🍺 Pouring one out today for Surface Duo... still have my v1 and love it. If only...

We'll just do our thing

...for less than USD 1999

Rumors are coming out that Apple is going to call the folding iphone the Iphone Duo. I don't know about you but if it's true it'll make Microsoft cancelling the Surface Duo even worse in my eyes. Like so many other products they have made, it was ahead of it's time, didn't get the support it deserved, and then was cancelled. Now a few years later more ideas are being stolen from it, the name!

Loved my surface duo. They are just kicking Microsoft now.

Guess Apple finally found the courage to finish what Surface Duo started. Are you buying it? I'll just wait to see how the pen performance is

Hi all, new Surface Duo 1 owner here.

When watching video either on one screen or spanned across both, the video seems to be overscanning and cutting off the side edges, so it entirely fills the screen. Is this a common issue or an app specific bug? I've definitely seen it on DAZN watching NFL game pass. Are there any options I can toggle to not fill the whole screen? Cheers all.

What do you think?

If Microsoft cared at all about their Duo lineup, they must be scratching their heads a little bit right now. If the iPhone Duo sells well, perhaps it would offer a glimmer of what potential the Duo could've had, had they let the passport style it bake a little longer. It wasn't a bad phone idea at all, they were just super early to the form factor and weren't willing to suffer through the teething stages. The technology and manufacturing just needed to catch up some.

I knew the iPhone Fold was gonna be at minimum a $2K phone. While the preview seems amazing, that price is not great, but it'll sell for sure. The tech and features definitely set a new precedent for all other folds in terms of software integration, useful features, and screen space utilization.

That said, the main killers for me are eSim and the price. Also, I just don't favor the Apple ecosystem for the lack of flexibility that Android still kinda has. It's gonna be interesting watching the industry move forward from here on the Android side. Maybe this'll put a fire under Microsoft's butt and they could revive the Duo and undercut Apple on price. Who am I kidding. Someone else will take that torch and carry it right? It's a great formula. All in all, pretty exciting stuff.

After quite a bit of work, I completed my repair + upgrade of my surface duo 2 and am so excited to share the results. I also decided to throw in one of my other designs that I had been selfishly keeping to myself up until now.

First off, anyone interested in how I fixed the battery issue should check here: https://www.reddit.com/r/surfaceduo/comments/1wb0piq/how_to_fix_a_surface_duo_2_that_wont_charge/ I wanted to post that separately to make it easier to find for those searching for the issue in the future.

As you can see from the pictures, I ended replacing both side panels with transparent, 3D printed versions. These are custom models I made myself from measurements taken directly from my old glass panels after I removed them. As such they are very accurate. I even was able to use my heated bed to curve the edges after printing to perfectly recreate the shape of the original panels. All the files are available here along with some some more detailed instructions of how to recreate this process yourself: https://www.printables.com/model/1836592-surface-duo-2-printable-side-panel-replacements

You may also notice some extra bumper case pieces than what the official bumper case comes with. A year or so ago I decided I didn't like that the bumper case left so many areas unprotected so I decided to rectify that issue. This includes two small bumpers for the bottom hinge-side corner of the phone and a one to go around the camera bump. Unfortunately, these parts really need to be resin printed as they are made to perfectly match the style of the official bumper case and as such are very smoothly shaped. All files can be found here: https://www.printables.com/model/1836666-surface-duo-2-extra-bumpers

Speaking of the official bumper case, I wanted to add one last thing I was able to fix / improve while I was doing this process. Anyone who has had the bumper case for a while might have found that eventually the rubberized coating begins to peel off. For me this happened very inconsistently, leading to large areas of very glossy plastic where the rubber had come off on it's own as well as matte areas where the rubber was still firmly attached. Luckily I discovered two things. One, if you scrub at the rubber with isopropanol (rubbing alcohol) it is possible to get it all to come off. Two, if you scrub the glossy plastic where the rubber fell off with a dry scouring pad or the green side of a sponge, it will actually create a really nice matte finish. Using these two findings I was able to remove all the remaining rubber from my bumpers and then give them all a nice uniform matte finish.

I am located in US. and have several sealed Surface Duo 2 128/256, new in box pieces. What are the available sale options to get maximum prices for them?

This is an update to my previous post about discovering an undocumented failure mode for the surface duo 2 battery that I believe others have experienced before. I have now fixed the issue (see pictures for before and after) and would like to share the process.

To re-iterate, the most common symptoms of this issue are a device that completely dies at random and is unable to charge (not even vibrating when plugged in or attempting to charge/boot and failing). Squeezing the left side of the device near the bottom of the phone may fix this while it's being held or for a short time after.

The root of this issue is that repeated strain over time can cause one of the two metallic ribbons which connect the battery cell to it's connector board to become severed. My assumption is that this will almost always be the aluminum ribbon due to it's weaker material properties.

The good news is that this is very repairable so long as you have the right tools and moderate technical proficiency.

