, fanbase. Looks like Microsoft is going after Samsung. But this foldable, double-screened product may prove to be their ace in the hole.

Foldable, but with two screens

The Surface Duo isn't only direct competition to Samsung's Note series, it's also a bold proposal for the future of smartphones. The current industry standard has seemingly reached the end of its life cycle. There's still the matter of wider or narrower edges, notches and headphone jacks, but that's pretty much it. With the exception of the iPhone SE, screen size has levelled off at somewhere between 5.5 and 7-inch screen diagonals. Amoled is standard.

The market needs new ideas. These come in the form of foldable phones. Samsung has come out with the Fold, Huawei is debuting the Mate Xs and LG is following this up with the rather strange V60. And now there's Microsoft.

But instead of radically new technology in the form of a foldable screen, Microsoft is using two screens. The Surface Duo thus avoids a point of criticism that folding phones have to deal with: the fold in the middle. Unless you're looking more or less straight at the screen, you can see where the screen folds.

The Surface Duo has a border in the middle of the two screens. To help developers get started with the Surface Duo and prepare their apps for the two screens, Microsoft has published a Dual Screen Guide. In it, Microsoft reveals how this software will one day work in real life.

So, that’s it. The Surface Duo promises to be an exciting device. Now let's see when it comes out.