Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - The Surface Duo w/ Microsoft CPO Panos Panay & LG's Unique New Swivel Phone

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

Microsoft Chief Product Officer, Panos Panay, joins us to give a behind the scenes look into the development of the Microsoft Surface Duo, all the way back to literal brain scans. We also discuss Andrew's favorite new gaming mouse, as well as LG's crazy new swiveling dual-screen phone, the LG Wing. Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by KamrenB: https://spoti.fi/2WRJOFh Logitech G Pro Lightspeed: https://amzn.to/33HUito Andrew's Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/andrewmanganelli Surface Duo Review: https://bit.ly/2E9HV0v Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that goal to beat your personal best? Keep chasing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. hey what's going on everybody welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast we're your hosts i'm marquez brownlee and i'm andrew manganelli and it is tech timber it is it is

tech timber for sure uh so our schedule is pretty much out of control. We've got a ton of videos that we're working on. There's a bunch of videos that have already gone up on the channel. There's a bunch of tech in the studio. It's just everything's happening. It's like this every year before the holiday season. But we wanted to do a little bit of an adjustment to our little recap. Yeah. We usually do like a big old content recap of every video on the channel, go back through everything. I think we're gonna shorten that up a bit. We've loved the feedback you guys gave us on Twitter

where we don't wanna waste your time if you've seen the videos already. Yeah, exactly. We just had a couple of people saying like, oh, I watch all the videos and then listen to the podcast and it winds up being just a lot of the same stuff already, which it's kind of hard for us because we've talked about how this was a way

we could expand some conversation as well from stuff from the videos that we didn't get to cover but at the same time like yes sometimes we were just recapping stuff and not adding anything new yes so we don't want to we don't want to double down on anything if there is more conversation to be had about stuff we'll have it and that'll be the fun part. But our recaps will be pretty short, just like this. Ready? Yeah. Okay. Since the last time we talked, Galaxy Z Fold 2 unboxing from Arizona and the review of the full phone. We had the Motorola Razr unboxing and first impressions, the second one. So we have a new Razr. We had a Surface Duo review, breaking down everything, finally turning the thing on and talking software, talking tech with Mark Zuckerberg, mainly diving into VR and AR and the future of holograms in your living room and

lastly apple watch series 6 first impressions and unboxing along with a little bit of apple watch se there we go yeah and i think like we're gonna keep doing just that quick recap just in case you know maybe you had a busy week and you're commuting when you're listening to this and you're like oh i missed i missed this i really wanted to hear about the apple watcher i really wanted to see the surface do a review so now if you missed on the channel you can go back watch everything on the channel and of course if we have another fun story like the fold unboxing in arizona like there will be month there we will recap stuff like that um that honestly also talking about feedback has been like some of the best feedback we've ever gotten.

So we appreciate everyone out there letting us know what you think. I think that was a really fun episode. All about the tweets. Yeah, we love reading that stuff and it made us happy. That was a fun episode. Yeah, so now we have a little more room to do,

I wanna do the stuff we liked section. We've always talked like either content you liked or maybe you got some piece of tech you really liked what do we have this week that you want to talk about yeah i have a product i liked this week i'm about products i like products yeah and i think like i feel like some people see me as the person who talks about gaming stuff on the channel so uh go on here's some more gaming things i i've been super super uh like stubborn to ever go to a wireless mouse for gaming because i've always just heard bad things about it and when i tried them years ago there was definitely like a latency issue it seems sacrilegious every time i hear about wires and wireless in the gaming world

everyone seems to just default, do it wired. No one wants anything wireless in gaming. And to me, that was always backwards because wouldn't you want wireless tech to get so good that you don't need a wire? But hey. I guess it runs that thing though. You want it to be so good that it doesn't need a wire.

I don't think there was anyone who was like, I prefer a cable, but it's not worth five or six millisecond latency, stuff like that. I guess that's just what it sounded like to me, is everyone is so anti-wireless in gaming. I think it's just like, I want the competitive advantage that I can't handle that little minute thing.

I mean, I think when I use the MX Master at work, I think to myself, if I use this for gaming, I would be miserable. Can you feel the lag in the MX Master? Yeah. Performance MX? Mm-hmm. Really?

Yeah. Okay. I think now I want you to try. Yeah, because I'm also on the Apple display. It's a 60 hertz display. It's a normal wireless mouse. Yeah, that might be a little bit of it as well. You're very used to a high refresh rate monitor with a wired mouse.

I'm curious if the difference you're noticing is the high refresh rate monitor with a wired mouse i'm curious if the distance the difference you're noticing is the high refresh rate monitor and it might be the wired to wireless it might be it's also like a bit of just like the feel for a game and the controls so when you like uh use something like if i know if i were using it with mx master i would 100 feel the difference even if it wasn't a super competitive game i just know um even like when we used to do um rocket league on the playstation when i started playing rocket league with a wired controller on my computer at home it was faster it was miles like you when you get so used to rocket league you're like you have to time all the shots and stuff like that and i was just

completely over under whiffing when i came back to ps4 interesting okay so you found something yeah i haven't even talked about the product yet um i tweeted that i was thinking of finally doing it because uh i've been playing valorant a ton which has changed the way i use my mouse i use it at a way lower sensitivity which means if you need to make a big move you need to move your hand way further um and no matter how i set up the mouse with the bungee i would either at some point have too much slack and you would feel it like dragging which is annoying or you'd have not enough slack and if you move too far to one side you'd pull the the whole mouse bungee with you and everything um yes so i i asked twitter all right everyone thinking of finally diving into a wireless mouse,

what should I go for? And it was overwhelmingly telling me to use the Logitech G Pro Lightspeed, which I've heard a million things about. I think almost every pro and every streamer probably uses it in all these competitive games. And it's just really hard to justify spending $130 on a mouse,

especially when it's not even, I only use my computer at home really for gaming. So it's just purely a gaming mouse. Now, you know what? I'll push back on that. I think the, I want to spend the most on the best quality of the point of interaction that you can't avoid. So for me on a computer, it has to have a great screen. Don't cheap out on the screen. It's the only thing I'm looking at. The case can be ugly. The cables can be ugly, but I'm looking at the screen. For a phone, it's like the same thing.