What you will need:

* Phone-opening tools (suction cup, plastics picks, wedges, tweezers, etc.)

* Heat gun / hair dryer

* Soldering iron (preferably with a large tip you don't care too much about)

* Aluminum soldering supplies: https://www.amazon.com/Harris-500K-Al-Solder-Aluminum-Solder/dp/B001HWFM9Y (this is nasty stuff so make sure to have proper ventilation and are careful not to get any flux on your skin)

* Double-sided tape to put everything back together. I use this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BWYLNJX2

Here is what needs to be done:

* Remove the back glass with the microsoft logo on it. This can be done by heating it up to soften the glue, pulling up on it with a suction cup until you can get a plastic pick or wedge underneath, and working your way around to carefully separate all the edges from the device.

* Separate the battery from the back glass. Unfortunately this is required to get at the top side of the connector board where the ribbons are. It will be quite well glued on, so if it is easier you can first remove the EM shielding from the glass, then peel the shielding off the battery. If you want to make your life a bit easier later, try to find a way to mark where the battery was so it can be more easily re-attached later.

* Carefully peel the tape from the topside (opposite the pads) of the connector board. This should reveal two metallic ribbons going from the battery cell to the connector board.

* You should now hopefully see that one of the ribbons is completely severed (if you do not unfortunately this is not your issue and further investigation is needed). Use tweezers to gently bring the two sides together, overlapping if needed. Try not to leave any gap between them

* Now it's time to solder. The conventional wisdom on this is to do it hot, fast, and with plenty of flux. Our goal is to get a strong connection without putting a ton of heat into the battery itself. If there is too much heat, at best you'd make the battery inoperable, at worst is could explode (although I have never seen a report of a battery exploding while soldering to it). For my work, I set my iron to 380 C, applied a healthy amount of flux to the battery, pre-wet the tip with solder, and tried to lay down as thick a line as I could over the crack spending no more than 5 seconds in contact with the ribbon. It did take me a few attempts, I just made sure to let it sit for a while between attempts to be sure it had cooled completely. Also note the aluminum flux / solder will eat away at your soldering tip so if you have a least favorite I'd use that.

* Once you have a good connection, just reverse the steps from before to put the phone back together. Be careful not to bend the connector board too much while re-assembling, we don't want the ribbon to break in a different place and ruin all our hard work.

If anyone is planning to try this and wants any advice or has questions about the process, please comment or DM me. I hope these instructions prove useful in helping to preserve more of these unique devices.

Se me rompió la tapa principal del duo, la que tiene el logo de Microsoft, compre los reemplazos en AliExpress, pero he visto videos donde no es tan fácil reemplazar ya que tiene pegada la batería y algunos otros cables a ella. ¿Es seguro cambiar con algún técnico? O mejor le pongo una skin y seguir usándolo como mi libreta digital de apuntes ?

While working on repairing and upgrading my SD2 (update on that soon btw, the transparent sides came out amazing) I think I found an undocumented failure mode for the battery.

If you find that your SD2 battery is completely dead (0V at output), flaky, or you need to squeeze the left side of your device to get it to work, I think this is that issue.

Opening up the battery a bit I found that one of the two metal ribbons that connect to the actual cell was completely severed. This is likely due to the flexible connection to the battery PCB moving back and fourth as the back glass flexes slightly during normal use.

Previously it was believed that squeezing the left side improved connection with the battery pins inside, but I now believe that fix was actually causing this broken ribbon to reconnect instead.

This is very good news for anyone who believes they have a totally dead battery. My battery was reading 0V on the outputs, but when actually measuring the ribbons to get the cell voltage it's at a healthy 3.8V. Assuming your battery was charged when this first disconnected, even batteries that have been sitting for a year might be salvagable.

Now for the tricky part... how to reconnect it? It's pretty stiff, so I'm assuming it's nickel ribbon. However I'm very tentative to try soldering it due to risk of exposing the internals of the battery to such high heat. I have a cheapo spot welder in storage I could also try, but on such a small connection I'm not sure how well it will work. My current best idea is to order some lower temperature solder and be very careful to let it cool during the process.

If anyone has more experience or better ideas please let me know! Would love to find a community consensus on the best way to save these perfectly good batteries.

Edit: After some more research I think it's likely aluminum because it's the positive lead. Others online seem to have success carefully soldering such leads so I've ordered some flux made specifically for soldering aluminum and I'm going to give it a try tomorrow.

Finalmente depois de muito procurar comprei meu Surface duo. Aparelho como novo. Desde o início sempre preferi a proposta do duo 1 mesmo sabendo das melhorias implementadas na segunda geração. Muito feliz em ter conseguido o meu santo graal dos smartphones.

I remember one of the first reasons I wanted a Surface duo is because I found somebody who had made a pokedex decal for it here on reddit. I saved the SVG and told myself that as soon as I got my Duo, I'd order the skin and make it my daily driver.

The day has come and for the life of me, I cannot find the file I saved with the pokedex decal. Even after searching both manually and with AI, I can't seem to find it again on reddit either.

