Microsoft Surface Duo teardown reveals ‘refreshingly simple hinge design’
iFixit has pulled apart a Microsoft Surface Duo, giving us a look at what’s inside the dual-screen device. One of the team’s most notable findings is that the Duo has a “refreshingly simple hinge design” compared to the ones found in foldable devices on the market today. iFixit says it’s like a “miniature 360-degree laptop hinge.”
To be fair, the Duo has two screens whereas devices like the Galaxy Fold and the new Motorola Razr have displays that can actually fold and probably needed a more sophisticated hinge design. Samsung even had to delay the original Fold’s launch to figure out how to make the device more durable and to keep dust out of the mechanism.
The iFixit team has also noted that one of the two batteries is twice the size of the other, but that Microsoft has made them difficult to replace by using lots of glue and screws. Those batteries aren’t the only components that would be hard to replace, though: the team found that the only parts that wouldn’t be a pain to remove are the displays and the back glass covers.
You can check out iFixit’s full teardown if you need help deciding whether to buy the $1,400 device. As we mentioned in our review, it’s the best dual-screen hardware out there, but it’s still plagued by buggy software. iFixit has also highlighted the issue, revealing that it had to deal with crashes and flickering screens when it tried to load web pages on the device.
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