I think if you're a gamer, you have to have a good mouse. Like you got to spend money on the mouse, right? You could think of it also in terms of sports. We play Ultimate Frisbee. I'm never going to cheap out on a pair of cleats because I know that's one thing that I want to feel sports like uh we play ultimate frisbee like i'm never gonna cheap out on a pair of cleats because i know that's like one thing that i want to feel the most like part of me when i'm playing because if i'm paying attention to oh my cleats don't fit or the spikes are like the patterns messed up or

then everything i'm blowing through it yeah everything else feels off so i finally just spent 130 bucks, brought it home. I even set up a stream for this to test it out because I just wanted to. It's always weird. You change to anything you're used to and things are going to be way different. And I thought it was going to take a while to get used to,

plugged it in, set my DPI right, got all my sensitivity down pat to how I wanted it to kind of make up for the feeling difference. And I am in love with it. Whoa. Just like I, I'm so sad. It took me this long.

It's one of those. I loved my, I had a glorious model O before and it's a great mouse. Looks good. Feels great. Even they do do something with the wire to make it be less annoying, but it just got to the point where it was too annoying. And i will i just don't want to use anything else i'm just i'm gushing over this mouse and it's like it feels so weird to be that adamant about a product but man logitech just

knows what they're doing i've used their mice in the past i used the g303 which they discontinued and i was really bummed about. But I get why. I don't get why you'd ever go back to that if you use this. If I talk about Logitech for more than about a minute, it all comes down to how good they are at mice. They do a lot of other stuff. They do headphones. They do keyboards.

They do accessories. But their mice have been top of the game in a couple departments. Almost every YouTuber, video editor, reviewer I know uses a Performance MX. And nobody told us to, nobody like independently was like, have you recommended it? It's like we all just found this mouse on our own and we all love this mouse.

And that's a Logitech thing. I had issues with it. I tried other mice. I went back to it when I fixed the issues and there's just nothing close. It's one of those things where you like they're the big company logitech's the company you think of when you think of mice especially gaming mice they're like really high up there for yeah for companies that do just gaming peripherals in general but you want these smaller companies to

succeed and you use them and you're like this is is great. And then you go back to a company that's been doing research and development on this for like 20 years. And you're like, I get, I see the difference. Yeah. That's, that's it. Um, glorious is making a wireless mouse coming up, but I'm sorry. I don't think I'm going to, I'm just so sold on this mouse right now. Um, all right. Yeah. So that's my. There it is. That's me gushing over.

We'll have a link in the description below. Check it out if you want it. Do you have any content or any products? Oh, I do. You've been a fan of? Oh, yeah. Oh, I do. What is it?

Shout out to all the LG fanboys out there. Okay. I am so curious about this LG wing. Oh, yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. How did I not write this in our notes at all for this? I just need to break down what happened this week. So LG, they've had their own on and off in the past with smartphones and flagships and other things like that.

They tried modular. They've tried a lot of things, right? But one thing they never really do is just follow directly in the footsteps of what the big guys are doing no they don't we saw folding screens we saw folding displays we saw foldable this foldable that lg said nah dual screen we'll have a case with a screen on it and then you can take it on and off and like to be fair i i didn't really give it that much light a day because it wasn't that much high tech super interesting stuff there but i did use it and it was pretty interesting. Not the best experience, but that's LG. They don't follow in the footsteps of others.

So in their quest of the alternate form factor, they this week announced LG Wing. And this is a podcast, so I have to describe this thing now. Yeah, I think we did talk about it a little tiny. There was an original leak photo months ago that we mentioned. Right. But now getting to see how they're selling it. They did a live stream and there's a couple videos out there.

They had Lou from Unbox Therapy. They had Austin Evans. So those guys have the phone and they were part of the broadcast and everything. So they got one. But I haven't seen anyone anywhere else. But, okay, here's the phone. Imagine a regular smartphone, 6.8 inch pretty tall i think a 21 and a half by nine curved displays p oled i think it's a 60 hertz 1080p oled right looks like

a normal phone but it's a little thicker than normal and you can swivel that smartphone screen to the top and it like snaps and there's you know you know those soft closed doors yeah yeah so instead of like a sidekick where it would just just snap right out to the top yeah it snaps almost all the way out and then like slowly finishes sliding yeah brandon actually caught that like yeah in the the video before they even mentioned it you could see it happening it did it's interesting because it makes it look like it's not doing it as fluidly as it should because like it flips and then slows down but then if you really think about it like if i have moving parts i want that to be safe when i'm doing it that is a big moving part yeah it's

a lot so but wait i'm not done yeah i'm not done so not only does that swivel out but that part that you're holding in the bottom now also has a square-ish, I think it's a square, a square display. It might be a little taller. Square-ish. There's a small display, like a 3.5 inch display underneath another OLED that is an additional screen behind it.

So when you swivel that screen out on the top, you get that additional display. And now you're holding a T-shaped phone. screen out on the top. You get that additional display. And now you're holding a T-shaped phone. They call it the wing. I don't know. You could have called it almost anything at this point. And you have my attention. Now, I tweeted, I can't wait to see how they justify this form factor over others, right?

The natural thought was watching a video on the top screen, texting on the bottom screen, right? Okay. That I get. Then they got really creative. So they had, they had a bunch of other like dual screen apps where like you could have a phone call on the bottom screen, but you are using a selfie camera in the top screen to like put makeup on. There's, you're watching a video on the top screen, but you're doing other browsing on Twitter on the bottom screen. A bunch of two apps happening at once, that happened. But one thing I didn't realize is,

when they did this in the reveal, I was kind of like, oh, I didn't even think about that. They turned it sideways. So now it's a sideways T, and that main screen is vertical again, and you can sort of mount that side screen with the letter T. So it's like navigation on the big screen and a phone call on the little screen.

