This is the Samsung galaxy z fold 2 5g let's just call it the full two and this is the Microsoft surface duo both of these transform into a tablet but well one of them is more tablet than the others so we're going to talk about that now okay so the perhaps the most important thing but maybe not because if you're considering either of these you're probably not the most a price-sensitive person in the world.
There is price the galaxy z fold to 5g is 2 000 which is monumental and mind-boggling and you know that's something to be talked about in its full review isn't it and the surface duo is 13.99 so 1400 uh but if you want the 256 gigs of storage that you get in the z fold then you're looking at 14.99 so yeah fifteen hundred dollars so it's expensive but anyway we're talking five-six hundred dollars cheaper so some of the things that are missing from the duo we can forgive because well it's a lot less expensive also for those who are doing those trade-in deals Microsoft’s a little bit more generous with the amount of money they're giving, for example, say you have a galaxy note 10 plus from last year and for you pen centric people you might actually be thinking about going from a note to a duo right well Microsoft will give you 650 for that where Samsung will only give you 500 dollars.
I think they have less margin on the Samsung that's why so there you go that if your price-sensitive at all and these are a stretch for you so obviously the duo is the more attainable and the less expensive one then there's durability so you know um Samsung describes the foals and the z-flips as tough yet tender so what they mean is it's pretty darn durable you've seen people abusing them and all that sort of thing and they survive you've seen a few that actually did crack in the flexible crease area but for the most part, I’ve owned the fold since it came out of on the z-flip since it first came out and they're fine they look pretty pristine I treat them nicely but not that carefully I put them in my pocket I even put the z flip in my pocket without folding it first but the catch here is no poking at the screen people you know keep your fingernails short and you can't use a stylus so that's where the duo comes in its gorilla glass 5 on all surfaces and you can use the surface pen so if the pen is important to you well the surface is the obvious choice but beyond that, there's also the durability of it you can poke at it doesn't matter how long or short your fingernails are all that sort of thing, you're playing games and you bump up on the screen with your thumbs or something like that.
It's your typical glass slab phone it's going to survive that neither of these is ip68 water-resistant I thought kind of thought maybe the surface duo would be but I guess they couldn't seal the hinges I don't know anyway but obviously it's still a typical glass slab foam which means I wipe it down with a very damp cloth to clean off the germs and all that sort of thing whereas I'm much more careful about cleaning the fold because it's not so sealed so there's the obvious wind for the surface duo and it has it's going to have a challenging time in a smackdown so it needs its wins the next thing would be how do you want to use this and as tony ABC said to me on twitter hey tony if you're watching this you know it's the difference between at work for example he said he has dual monitors set upright and he feels very productive that way and at home he has one single big screen monitor so for those who have the luxury of having tried both of those setups you know who you are and which you prefer now that gets down to use case too so say tony maybe like his dual screen monitors at work because he is in the business of being productive at work isn't he can have his email going in one window and his slack or his word document or whatever it is he does for a living on the other screen right but when you get home maybe you're not the kind of person to multitask a lot maybe you just want to kick back and play games on your big monitor and maybe you just want to watch videos that's what the galaxy z fold is about it's pretty much about mono tasking on a big screen.
Whereas the surface duo and do read my review of it I know it's long but you'll see a whole lot of great use cases about why I discovered what a great device it could be too but the fact that I can even if I’m using a single program for those that support spanning you know I’m using outlook and I’ve got the list of emails on one side I’ve got the message pane over here or I’ve you've got the example I use of having a baby monitor running in one screen and whatever else you wanted to do on the other screen and game walkthroughs on YouTube and one and discord in the other there's a lot of things where you feel productive and that comes from the aspect ratios and the sizes of these phones I mean look at them it's very obvious right the Samsung is a very tall skinny candy bar so if you want to multitask on that and there is software-based multitasking that's not compatible with all apps and all that sort of thing you're still stuck with two apps in very narrow windows I mean you can rotate the device and it gets a little bit better it's not ideal the software is something that Samsung has worked on for years and it's okay but it's not something.
I think a lot of people use just because it's not that great whereas you get the wider screen that four by three aspect ratio times two on the duo and you feel really comfy and you kind of when you go back to a regular phone because they're all you know that tall skinny aspect ratio not as much as the fold perhaps when it's closed but and you feel like a man I’m crammed in why is everything so narrow so it's really just great for immersing yourself in two apps very easily but the drawback is it's also wider to hold so it's something like I say you know yes I have big enough hands to do this until the cows come home but I think a lot of people will be more comfortable holding like this and even if you want to use it in phone mode with both screens out glass on either side what does it matter this is the way to hold it whereas this one here eminently easy to hold it's narrower than the average phone but it's a lot thicker too well because it's kind of still two phones glued together right so it's a handhold but I think a lot of people would find this easier it is a lot heavier and it's a density of design so this is significantly heavier than the duo as well so it's probably not as pleasant a carry but yeah they're both pretty tall they're both going to stick out of your pockets so there's that when I’m talking about the thickness or the thinness of them that's what makes the duo so amazing and easy to hold and use and feel very balanced.