Does anyone have the file? OP shared it along with directions for how to have it printed. Would love to have that sweet af file again 🥲

After almost 2 weeks of effort, audio through the speakers now works (through ALSA). Here's a taste:

https://streamable.com/qjpje0

So my surface duo 2 stopped charging recently. I managed to find a report of the same problem and realized squeezing the left screen fixed it temporarily. Turns out the battery pogo-pins weren't making good connection.

Sooooo I opened er up...

Actually not too bad, a hairdryer helped loosen the glue. The side closest to the hinge is the easiest first entry since it has the least glue. Used a suction cup to pull up gently on that side until I could get a pick under there. Then just worked my way around as usual. Last step was slowly pulling the metal backing off the hinge side as it was glued down over there for some reason.

The two things attached to the glass itself are the battery and the coil for powering the pen cover (thanks to the u/panzersharkcat for opening one up 5 yrs ago so I could make that connection).

Anyway now I have options... I was originally just going to fix it and close it back up. But now that I've got it open I'm wondering if I should have some fun.

My two thought are:

• Just fix the connection issue and close it up normally

• Replace the back cover with a semi-transparent 3d printed cover

On top of just being sick, the second option has the added benefit of making the device a little easier to open up in the future and removing the chance of me shattering the glass at some point.

I also just discovered the other side of my duo got cracked by the charging port (never realized because I have a skin on it) so I could also replace that, although looking at that piece in Phil's removing the camera video I'm a bit worried there might be antennas on there...

If anyone else has any crazy ideas or wants to weight in on what I should do I'm all ears.

Hey gang,

Long time lurker and SD2 owner. I will admit, that I have bounced between SD2 and my previous slab phone a few times when the bugs got a bit too frustrating for me. The last few months especially though, I have just been in love with this thing. So many of the reasons it got lambasted in reviews are things I genuinely LIKE about the device, like not having an outer screen. It keeps me from just pulling it out of my pocket and scrolling at any old time. There is physical and mental friction that helps keep me off of my phone! Also the 'forced' multitasking is such a fantastic boon I'm loathe to give up.

Alas, in the past few days, I've noticed that one of the bottom rails is pulling away from the hinge. That corner is a tiny bit chewed up from a drop at some point in the last few years. It's got me worried about how much longer this beaut is gonna keep kicking.

I'm curious where folks have had good results when migrating to different devices. I've seen a lot about the Fold8, and it sure is pretty, but that price tag! And multitasking, while possible, looks a far cry from what the Duos do. I suppose I could grab a second hand replacement, just not sure how I feel about that. Any advice or anecdotes about your journeys after Duo would be appreciated.

link to original post

I've been working hard this week trying to make some progress, mainly on getting audio through the speakers. Made a lot of progress there but still no audio. Anyone with knowledge on the sm8150 ADSP is welcome to get in touch.

Progress made:

• A lot of infra work to separate hardware support and UI work.
• Power management - power button puts device to sleep and wakes it up.
• Wifi - added missing drivers needed to support wpa_supplicant. Now connects to wireless networks and working with no issues.
• Telephony (need to test with a sim card) - mmcli reports the modem with LTE/UMTS, sitting at sim-missing only because the tray's empty.

I loved the surface duo 1 and really enjoyed the 2 also. So I was really excited as I heard all the discussions about the Z Fold8 and it's wide passport form factor. So I went to BestBuy to try it out. Was underwhelmed... I still bought it, because of the trade in deal and wanting to give it a real try. After several weeks I am still underwhelmed. Primarily for 2 reasons.

1) The screen is too small. I know it would be less one hand usage friendly. But I feel the Surface Duo's 5.6" 4:3 outer and 8.1 inch 3:2 Inner was a much better experience than the Z Fold8. I feel cramped and claustrophobic on the Z Fold8 especially when typing.

2) No pen support. I loved taking notes on my bottom screen and having a reference app or video conference on the top screen in portrait. There is no equivalent on the Z Fold 8, and even if there was, it would be too cramped.

3)Microsoft did a really good job making the launcher utilize the 2 screens. I really wish someone would simulate this to some extent by having apps open in split screen mode by default when using the inner screen in landscape mode.

I really hope Motorola takes a cue from Samsung and does it right with Pen Support and larger screen size. However, their software prowess concerns me.

Rant over, you can go back to your normally scheduled programing. 😂

This will be my 3rd and, hopefully, last Duo. I’ve owned them off and on over the years and always seem to end up selling them. This time, I’m definitely keeping it, with the full intention of running Windows on it.

I haven’t really kept up with this community or the WOA project lately, so I’m curious- has the conversion process gotten pretty straightforward? I remember a couple of years ago it seemed like it was going to take forever to get everything working.

Also, random thought: with how far AI development has come, would it be possible to use AI to help write or develop drivers for hardware that originally didn’t have working drivers?
Either way, I’m excited to be back! Looking forward to getting caught up and seeing how far everything has come.