Yeah. I think I like my biggest problem with them continually showing a phone, a phone call on one of the screens is like, it's just a mess. Nobody needs to look at a phone call. That's true. But I need a separate screen to look at your phone call exactly yeah exactly um but in terms of navigation the one thing i thought was kind of neat was having so now what what's the best way to describe it an uppercase

t that is sideways so yeah now at this point you really have like a portrait mode phone with like halfway in the middle of it a square just like coming off the side of it. So this is like a one and a half screen phone. Yeah. And then I liked when they did, they put like Spotify or something on there so you can see like your playlist or songs that are playing or just like. Something a little more that needs a visual. Like even for me right now when I'm driving and I'm navigating, my Spotify is in the background and I already know what the next song in the playlist is. But that maybe you want to see the art and you want to swipe and like mess with the music.

Or even sometimes you just want to, you know, you're in a playlist you listen to all the time. It's on shuffle and maybe the next song isn't something you want to listen to. So instead of waiting like three seconds for the song to start playing, especially if it's a song that takes a couple seconds to really like amp up like yeah i can just then see skip it oh it's the song i don't want to listen to that right now skip it yeah it's super basic but like that's what phones are solving these days super basic little problems that just make your life that much easier and apparently flipping a phone into a t

it's so i lg if you're listening, I would love to check this out. I need to get my hands on this. There were a couple other questionable things in that presentation. Like the car mount that they showed was like a vertical clamp because I don't know any car mount that is supposed to hold like a vertical study instead of horizontal. You know what I mean? So it's holding the top and the bottom of the phone instead of the left and the right it's funny that it's holding as if the phone were horizontal yeah which is funny so like it's a mount that would be holding a phone like if you used your phone in landscape or yeah landscape mode all the time because then the portrait mode

is off to the side away from that and facing upwards yeah so i wasn't i wasn't so sure if my car mounts that i'd have to get a new car mount to do that's not a big deal a lot of people have to get new car mounts yeah another thing you'd have to get a new thing is a case you know there's the case situation is probably like you get protection on the back but then like a bumper on the top or something yeah maybe a bumper on the top uh i was also wondering about the screen specs itself. I don't think I know if it is 1080p 60 hertz. I just know it's a P-OLED and it's 21 and a half by nine. So I'm looking forward to seeing more specs and actually using the thing, seeing if it's good. And another

thing we didn't get is a price. That I think is going to be a big difference. And that to me is the most interesting part because LG, for again, all of this not following in the footsteps stuff, is also typically undercutting a lot of the big stuff. You see a $2,000 folding phone from Samsung. You see a $1,600, $1,500, $1,400 folding phone from Microsoft, from Motorola. And then LG Velvet with the dual screen case, I think is under 700 bucks. I know that like the G8X was like 500 at first with the case. So it's like.

So they can make a case. You can say, oh, it's not the best solution, but it's definitely not the most expensive solution. It's something that I've like, I've been confused with about. Because I always mention how like those cases, those dual screen cases are, they're an accessory. Like this phone.

Optional accessory. Yeah, yeah. Not talking about about the wing talking about velvet with the screen yeah or g8x with the screen or v60 with the screen like that is an optional accessory and the phone is not totally built around that so it's going to work it's not going to work as fluidly as like a surface duo or a fold two but it's gonna be way cheaper and it's still an accessory and if you don't want something that thick you can pull it off it has its own pros and cons i just don't think the comparison between the two of them is just oh yeah fair it only it only compares if you're just counting how many screens it has but yeah other than that yeah it's a different form factor but then the wing is now something that has to be like this all the time. So they're clearly going to be developing it.

Yeah. Purely like for that. And it's all built to have optimization for that. And it's... So here's my theory. Okay. I think they're gonna undercut again. I've heard some like everyone's,

you know, there's rumors and maybe it'll be a thousand, maybe it'll be 1200. I think this flip, I think this can be under a thousand dollars i think this can be a 900 phone because i'm seeing p oled 1080p 60 hertz cheap panel i'm seeing like a pretty average like set of specs and i i think it's even a 765g yeah and like that is one thing they said yeah not a bleeding edge amount of like ram or anything crazy with the storage i don't think it

has to be water resistant like there's a lot of stuff that's not screaming bleeding edge high tech all they really have to do is make a sweet hinge and the software development to to sort of optimize that dual screen experience depends on how much they want to charge for all that engineering of the software experience but i think hardware wise it's not that expensive of a phone. And I think what's super beneficial about that is right now, if you want to use a new form factor, you're paying for it and you're paying for it by the price and you're losing some things. Like you said, waterproofing, like none of these new these new form factors have something so simple like that or like lower specs, like Surface Duo doesn't have all the top specs right now either. So if they can though take that

and then you're getting to try a new form factor while also not paying over $1,000 to almost be like a tester, that's super interesting. And I think more people will go for that. Yeah, they don't have to, since the screen doesn't actually fold, they don't have to have any crazy technologies in that.

It's gonna be way more based on how well they optimize the two things together and how much that solves people's problems. And I'm all for pushing the boundaries and taking a risk on stuff like this because it's gonna make phones way more fun. Mr. Mobile always says phones are getting fun again. It's hard to see it right now and think that's going to benefit me somehow.

