Microsoft Surface Duo Phone Goes on Sale Starting at $1,399 (bloomberg.com) 98
Microsoft begins taking orders for its dual-screen Surface device in the U.S. on Wednesday, an attempt to re-enter the mobile handset market with a product that blends the features of a tablet with those of a phone. From a report: The Android-powered Surface Duo starts at $1,399 and will be available Sept. 10, said Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay. The device will be sold on Microsoft.com as well as by AT&T and Best Buy. It is the thinnest Surface ever, with screens that unfold completely to serve as a phone or act like a book to provide more space for different apps. The gadget represents Microsoft's return to the handset market following an ignominious retreat in 2016 after the company's acquisition of Nokia's handset unit crashed and burned in a costly writedown. It's also the company's first Surface device running Google's Android operating system, which Windows Phone once sought to vanquish. Why Android? Panay told reporters it came down to the need for apps -- Microsoft's previous efforts were largely doomed because of the lack of mobile developer support.
$1400? (Score:1)
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Make sure you don't forget the you're-not-in-the-US tax!
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You mean VAT? They do that to themselves.
Re:$1400? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:$1400? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually a straight replacement of $XXX with €XXX is about accounted for by VAT, since VAT is included in the base list price (US sales tax is not), and is around 20-25%. In fact, the list price in €'s will generally be slightly higher than the list price in $'s.
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Re: $1400? (Score:2)
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Perhaps you should start looking for different work.
I worked for a company that I felt over time I wasn't getting properly compensated for my work. So I found a better paying job (during a recession) then professionally quit the one I was working with.
I have left all my jobs on good terms, however they were always reasons for me to leave.
1. Ethical Reasons. Management was making me do stuff, that I felt could get me in legal trouble that was getting more difficult to stay on the right side of the line.
2. I
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Re: $1400? (Score:2)
Depends on what his career is. Some inherently pay more than others. IMO cybersecurity is the place to be right now if you want to watch your pay check grow quickly. The profession is growing faster than businesses are able to fill job positions, and if your job is at all technical then there's a pretty good chance that it will translate into one of the cybersecurity domains.
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Yeah, well here in California, it costs a minimum of $1500 to rent a room in a shared household. If you work a full-time, minimum wage job, you cannot make enough money to survive.
$12 per hour * 40 hours per week * 4 weeks per month - 16% federal and state tax = $1612.8
After you finished paying for your shared room, you would only have $112.80 left over for bills, food and savings. You simply would not be able to make ends meet and certainly not enough to ever get out of that rut. It's ridiculous and the go
Re:$1400? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then don't.
I don't see people being forced to buy these devices against their will. Even if your job requires a modern Cell Phone, you can usually get by with a Cheapish phone that is under $400
One of the issues today is that Cell Phones are no longer the same status symbol they once were. You can get a $2500 Galaxy fold and no one will really care. You can have a bulky Budget Phone that works good enough and still no one will think less of you.
Sure we will get a slew of people who will say, I didn't get X because of the status, and they don't care what others think of them. But they did, and they do. Even if they purposely buy the Cheapest product. They will want to show off showing how smart they are with their money, and how they are able to manage without these "Premium" features.
Boomers like to drive fancy cars. Growing up my parents (Early Boomers) always had a Cadillac or a Buick, and my Parents were Blue collar workers, which made enough but were considered lower middle class. But they wanted the nice car, because they wanted to show off and not seem like they were poor, even when both my parents were working two jobs to make the payments. My parents had a hard time understanding why one of my friends family (Late Boomers, near Gen-X) drove a Saturn and a Chrysler where they were working much higher paid and prestigious jobs. They also don't get why I drive a small car, where I make much more then they ever did. It is because for the Boomers the Automobile was a status Symbol. for the Gen-X it was the Cell phone. So while I drove the small car, I had the latest greatest iPhone, in which showed off to my peers that I was well off.
However now phones are no longer a big deal, so I am off the iPhone. And also I feel that I have grown up enough that I think my personal reputation is more important. However I am interested in investing my home for more green technology. To be honest just to show off a bit.
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You can get a $2500 Galaxy fold and no one will really care.
You used to be able to spend that on a nice watch and be somewhat impressive (not like an amazing watch, but a nice one). But people don't wear watches anymore. I consider these phones to be fashion accessories, but nobody is impressed.
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A big part of our evolutionary instincts is to impress people.
The caveman with paintings on his walls can show to potential mates, that he is so successful, that he can dedicate time out of his day used for food and water collection, shelter maintenance, that he can draw fancy pictures. Thus be more desirable has can show they can provide more if needed.
