- An unreleased prototype of Microsoft’s dual-screen foldable phone, Surface Duo, was recently found listed online for sale.
- While Surface Duo ran on Android, the leaked prototype runs an unreleased version of the Windows Phone interface.
- Microsoft envisoned this as an intermediate between a regular phone and a Windows PC, but never realized due to the decline in Windows Phone’s popularity.
Microsoft persistently dabbled with mobile phones for almost the entirety of the 2010s — and for a couple of years after that, too. While its Windows Phone operating system garnered both appreciation and criticism, a project that was critiqued mainly was its category of folding devices, known as the Surface Duo.
The Surface Duo was a folding phone, but unlike the Galaxy Z Fold devices, it came with two separate screens for running multiple applications side-by-side. The first generation (yes, there were more than one!) Surface Duo felt like a prototype and offered a jarring software experience full of bugs. The second generation came with slight upgrades, but felt outmoded by true foldables that were starting to take over the market. A third generation aimed to solve that, but it was cancelled before it could take form.