After nearly a year of anticipation, Microsoft has announced that it will officially launching its dual-screen Surface Duo smartphone on September 10. The handset, which the company debuted last October, will be available for pre-order this week and cost US$1,399.

The Duo is Microsoft’s first smartphone since it killed off its Windows Phone brand in 2017, and in an interesting twist of fate, the Surface Duo will run on Google’s Android operating system complete with Windows 365 and Android app support.

From the look of it, the Duo could offer the kind of jolt the smartphone industry needs, and may give Microsoft a greater foothold in the mobile market. Microsoft isn’t the only tech giant trying to switch up how we use our devices. Samsung, Motorola, Huawei, LG, and TCL have put out either foldable or dual-screen phones. But Microsoft’s design looks cleaner and more like a reinvention of the smartphone rather than a smartphone that’s been reconfigured to have a foldable or dual-screen setup.

Microsoft says that the Surface Duo is the thinnest foldable device in the world, and it certainly looks it. Rather than two bulky halves sandwiched together, the Duo’s left and right sides are incredibly slim.

When open, the Duo is just 0.5-cm thick, thinner than Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Fold2, which is 0.7-cm thick while open. Closed, the phone is 1-cm thick, slightly larger than the 0.8-cm thick iPhone 11 Pro Max. In other words, the Duo should slip nicely in your pocket.

So why not use a single foldable screen instead of two separate screens attached at a hinge? According to Microsoft, the decision came down to functionality. The company says that bendable displays are easily damaged compared to standard screens, and that it wouldn’t have been able to include stylus functionality with a folding screen.

Unlike Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold2 or Galaxy Z Flip, the Duo doesn’t have an outside display. When it’s closed, there’s nothing to see but front and back panels. Not even an external camera. Instead, you’ll use the 11-MP internal camera for normal shots and selfies.

But the Duo benefits from a 360-degree hinge that allows you to completely unfold the device so that you’re using just one display at a time.

Those screens are no slouches either. Microsoft says it married the two 5.6-inch AMOLED PixelSense displays to create what it calls a single 8.1-inch PixelSense Fusion panel when unfolded. (SD-Agencies)