We are still animals with basic instincts. We do want to impress others, as a sign of dominance, and sexual desirably.
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I like getting compliments on my watch, feels good to hear. And my watch was only $550, and I've had it for about 15 years now. I spent way less on it than people spend on their phones, and it's had a far superior return.
All this is still just materialism and at some level it's pretty stupid. But it's also the game we all play.
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Really? IMHO, Buick and Oldsmobile were definitely fancier than Chevrolet and since maybe the early 1970s shared the same platforms with Cadillac. Often the only difference at the top of the lineup (Electra 225) was what convenience features you could get in a Buick vs. a Cadillac.
The only downside really was being tagged driving a poor man's Cadillac, despite it being more or less the same car with mostly the same features.
Since dumping the Olds marque, GM has definitely been positioning Buick as a mid-t
Re:$1400? (not me either) (Score:2)
Microsoft has a problem with mobile. (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft has been trying to get a good foothold in the mobile computing market for much longer than Apple, and Google. But never seemed to get too much of a foothold in the market.
Back in the late 1990's and early 2000's Windows CE devices came in and gone off the market rather quickly. While Palm and Handspring held the PDA Market.
Microsoft had Windows Mobile Phones that never seem to take off. While Blackberry was grabbing the market.
After the iPhone came out, Google came out quickly with an updated Android, and Palm created it WebOS while Microsoft seemed to take a step back until it can have its Windows 8 mobile OS. By the time Windows mobile was released, the market had Settled on Apple and Android. WebOS had died out, not because it was a bad OS, but due to idiotic marketing, and questionable in legality tactics, such as syncing with the Apple iTunes, by pretending to be an older iPod. Where Apple will update its iTunes to stop this devices on their service, where WebOS will just hack it again to give service again. Meaning the users will have spotty access to an advertised feature. But While a lot of people actually liked Windows 8 and 10 Mobile, it was just too little to late for Microsoft.
I expect the big thing, is software compatibility. Windows dominated the market mostly due to software compatibility. Nearly every software vendor had a good Windows Version (not just a quick port) for Desktop Apps. However when WIndows Mobile versions came out with ARM and other mobile processors, most software will not run on these devices. And even .NET which was suppose to allow for better cross platform development, didn't fully work as well. Leaving Microsoft to have to compete against Google and Apple off of its own merits, While both Google and Apple, had built up a solid mobile software infrastrucutre.
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No, people have a problem with Microsoft and mobile. Kind of like right now where people are comparing this to iPhones, or how msmash put the word phone in the title despite it not being a phone and MS targeting this specifically at tablet users.
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The title of the article is "Microsoft Surface Duo Phone Goes on Sale Starting at $1,399".
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You don't get to defend Slashdot editors for copying a headline when they normally do not. Msmash get's as much of the blame as Bloomberg.
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The problem with Microsoft and recent mobile versions was a chicken and egg problem in that they didn't have a lot of apps so not many consumers would buy one.
And Microsoft messed this up royally by requiring developer and application registration in order to *develop* a Windows Phone application, not just to distribute or publish one. Back when the phones first came out I was going to play around with developing an app, but got turned off by the developer registration process and didn't bother. I wonder how many others made the same decision.
The bigger problem wasn't devs (Score:2)
The result was iPhones & Androids were front & center while the Windows phone were on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'.
Re: Microsoft has a problem with mobile. (Score:2, Insightful)
The tile interface pretty well sucked. They would always flip around so you might miss something mid sentence and there's no way to go back other than wait a long time. Tapping on the tile would only open the app, not the message you tapped on. Then there was also the matter of tiles generally lacking any information about what exactly that particular tile is for. I never did figure out what that purple tile that just showed an icon of a trophy was for.
Android widgets from the very beginning have never had
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Android's interface is like my Grandma's Windows 95 desktop. It's a mess and it's ugly as all hell. I don't know how people use those things productively.
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Yeah. I've never heard anybody who spent a significant amount of time with a Windows Phone who had a problem with the Tile UI. Some would say it's the only thing they miss about not having a Windows Phone anymore.
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Not only. Microsoft's OS was utter garbage. They have gone from one unfriendly and hard to use interface to the next. Navigating on those Tile based phones was completely counter-intuitive, as was that stupid honeycomb layout in windows mobile 6.5
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Another problem was the "windows branding"...
A lot of end users falsely assumed that this meant it would be compatible with the desktop versions of windows and run the same apps. They were disappointed to find that it wasn't.
