Ask Paul: February 4 (Premium)

Happy Friday, such as it is, from the frozen northeastern United States. Here’s another great round of reader questions to kick off the weekend.
Surface Duo 3?
crunchyfrog asks:

I read an article stating that Microsoft may either skip a third generation of the Surface Duo or may be just waiting beyond the typical upgrade cycle to have more time designing a third generation.

Either way, I think the Surface Duo is a poorly conceived device having used one and fully expect the hatchet to come down on this product if it does not generate a higher sales volume for the third revision of the device if indeed it ever arrives.

Are you aware of anything from Microsoft on the status of Surface Duo gen 3?

No, I saw the same report, from Zac Bowden, and he’s been a reliable source of information about Surface Duo, so I’m inclined to believe it. Helping matters, Surface Duo has clearly not done well, and though Microsoft made some much-needed improvements with Duo 2, especially around the cameras, it didn’t address the primary problem, because it can’t: there just isn’t a viable, mainstream use case for dual screens. Since this is one of the rare examples of me being right about something immediately, I won’t pile it on. But this product makes zero sense.

But it may not be all bad news.

I’m currently working on the Tablet PC article for my Programming Windows series, and one of the things that is most striking about that product may be applicable to Surface Duo as well. And that is that Tablet PC required an incredible range of hardware innovations before it became viable as a product. Bill Gates was so excited about taking notes in meetings on a slate tablet that he began talking about the Tablet PC several years before Microsoft was ready to ship it. And it wasn’t until hardware makers got involved that we got the convertible form factors that still make more sense, in general, than the pure tablet design Microsoft came up with (and still uses, go figure). And then it took another few years, and a second major software release, before the software became elegant enough for general use.

Surface Duo may be following a similar trajectory, with the exception that Microsoft maybe released it too soon. My guess is that Microsoft agrees internally that folding displays are the future for this kind of hybrid device, but that they didn’t have, or have access to, viable folding displays. But what they did have, thanks to the Surface team, is a rich history in creating (and marketing) unique hinge designs. And so they went to market with what they had. We can debate all kinds of things with regards to this product and the strategy, but the central point remains: Surface Duo just doesn’t make sense as a product.

Maybe it will in a few years. Maybe there’s an interim step where a dual-screen design with very thin bezels sort of makes sense. I suspect a folding display is the only thing that makes any sense. But we...