There's got to be different ways of doing everything. I've made this comparison with electric cars, but with a folding phone, it doesn't have to be a folding screen. We have folding to the outside. We have folding to the inside. We have dual screen. We have the 360 hinge. We have all these different ways to do it. To me, the wing is another chapter in LG's think different. They probably have a whole like think different like mentality over there where they look at what's out there and they go well we're not doing that even though the back looks exactly like the s20 or the note 20 but they think okay we're not doing that but we're gonna find a way to do it a little better or a little cheaper or a little different in order to differentiate ourselves

because at the end of the day they're not really competing in the world of thousand dollar phones the way the behemoths that the samsung's apples basically are so i i am i'm very curious for wing we'll see we'll see about price and getting it in our hands but it's wild if every company right now is coming out with a fold and lg throws the wing out i want to see their prototyping labs so bad i cannot imagine what is there because just like you know it's just sidekicks if everybody but like if everybody else is what other ideas did they come up with if they were just like yeah we don't want to do the fold right now technology is not there everybody else is trying it we want to differentiate ourselves

go make something cool i would kill to see what some of the other ideas i want to see the six month old prototype that didn't make it that That wasn't good enough to be the wing. Oh my God. Flings off of the body of the phone when you flip it up. But this is kind of interesting. We've talked about, so right now we have a bunch of folding phones in the office, but we were thinking between Vin,

Brandon and I, I don't think any of us have used a folding phone. Brandon may have for a little bit. I think he tried to use the fold one for a little yeah for a little bit yeah so as three people who now have not used it we're thinking of potentially dividing up three of them when we're done with the reviews of it and all of us would have to use it for a week or two so we can get kind of an idea of what so we should have each each one of you using a different folding yeah so probably okay fold to duo and then one of the clamshells so z flip or razor uh razor split it up

between the three of us if if brandon's used the fold then we'll give him one of the other ones that he hasn't used and yeah it just might bring all of us on the podcast talk about how it changed some of the ways we do things and uh because now because now you've encountered you've used one before so get a perspective of someone like doing this for the first time like we are now gotcha we skip first generation let's see what it's like to dive straight into something that's a little more polished and that's fair that's actually a really good point is most people getting a folding phone when they eventually do will not have had experience with four or five other folding phones

of various generations and states of completeness. But you know what, speaking of first gen folding phones, we actually did have a chat with Panos Panay, the chief product officer of Microsoft, who's of course a big part of the launch of the Surface lineup and the Surface Duo. He's kind of described it as his baby, his child, to the maybe slight chagrin of his actual children, but that's okay. It's a really fun interview and we're going to get to it right after the break, but we talk a lot about Surface Duo and the choices they made

with it and why they ended up doing what they did. We shot that before my review published. So that's the context of it. But yeah, we'll take a quick break. We'll come back and then we'll listen to that. With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights. To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. See Uber app for details. This holiday season, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health is counting on your support. CAMH is on a mission to make better mental health care for all a reality.

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All right, welcome back. So before we get into this Panos interview, this is kind of Andrew from the future. I've already edited it, and I just want to let you know the audio is, it's off. He didn't wear headphones. There's a lot of Marquez talking through his speakers that it got picked up,

so there's a lot of really precise editing I had to do here. And obviously, since people talk over each other once in a while, it's not all perfect, through his speakers that it got picked up. So there's a lot of really precise editing I had to do here. And obviously, since people talk over each other once in a while, it's not all perfect. So just please bear with us. There's a lot of noise and distraction. I promise you if an edit sounds kind of off, it was most likely to try and save your ears

from some type of glitchy noise or something like that. So just go into it knowing the audio is not going to be perfect. Thanks. All right, Panos Pene, welcome to the Waveform podcast. So glad to have you on. You're a busy guy, so I know. Thanks. Yeah, it takes a lot to get the busiest people in the busiest of times on here, but you have, I think, some of the most interesting perspective in this time that we're in, where at the moment, honestly, I'm just going to tell you right now, I'm reviewing three different folding phones at the same time right now. It's a weird world.

That's funny. That's a trip. Yeah. You have a purview. Let me share something with you before you jump too far in. You should know that when you unbox Duo duo which i assume we'll talk about with folding phones in just a minute um you uh i didn't i didn't watch it through the channels that you would expect at microsoft uh because i try not to like it's hard for me because these

are like my kids you know like these products and so I wait a little bit and then I go after but my kids were watching it like I have a 20 year old and a 17 year old Marquez like you want to like as a father and then a of both a product and kids and they were just hanging on every word you said like you should know the impact and i and i just they're they uh they're huge fans so this is a high pressure high pressure podcast when you know you hit legendary status with those kids when you did your sneaker shopping by the way so if you're kind of wondering where it where it crossed the chasm like when you met with joe lapuma and you went with complex do you remember that like when you know was it was that long ago It wasn't that long ago. Yeah, maybe a year.

That was a fun time. Yeah. Anyhow, just so you know, like it is an interesting time for sure. And I appreciate you having me on. For sure. So I think a lot of people, when we think about folding phones, we think about like what's coming out right now, you know, comparing the couple of different options that are slowly first gen happening.

But I love, I would love to talk to you about the future versions of folding phones that you consider. Because when you work for Microsoft, I guess we should just back up and talk about that for a second, but you have a lot of vision and control over the goals of the product and where they start and where they go.

So I guess let's just start with what your role is at Microsoft and what your input is with the service duo I'm holding right now. Yeah. So I'm the chief product officer. That's the official title. I don't know necessarily how that translates, but ultimately responsible. You think about it as at the end of the day, You think about it as, at the end of the day, hardware, software coming together, the product that you buy, the thing that is, you know, whether it's that object or it's maybe even a piece of end-to-end service and software coming together. But my responsibility is kind of stitch a lot of that together. I'm also, you know, I'm responsible for the Surface line and have a deep history there and responsible for the Windows product line.