Other users associate the windows brand with crashing and malware, something they tolerate on desktop systems because they don't realise any alternatives exist, but aren't willing to tolerate on mobile when other options in the form of android and ios are well known.
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Quite where the "It's not a phone" stuff is coming from is something I'm not understanding here.
Probably the pictures. If you didn't read the article or the headline, would you think that thing is a phone? I don't like making predictions about consumer trends because I don't relate to most consumers, but I have a hard time seeing this thing taking off. It looks like it does everything a phone and a tablet do, but compromises both experiences. However, I have always been critical of SUVs for merging a car/van/truck while lacking the strengths of any of those vehicles and that's about all anyone drives
They should have owned the market (Score:2)
I was writing software or Windows Mobile/PocketPC and it was so easy, at least if you used .Net. You could develop in C# in Visual Studio. Any Windows programmer could write for it using out of the box Visual studio. But every version I saw had the Start button, and really required a stylus to work properly. Trying to squeeze a desktop paradigm into a 3" screen just didn't work.
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Back in the late 1990's and early 2000's Windows CE devices came in and gone off the market rather quickly. While Palm and Handspring held the PDA Market.
That's because Windows CE was a pile of shit. It used more resources and was way less stable than PalmOS. And in a bid to get performance out of handhelds at a low price, they spec'd out WinCE devices with no non-volatile storage for user data. So when your device crashed, as it inevitably would, you'd lose anything you hadn't sync'd, plus you'd have to reinstall everything again. I forget which version of WinCE that was, 5? 6? It applied to my iPaq.
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Back in the late 1990's and early 2000's Windows CE devices came in and gone off the market rather quickly
Did you ever try to develop for WinCE? It had to be compiled into one big thing for a specific device like an Android ROM. Except the updates and installing of new apps weren't at the point that Android could do even in the first version.
Wait for it. (Score:2)
Starting at $1399? (Score:2)
What a deal. (Score:2)
How many iPads or laptops can you buy for $1399?
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How many iPads run windows software? How many laptops are that small?
Honestly those were pretty easy to answer, what I'm more curious about is how many other products in a completely different target market with completely different use cases can you compare it too?
How many dinners can I buy? How many 3D printers? How many desktop computers, cars, condos on the beach?
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1 3D printer
1 Desktop. 2 or 3 if you have some parts floating around.
1 used car.
None, not that you want to live on a beach anyways. Its smells, tourists are always in your stuff, everything is overpriced, not conveniently placed to anything, and just begging for a hurricane to take it out.
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This doesn't run windows software. Its an android device and like all other ones with access to the play store, runs Microsoft's Office android apps.
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Re: What a deal. (Score:2)
How many iPads or laptops can you buy for $1399?
At least one of each:
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy... [apple.com]
https://www.apple.com/ipad-10.... [apple.com]
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I most definitely won't be buying one.
Re:I really like my Windows Phone (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait, I just read that it runs Android.
With the launch of this phone, I suspect we’ve now been shown the real reason Edge was migrated over to Chromium - browser sync and compatibility.
Re: I really like my Windows Phone (Score:1)
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I suspect weâ(TM)ve now been shown the real reason Edge was migrated over to Chromium - browser sync and compatibility.
I think it's simpler than that. Microsoft finally realized that they weren't capable of producing a browser worth a squashed shit without someone else doing all the hard parts for them.
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Hey Msmash, it's not a phone. (Score:3)
If Microsoft doesn't call it a phone, why do you? The only "phone" reference on Microsoft's announcement or product page is that it can be used to make phone calls. I'm not sure why Bloomberg or Msmash needs to somehow pretend this is some product it isn't entering some market it won't.
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A device that is build as a phone, with primarily phone like functions, and which can be held to your face without looking like a retard. That's how I define a phone. What however constitutes a phone is defined by the manufacturer. When they call it a tablet why would you call it a phone? In other news I can make phone calls from my desktop, does that make it a phone?
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So, then by your definition, "smart phones" are not phones, because their primary functions are certainly not as "phones".
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Oh? You don't think their size has ultimately been defined by the ability to hold in one hand up to the ear? You don't think their core functionality is based around calling, smsing, and their main feature is one (or sometimes multiple) SIM cards with their most advertised feature being primarily the speed and capabilities of their cellular modem?
I'm not sure what smartphone you use, but given how smartphones are the most popular phones on the market they by definition self-define the term phone and by exte
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Size is what you can reasonably carry, ideally in a pocket. The fold out design here is to enable that, so to me it looks like a very expensive phone.
