Surface Duo internals show Microsoft’s fanatical commitment to thinness

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  Behold the guts of the Microsoft Surface Duo. There is an incredible amount of motherboard in here. [credit: Cnet ]

Microsoft is certainly marching to the beat of its own drum with the Surface Duo. In a world of cookie-cutter slab smartphones and cutting edge foldable display devices, Microsoft is slapping two transitional smartphone screens next to each other and pushing dual-app usage as the way to use its first-ever self-branded Android device.

Something lost in the initial news shuffle is that the Surface Duo is actually one of the thinnest smartphones ever made. The mid-2000's misguided obsession with thinness resulted in a few gimmicky devices labeled the "world's thinnest smartphone." The high point (low point?) of the thinness war was the Vivo X5Max, which had an astounding 4.75mm thickness (and would you believe it still had a headphone jack?). Last week, Microsoft published the Surface Duo specs, and the company just casually listed "4.8mm" as the thickness of the device when open. When you plug the Surface Duo in to charge it, the USB-C plug will be thicker than the body of the device.

CNET recently got a look at the internals of the Surface Duo via a non-functional, transparent prototype, and the photos and video shows just how far Microsoft went in its fanatical dedication to thinness. The Surface Duo has what looks to be a single-sided motherboard. All the chips are on one side of the board, and the presumably smooth back looks to be pressed up hard against the back of the device.

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from Tech – Ars Technica https://ift.tt/3h9PEdo