And so it's kind of got a, I get a general sense of almost everything across Microsoft because at some point everything comes through these products, Windows and the device. And so my responsibility is bring it together, bring it together in an elegant way and then look for future and where we should be taking things. And I get to play both sides of that, the now, Marques, and then where we need to be. I often talk about my role in this team. I have an amazing team and that's where really it's a reflection of this team, but it is. We want to provide you with products, people with products that they can use now. We want to provide them with the tools they need in these products to get to where they want to go. And ultimately, we want to invent and create so when people get to where they're going, there's a new kind of form that they can take to go change the world. And that's kind of my role. Awesome. And also because of your oversight in all these different programs, you get to be often

the one presenting this final product, which I think in this world of, let me tell you, of COVID times and presentations and virtual events, we even have, we keep a little power ranking on the podcast of like our favorite events and presentations. And I think your presentations, your passion is contagious and it's also not something to overlook. So I'm glad that, you know,

the product has such a great spokesperson for it. Thanks. I appreciate it. I mean, you know, one of the beliefs we have is we want the product makers to talk about the products. Like you, at the last event for the Duo event, you met Pavan, you met Shilpa, you met Jasmine. These are the true product makers. I'm in the product every day as well, but ultimately like we want that reflection because at the end of the day, these products are reflecting the people that make them. And, and, you know, we, we do bring passion to the table. I want people to feel that there's a, there's a reality to what we use today. Like when you pick up anything that you either think is beautiful or desirable or emotional, when you grab it, an object, you want to know that somebody

put a ton of care into it. This is not just something simple. And you know, the next thing you took off the shelf, I think what we put into it, people get out of it. And we believe in that. But I appreciate your comment. And the teams work hard, not only obviously to make the product, but how we tell the story is really important to us. Yeah. So I think it was about a year ago, maybe a little more, that I was out in Seattle and you were showing me a year ago version of the Surface Duo. And yeah. And so we walked through that and got the first impressions and look at it. And it was actually a little bit of a different one that I think you had in your pocket versus the one that you shared with me. But at the end of the day, it has evolved over time into what you're able to give us now. What can you tell us about how Surface Duo and the idea of this foldable has changed over time to end up with this?

It's been many years, Marques. You saw a version of it a little bit over a year ago, I think. And there's a few things. Like the nuance in the product is it's almost the stuff you can't see. It's the thinness. It's the weight. It's the balance when you're holding it. It's the way the hinge comes together, the way the two screens interact,

the way the pixels line up. All that is like it like an iterative process. It's almost like generationally. We started this program five, six years ago. This is not like we woke up and we were like, I got an idea 12 months ago. Let's see what, let's pull some stuff together. Let's pull our best stuff together and see what comes out.

And you start to realize what are the things, what are the trade-offs, where do you want to push the envelope, what do you leave behind to bring the elegance and emotion to the product. And if you're trying to create a new category, which is what we're doing here, what are the trade-offs you have to make? So where it evolved is pretty interesting. You said foldable a few times. I think it's interesting.

Like I hear you talking about it, I go, oh, it is a foldable, but it's a two-screen device. It's so different. It should be so different, I think, from the other foldables you picked up. And it's intentional. It's intentionally that. We looked at every tech, I would say, that I think a company can look at, from inventing to also partnering. And, you know know we watched we had a single screen device that folded but it was just a little too clunky a little too thick it

wasn't as elegant as it could be the radii were challenging um we needed 360 degrees on a product with you know what i mean by that where i can fold it all the way out um and so there were so many elements that were critical to what I, what we believed was here's the purpose of the product. And, and then, and then once you get to that critical nature of it, which then we got into thinness, weight, the hinge perfection, the feel of opening clothes, something that felt premium, and then most important lit up the brain. In other words, got you to be as productive as you possibly could get you more information at a time where all we're doing is looking for information. And then when you were done getting that information, just close it and put it down and shut down your mind for a few minutes and see if you can kind of, you know, get some of your semblance of life back, if you will.

And so all those come into play and the history kind of evolved. Like it wasn't thin enough. It was single screen just didn't work. The radio radio didn't work it had to fit in the pocket when it got too small it just just pick up a phone why not like and so you you see that marquez over the product making process and it ends to the thing you have now in hand i don't think it's when i say ends that's it results in the thing you have in hand. And I think it's the beginning of what's next. And that's that's where the team kind of puts its energy.

Yeah, it's really interesting. You talk about the like the tradeoffs that are in every device has some level of tradeoffs to achieve what you end up with. And it's interesting to hear you talk about you need the 360 hinge sounds like was a core thing you definitely wanted to do from the beginning um the thinness the lightness were there certain things that you found that you had to sacrifice on or that you couldn't do you mentioned you tried you know a single screen that folds um what what were the sort of original design my great example is you know we had a camera bump on the back of it we had a a big camera. We had the high res. We, you know, we had AI associated to it. We were going to go tackle the competitive camera wave of on phones.

And then at some point you step back and you realize that 360 degrees, you end up with a wedge. When you have a wedge, that won't make it in your pocket. What if somebody wanted it backwards? Is the purpose of this product to take great, the best photos on the planet, or was it to be most productive when these two screens were open? And when you get to that point, you start to realize, wow, you're trading off so many things to tackle what I would say is a feature that somebody specifically wanted, where this product was not made for that feature. It was made to be more productive. It was made for two screens. So it's a great example. Original design had a huge camera bump in the back of it. It just did. I don't think I've ever shared that. I think actually we have footage of in our video, there's the one I'm

playing with, with no camera bump, but also the one you pulled out of your pocket that did have a camera bump. So it's in our video actually. And so we had both, like you iterate and you go through. You're right. And so years before that was just obvious. Of course, there's a camera. So when you close it, you take a picture. I'm like, wait, hold on. That's that's the conventional way to run down something. And I totally get it. Don't get me wrong. But you think I'm looking forward to the review? That's like, I can't believe it's $1,400. It doesn't have an incredible camera. Like, I'm not looking forward to that. Like, I got it. Like, but i also look forward to but i also opened instagram and twitter at the same time where i had youtube while i was texting and i was having a conversation

with somebody while watching a video like watch one of your reviews while you're telling a friend what you're seeing like there's something super powerful about that in your pocket as opposed to having to sit at the desk to do it which is is what's happening. And that element of connection to the product, that element of connection to being able to accomplish more things, kind of in an easier way where the brain lights up is where it won. But it's a good example. Like, you know, look at this is open. This is how I carry my device most of the time, where I have the screens available to me at all times. It's a really difficult situation when it's wedged because there's something in between it.