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The majority of people do not hold phones to their ear. Phones only rarely get used for phone calls anyway, and a large fraction of those go over WhatsApp or similar. I don't think WhatsApp even supports non-speaker calls. SMS is pretty much dead except for machine use (the original application), everyone uses other texting apps.
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In other news I can make phone calls from my desktop, does that make it a phone?
Yes, but it’s a bitch holding that thing up to your ear.
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It's a valid point.
I can make calls with my computer. Does that make it a phone? I don't think so. It's still a computer, it just so happens to be capable of telephony as well.
To be called a phone I think telephony should be a devices primary intended use case not just a feature. I think this is true for all things. I wouldn't call a tablet an ereader because its primary purpose isn't reading eBooks whereas it is for an ereader.
I'm not sure if smartphones are even primarily phones anymore. Given mos
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My opinion is that while their form factor is based on an efficient way to get sound into the ear while recording from the mouth and being comfortable to hold, I'd consider it a device that was designed as a phone.
Unlike say phablets which are bloody uncomfortable hold to your ear for a long period.
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Well by your definition then I think it would qualify. Since it can fold in half and then become the same rough size as any other smart phone.
For me a device becomes that named function and not just a thing that can also do it when that function is its primary one. I think smart phones stopped being phones a long time ago. They are mobile computers. I spend a small fraction of my screen time actually using it as a phone. Therefore its not a phone, its a computer with phone capability.
Only if it runs FS2020... (Score:3)
Galaxy S10e (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds about on par with my Galaxy S10e but with a larger/split screen. Why does it cost $1400? It's going to be a failure...
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Android powered? (Score:2)
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It is not that Linux and Android are better than Windows for such things, is it?
No, it's that Linux and Android are better than Windows for all things. The only thing Windows has going for it is back compatibility with jillions of Windows applications, and every release makes the back compat more fragile. You need tons of patches or to use a VM to run a lot of XP software on Windows 10, for example, let alone even older Windows software that still runs fine on Windows 7.
How to protect this expensive thing... (Score:2)
So, the curved screens on the latest Galaxys are bad enough; how the heck does a protective case go on this hinged thing?
Hey, no Bixby button, I might get one!
LG G8X (Score:1)
The fans are excited! (Score:5, Funny)
Both of them.
i am abandoning google's adnroid (Score:2)
Another product that will fail miserably (Score:1)
Price makes it a 100% non-starter (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't spend $1,400 on...
A new desktop PC. I keep it to $800 or less with Windows installed.
A new laptop PC. I keep it to $600 or less with Windows installed.
A new smartphone. I keep it to $500 or less. (Pretty easy with the new iPhone SE)
A new bicycle. I keep that to $1,200 or less. And I use my bike as my primary transportation vehicle.
I know why it's priced like that, but I think the price alone is going to ensure that demand is low and the line won't continue.
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I think it shows just how much better Samsung, Apple and so on supply chains are. They can offer comparable hardware for fraction of the cost.
This is the nth comment about the price being out of line; crikey people, the top of the line iPhone and Galaxy Notes are both $1,449. Expensive mobile computers are not hard to find.
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I don't spend $1,400 on...
A new desktop PC. I keep it to $800 or less with Windows installed.
A new laptop PC. I keep it to $600 or less with Windows installed.
A new smartphone. I keep it to $500 or less. (Pretty easy with the new iPhone SE)
A new bicycle. I keep that to $1,200 or less. And I use my bike as my primary transportation vehicle.
I know why it's priced like that, but I think the price alone is going to ensure that demand is low and the line won't continue.
I remember when $300 got you the best graphics card, and $500 was absolutely insane. Now the top end is what, $1000 ish and $300 is the mid-low end?
A desktop PC used to be $2000+
*shrug* times change.
Low demand is probably the point (Score:2)
This is not the droid you are looking for (Score:1)
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What's actually MISSING from the smartphone market is
a device that doesn't make you look like a jerk when you put it to your ear, unless you are built like your average NBA player.
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I always dreamed of having a Phone upon which I could write code while waiting for my friends to show up at the bar an hour late... maybe one that runs desktop apps... has a keyboard or a keyboard-like input that is reasonable to type on.
They have those, they're called "laptops".
Just what the market needs (Score:2)
Project Courier finally made it to production? (Score:1)
Missing a lot for such a high price (Score:2)
Let's see here:
I know this is geared at business productivity and not the average consumer, but man, if you're going to ask someone to drop $1400 on a phone, at least make sure it has a feature set to match. I personally would have designed it so you could