The fact that you've got the symmetrical design and you've got something that is 4.8 millimetres thick so it's folded not much thicker than your average normal phone already and it weighs a bit less so that actually well adds to the ergonomics in a good way for the duo but now you know the difference there about which one you're going to deal with in what way I think the most important thing is going to be whether you embrace that new paradigm that Microsoft introduced because we've only been doing one thing on our phone at a time because that we had no choices and if you try it and I do say if you can give it a try if you discover that you like doing more than one thing at a time on your phone a lot I would go a duo if you're just all about YouTube videos as big as you can get them and web pages with more space then great like I said my duo video in a way the galaxy z fold answers a problem that we had we all like our screens to be as big as possible but now we're making phones as big as we possibly can so we found a way to do that for you to give you a tablet that does fit in your pocket at a certain price for now and the duo just introduces something totally new it's the thing you didn't know you needed.
So if you're captivated by that idea, by all means, explore the duo when it comes to a camera you know the story you've seen the duo beaten up on and even I said it's one step above a potato camera it's okay in daylight a great light it's terrible in just about everything else it's not a very good camera can they improve that with software yeah I think that they could is there a gcam port that does any better right now no not yet maybe there will be but photography is so important to a lot of people in their phones that I think that that's gonna really pull people back whereas with this you've got triple cameras you've got your main your telephone or your ultra-wide and you've got something that's around the same quality as a galaxy s20 plus which is to say darn good it might not be s20 ultra level but it's also a less fussy camera in terms of depth and feel but this is a great camera phone and speaking of that you have more cameras because you have one on the front so Samsung’s design means they have to make it a bit more expensive and a bit thicker because you don't just have that big capacious inner display you have a display on the outside because this one does in 360.
The most that this does is open flat right so with a Microsoft device like any yoga-ing laptop yes it opens flat yes it does this too so there you go so if you need your screen on the outside instead of the expense and the added thickness you just fold it in phone mode and then you've got a screen on the outside you can switch between whichever of the two you want if it actually makes a difference to you so that's actually kind of neat and interesting to the rest of the specs you know the best I can say for the duo is it reminds me of the original iPhone which had no app store and back then feature phones had app stores that carriers often even you didn't have 3g yet and but we forgave it all those things because it opened up so many nifty usability paradigms and some things that were just delightful like on duo the way you can flick windows from one screen to the other back and forth and drag and hold and make them go full screen and switch from the front to the back pretty seamlessly still some bugs I’m not saying they got it perfect yet but it's ambitious and it's delightful to use but is that worth giving up on specs well this is why maybe a white for a gen 2 or a gen 3.
While Samsung has been making galaxy phones for more than a decade they have the formula down and while the original fold it was sort of like the duo in terms of compromises small outer screen ugly duckling you know those things they have it so down now it's hard to complain about anything other than the fact that it doesn't support a pen and the screen is more delicate than a normal phone so with the duo, we have so many concessions in specs snapdragon last year processor to be honest with most people I don't think that's going to make a difference in your life they're both very fast on the galaxy we have the 865 with 5g built in the thing that does bother me though you get 12 gigs of ram on the Samsung even though you probably won't be multitasking a lot right and that's where you really want more ram and the duo which is all about multitasking only has six gigs of ram so that means rebooting it more often really to clean up memory or micromanaging your app's storage they're both the same no micro sd card slot you can get up to 256 gigs of storage on them when it comes to things like wireless charging Samsung has it when it comes to fast wired charging the duo is 18 watt versus 25 watts on the galaxy.
I don't think that's gonna make much of a difference to you the speed of those two charges right um but the battery life on this well you know the duo does actually pretty well it has a smaller battery but not tiny for what it is but it has a smaller battery I’ve been getting around six hours of screen on time does depend on whether using one screen or both screens at the same time right with the fold I’ve been getting closer to six and a half to seven hours so a bit better enough to make your decision based on that no not so much so in the end besides price being a factor and both of these are so expensive that well what can I say there it's going to come down to whether you want a pen I think note people might migrate to the duo more than they would to the z-fold for example and the fact that the duo is a visionary product for people who see the use for that kind of multitasking.
Once you try it you might really like it but it's very much a first-gen product with specs that are lagging behind and they have some bugs to iron out but Microsoft seems that they're going to have a very aggressive release schedule to address things and maybe even add a few features like tap to wake I hope that they do whereas the galaxy is such a mature product. I don't know how they went from the first fold to the second fold that fast I mean other than the price and the delicacy of the screen that thing is perfect it would be nice it was thinner and it was lighter I suppose in that way that's how it could still evolve obviously I will never get as skinny as the duo. I don't know about that but hopefully, these things help you there's the two most amazing phones so far of 2020 and probably going into 2021.
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