And, you know, we learned that. And it is one of the examples of a pretty important tradeoff. Same with size. Like, you know, if it got too small, it just looked like two phones glued together. Trust me. It wasn't that exciting. And so there are a lot of little things like that. But I think camera is probably the most fun to talk about.

And it's the one I get asked about most, Marques. I mean, you got to know that first thing. Like, of course, when you buy a premium phone, I'm like, well, that's why you buy a premium phone. And so do it. If that's what you needed and that's what you wanted, you were out to get a camera and there was a phone associated to it.

There's incredible products out there. Yeah, and I think a lot of what you just said, you haven't seen it yet. At the time we're recording, the reviews aren't out yet, but in my review I talk about almost everything you just mentioned and the target audience for this device and things like that. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, sorry. So this comes out after your review probably, right?

So this will sound nice. Yeah, good to call it out. I haven't seen Marques' review. I'm not even insinuating anything. I just know like believe me like the first question i get after people go holy this is amazing where's the camera i'm like well fold it back and take a photo it's a great shot you want a good picture you can take a picture you want a great selfie hey here's an here's an insight the front facing camera was pretty critical to us. Because when you think about why you're building a product,

in this case, you want to be more productive. I want you on a Teams call or a Zoom call and on the other screen. Whether you're playing poker with your friends and you're having a connection point with two screens or you're having a meeting and you want to see what's on the other side or you are bored and you just want to browse. Like that front-facing camera was pretty important. And you kind of see that. And eventually there'll be more features that are added to it.

We're putting eye gaze into Duo a lot like we've done with the rest of the Surface product line. So you'll just connect eye to eye on a phone is pretty good. Like that idea is so emotional. So you start to see that. So that front-facing camera i would say we didn't compromise relative to what it was being used for and the associated software that that drives it but it uh and if you want to take a great photo you still can marquez is just a question of um you know what your desire is at that level and uh i also want to touch back

on when we visited you guys in in Seattle last fall, you showed us I a lot of the time I use this device, I'm thinking about my desktop because I sit in front of two screens. And I the reason I sit in front of two screens and not one ultra wide screen is because that compartmentalization that I'm just so used to where I divide up my workspaces translates really well to this. And something you guys showed us in Seattle was like these labs where you're literally analyzing brain activity of people using the device and then productivity and figuring out that flow. How much, how much did that research actually translate into changes that you made on the

device itself? Huge. It played into a ton of it. So a couple of things things the difference between a single screen um where you're trying to manage things yourself and multitask and so forth on the brain when you're watching it i'm sorry my printer's going off in my office apologize but the and uh two screens side by side it It played in a massive role. How where we thought the breaking point of thinness played a massive role.

Because, you know, when you're studying brainwaves and you're kind of looking, I'm not the expert here. But boy, we have some incredibly talented people. But I get to see the data. We have the conversation at multiple meetings, and it does inform the product. Ultimately, what we found was just like when you're at your desk and you have two screens working, when you open up Duo and two screens side by side with a seam and two things happening at the same time, not only is your brain kind of you're firing and you're being more productive and you can get more done, it's actually with less stress. That was it.

Like you want like gold in my mind, like, whoa. And so what we're finding actually with people, people who use Duo for a longer period of time, there's a learning curve on this product market. It's like when you first use it, you're like, ah, and then you second, first read is beautiful. Second read is learning to use it. I'm not sure. Third read, two weeks later, you're living with it.

You're like, oh my goodness. how did I work with one screen that feeling it comes from that combination of I can do more and it's fun or it's easier and when you you hand somebody two tasks as an example where you're studying and you saw this in the lab which is very cool I almost forgot about that you hand somebody two tasks and you say, get it done on a single screen and two screens. You can literally just watch how it, this is a simple, it's just like a simple study. It's complex in nature if you have to understand the brain, but you start to see it like, wow, it's not only is it easier, it's delightful. And we found that. And that was, that's a driver. And the difference between when you say a folding screen that just opens here versus two screens side by side, which kind of goes into our history of Windows and what people can do with Multimon.

And it really translates really well. And so we kind of see that. And it's been fun to learn and part of the process of making a product. Yeah, I can say for sure the learning curve I've witnessed in my weeks of using it, where like now, far more often, I'm willing to pull out the Surface Duo and attack email and calendar at the same time. And that's something I kinda hate doing on normal,

unlike my phone, like I'm just not a fan. But I'm far more willing to do it when I have that division of workspace. It's the context switching. That's costly. Like you're going in and out. You're actually context switching as well. And it's costing you cycles and energy.

And ultimately you put it side by side and it's almost the delight is it's all available to you and you start to, you start to feel it. Uh, we love that. Like I love hearing you say it. I, you know, what's funny is like I debated debated with the team, giving you a product for a lot longer, but the software is still evolving in the sense of, then there's another build coming that you don't have yet. And ultimately it's getting to that point of awesome. And, but the, you know,

if I give it to you too soon and you're, you know, you've got to deal with more bugs like I'd, you know, early on. And now you can kind of see the product is a stable and delightful and it just keeps getting better. And so is this trade-off, like when do we hand it to you? Especially for somebody who had already seen it, because there's a lot of folks that had not seen it. They may have saw it in your video and they maybe saw it on stage with me, but they hadn't put their hands on it. You got as close to it as anyone early on and it would have been fun, but we believe the more time you have with the device, the harder it is to live without it. And I think that's a pretty good sign for any product we make.

So I have a question for you that I think you are probably one of the only people equipped to answer, which is where do you see Surface Duo? And I called it a foldable, but you can call it kind of whatever you want. Surface Duo, and I called it a foldable, but you can call it kind of whatever you want, but where do you see this Surface Duo product in five to 10 years' time? What are some technologies that, wow, if only I could have fit this, or if only we could have also included this, then it would be perfect. Where is this headed? You're so close to asking me what my roadmap is, so it's a dangerous, dangerous answer. You've been in our lab.

You've kind of seen the way we operate. We push boundary here, as you know, on hinge and thinness because we wanted a starting point, not an ending point on that. But think of Moore's Law, this product, it applies. At the end of the day, product will continue to evolve from thinness. At some point, there's a point of diminishing returns, as you can kind of imagine. But in size, you will start to see different types of screens. I think in five years, the opportunity to blend folding and two screens

next to each other and then bring that delight to folks with the emotional connection is real. But also the integration of deeper AI and AR and these products will be real. I'm going to five years on you. I'm not because I got to be very careful not to give you a here's what the future products are. And then people are like, wow. You know, people would love that. They would. But I don't think, like, I think this is the beginning of the form factor for not just Microsoft. Like if you said, Panos, what did you write down?

Here's what I wrote down in the sense of vision. Let's go create this form factor. And the more companies who adopt it and take it and run with it, the more excited we should all be. And so, you know, maybe that's a little different because as Microsoft, we get this opportunity to refine. Sorry, my dogs are going crazy. You get to refine Microsoft 365. You get this opportunity to evolve all the portions of Microsoft software and services that show up on Android.

And they just get better. And the more companies that take that, the more hardware manufacturers, if you will, I don't even know what to call, you know, competitors, partners, take it and run with it. Like the more I would celebrate, and I actually believe, Marques, this is it. Like people will find themselves more productive on this product and over time that'll only get better and i think that future form factor like we need more from products that aren't our product in our pockets we just we need more from them you can argue and i can do everything i can do anything but you're starting to see even during covid time, you know, like if you ask your if you have kids like me, I think three months ago. And remember what I do. I'm part of Windows and Surface.

You ask the kids, like, do you need a do you need a PC? They're like, I'm fine with my phone. I can do everything. And then all of a sudden, you know, the world changed very quickly. And that responsibility and understanding of how much you can get done. But I think Duo is a form factor that starts to bleed into that world of the phone evolved. And I think that can be transformative. And we believe it's a category that extends itself. I hope and kind of I will other companies to go after it. I think it's a worthwhile opportunity for folks. Yeah. I have a theory that I'll bounce you off your ears

and leave you with this, and you can tell me what you think. So my theory for Surface Duo is the dual-screen form factor is awesome right now, and it will continue to be, and when you have this hinge that you can't achieve this form factor with the folding display tech that's out right now and it will continue to be and when you have this hinge that you can't you can't achieve this form factor with the folding display tech that's out right now but sometime exactly not yet so sometime in the future when that tech gets better and better it will get thin enough

and good enough that you can do this awesome form factor with the awesome like all-around wraparound screen and have that like new stunning design and sometime in that future timeline in my in my brain the tech has gotten that good and surface duo eventually does have a folding screen and takes all the best from that form factor too I would bet on you I would bet on you like we we bet on you. Like we, we see that path. We see that, but you can't jump there too soon. Like, you know, to create grading, to create the 360, to create the hinge, to create the elegant feel like these things matter. Like that's an emotional connection that people need with these products. You're you pay a lot of money. You want it to be yours.

You want it to be something special. You want it to be as thin and as powerful as can be but i'm with you like there's this there's an opportunity of how that technology evolves what screens will be in three years five years especially five years from now are very different than what they are now but the anchoring point is the experience and two screens and how you evolve from getting smaller to larger and putting productivity in your pocket i think it's going to matter us marquez it's going to matter all of us and like the more productive we can be the more fun we can have the more we can consume the more we can engage with the people we love

and care about and want to connect with like it it's all it all it all kind of pays back into into accomplishment and so your your vision's not wrong. And if you want to come hang out in the labs, you should do that because I think I'd take it now. You know, I'm happy to write down, happy to write down the patent that you invent for sure. And, and, and, and attribute it to you, but I could use it. I could definitely use some perspective, man. If it's anything like the, the Anacok chamber, we spend a few minutes in, I would happily spend plenty of time out there. How did you do with that? By the way? Like, Oh, I guess deafening, right? It's so quiet. Like you can think incredible. It's like, I, yeah, we, you know, I'm, I'm recording this in

our podcast studio and our goal is make it as quiet as possible, get it as damp and as, you know, acoustically perfect as possible. And I think we've done a good job. And then I hang out there for a few minutes. I'm like that this is this is something you should do that you should bring your you should bring your podcast to the anechoic chamber and just just we can set you up in there with no noise and just you might be interesting to see how that sounds like it might be fascinating to pull it off. 100% would I think? Yeah, no, that's that's something we got to set up for. All right, let's do it. Nobody's done that. That would be very cool. The people we bring in there, like yourself, to see it, you get that moment in there.

But when you watch a study being done, it's pretty mind-blowing. And then it would be interesting to see you talk in there. The other thing in there, there's no reverb, right? So as you're speaking, you can't really hear yourself speaking. Right. So I don't know how you think, but if you need to hear yourself, it might be hard. It might be interesting to test. Right. So, so like, I don't know how you think, but if you need to hear yourself, it might be hard. It might be, it'd be interesting to test. Yeah. It's a, it's a great conversation. I'll save it for when we're actually in there, but Panos, thank you so much for your time. I

wouldn't, I wouldn't want anyone else in charge of this program. Um, I appreciate everything you do and, uh, best of luck. Hey, thanks to you. And thanks for, uh, just giving our team a chance to connect with you, Marquez. We love the work you do. So thanks for your support. For sure. All right. So that's been Panos Panay. Quick interview. We're going to take a break again and come back and talk about all the stuff we just learned from that conversation and more. Be right back. This is an ad from BetterHelp. This holiday season, do something for a special person in your life.

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And you could imagine an answer from a PR, why does this device not have a great camera? And you could, you could imagine an answer from a PR person of like, well, we thought really hard about this. And we decided that, you know, it would be better for our users if we had this blah, blah, blah. And I like that Panos can straight up admit like, yeah, we wanted to put a good camera, but like we really had a focus here on the hinge. And now when you fold it over backwards, we thought it was more important. And like, we can acknowledge both sides of which you would want and not only just acknowledging it but like he talked about it first you didn't even get to bring it up and he was just like i know you're gonna say something about the camera and this is what like yeah a regular pr person would just be sitting there crossing their fingers be like don't mention the camera don't

mention the camera don't mention the camera and he's just he's open about everything so i think it's also something we found out after when we were reviewing it we had um we had the d brand skin on the back of it just the pastel blue one for a little bit and not only was it like you know when he had a camera bump on the back of his it didn't fold flat it was kind of a wedge and he didn't want to put it in his pocket that way even when i put the d brand skin on the back that just those two sheets of sticker basically were too thick to fold it completely flat on the back yeah like really close but it wouldn't technically be all so that's how precise it is it would be a 359 degree hinge which isn't good enough not good enough for microsoft you want it to fold totally flat and i think that's a big thing that i wish i had done more often is fold it over open and leave it

open in my pocket yeah he he mentions that's how he mostly carries the phone around and yeah at first you're like oh one of the reasons this folds is because it protects it all the time and i don't really need to worry about it but we we put screen out a screen is always out in our regular phone so why is it any different for that yeah it'll survive so i think that's something i would do more if i were to use it even more but i don't know i'm i like i said i'm really looking forward to the second generation of this this duo because it's it's still pretty rough around the edges with this first yeah he so he mentioned that he doesn't want to go too deep into the roadmap for very very obvious reasons but he let you explain your prediction your prediction was in like five years you thought it might come to the point of having

a foldable screen right if i were to be a betting man for almost anybody who's a large uh a large entity at a tech company they would I would assume the answer would say, we're totally fine with two screens. It focuses on productivity. We like our hinge more. That is our focus. And just completely skip the question of folding screen. And instead he was like, I would bet on you.

Right, yeah. That's another not PR answer that I love. Yeah, it seems very much like yes they're interested in a folding screen it doesn't work to the specifications they have right now and doesn't fit in that form factor but it's something they're looking into so i would i honestly thought going into that he would mention something about like maybe another microsoft product in the future that would have a folding screen but duo is always going to be this yeah two very distinct screen thing and um but we might see I cannot imagine how sick Duo would be with a folding screen it seems impossible right now it does I mean yeah with the with the

Tekken folding screens not only does it not fold out very well because you have to stretch it in the middle um but the one folding phone that did fold like that had like a big side bezel like a real big side bezel to fit all those drivers in it uh the huawei mate x is what it's called i think uh it's been so long we i still haven't gotten hands on one of those i'm convinced it's not even real um i want to try one but even just think about right now think about the full or the duo form factor not being able to do 360 degrees but being able to fold open flat and still have a folding screen even just thinking about that yeah it's pretty wild yeah um especially if somehow they don't

have any bezels either or like much much smaller bezels yeah i'd be fascinated by that just i think it just proves that how that's how great and how good the the form factor feels on the duo you know what though you know what the number one thing i got out of that conversation was what's that we got to get back to that anechoic chamber i'm not even joking we gotta go seriously like the i we've described it probably twice now on this podcast but the the little visit we had to microsoft labs when we first got that preview of the duo when we first saw panos's matte black version with the camera on the back when we were first like getting a look at this idea uh and he mentioned we he was considering having us in even earlier but all of that was also alongside like check out this lab

where we do material finishes and here's how we do the leather and here's how we do the alcantara finish on the surface laptops 3d printing yeah 3d printing and stuff and also some uh some audio testing in the anaco chamber and uh the people involved in that are all awesome so i i would love to bring i don't know if here's what i think would happen if we brought all of this podcast equipment into the anaco chamber i think you would start to hear more of the coils and the things too close to my chest is it going to pick up my heartbeat like i want my heartbeat to be in a podcast but yeah so it would be it's so direct because i think the thing you don't realize is when you're sitting in a room and you talk or someone around you talks the reason that you can tell where they are in the room is because their

voice echoes and bounces around the room in a different way so it's bouncing off the wall to the right of you and the left of you and behind you and you can hear how big the room is and you can hear where they are in the room and when you go in this this super super dark like how do i just soft whatever the anechoic chamber you get in there and someone 12 feet away from you talks there is absolutely no indication whatsoever of how big the room is it is just their voice and you can't even really tell where they are relative to you they're either right in front of you next to you or behind you but you couldn't tell how far away they are it's just their voice and so that's the weirdest thing

i think if we brought this equipment in there you would it would just sound like a normal podcast but even less reverb because it would just be so directional if i pointed this at my chest you would just be hearing whatever is in my chest i think it'll be totally wild it sounds like a dream and a nightmare to edit in terms of like adjusting sound because i'm so picky with any little type of noise or which is like why we run a podcast next to a truck yard is beyond me but also like yeah i think you're gonna hear some really weird stuff and i think we also if we do it need to get go paul was that his name yeah he was arguably one of the most fascinating people i've ever met in tech. And I would love to just do a bunch of tests in there with him and talk to him about tests that he does as well.

And I think it would be fascinating and so much fun. And I think he would love it too, because he just seems like the type of guy who genuinely, genuinely loves his job. Seems like he spends a lot of time in there too. Like he's been in there often. I wonder if that's where he locked himself for quarantine hey i'd be totally cool with that speaking of quarantine everyone please wear your masks because they'll get us over to seattle quicker and then maybe we can get into there a little faster that would be sick well i guess this is our this is our pitch microsoft if you're listening i'll reach back out to panos and we'll

see if we can actually make that happen um but yeah that that's pretty much it for this episode we are back on on pace or on schedule we'll have our episodes on weekends or on fridays actually and i i just can't wait to get back to to doing more of this stuff tectember rolls on it does timber rolls on there is a lot more happening on the channel stay tuned for that and. And of course, the upcoming podcast episodes. Thanks for listening. Talk to you guys later. Waveformer is brought to you in part with Studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by Cameron Barlow.