Z Fold 2 or Surface Duo? Comparing foldable phones

Galaxy fold two and Microsoft Surface duo are unique devices. For starters, one has a foldable screen while the other has dual screens. One is on version one and the other is the second generation. But if you find yourself choosing between these unconventional devices, I am here to help break it all down for you. These are the five key differences between the the folks here Microsoft Surface. [MUSIC] On the surface things are completely different devices and choosing the right one for you will really come down to what sort of device you're looking for. Are you thinking of something that's more geared towards productivity? Or are you looking for something that is a little bit more based around media, entertainment and something that's a little more similar to a traditional phone? And yes, if you're buying one of these phones, then the price probably doesn't play too much of a difference because. There's only $600 between them one is $2,000 and the other is $1400. So, big spenders, come with me. These fines are really like comparing apples to oranges when you're talking about design because they are completely different on that front. Now the surface Judo or Judo as I might say, because I'm Australian, that's usually how I say it. So bear with me is more of a flat, incredibly thin design and to me it reminds me more of like a notebook or a moleskin something like that the Z fold to use a much thicker design and it kind of feels like a candy bar phone maybe reminiscent of something you would use in the early 2000s. But I do want to mention the front screen on the Z fold too. Now this is particularly useful if you want to do something like quickly check a message Maybe social media without necessarily needing to open up the phone and go into the full foldable screen mode. Now the surface juror you can't do that. Obviously there's no screen on the front. Although you can do this thing where you open up the lid slightly just peek and take a look at the time which is a nice touch. The hinge is also completely different on both of these phones. Now, the Z fold two uses what's called the hideaway hinge and it can hold itself open in any number of positions from very small angles all the way to 180 degrees. Particularly useful if you want to do something like kick back and watch, a movie or play a game, or even take a photo using the camera, and you don't have a tripod. The Surface Duo opens pretty much 360 degrees if you want it to, so you can use it in a more traditional one screened phone use. You can also use it like a tent, like so put it on the table rest and watch a movie, take a call and so on. And you can also keep it open just like a book. The hinge on the Z Fold 2 is rated for 200,000 folds. Now the hinge on the duo doesn't have an official rating, but in my time using it I haven't found any issues with either of them. And fortunately the crease and the hinge itself doesn't make any kind of weird creaking noises like some other foldable phones have done in the past. Neither of these have an IP rating. So definitely avoid any contact with water or dust things like that, as to the weight is equal to is significantly heavier than the slimmer and lighter surface Dewar. As for the pocket test. Well neither of these phones are going to pass with flying colors as you would expect. You're really gonna have to carry them in a bag or say a laptop sleeve because they are not sized for most people's pockets. Now the jeweler in particular, I just couldn't find any place to stash it on my person When I had this phone in my pocket, so I was expecting someone to call me out and say is that as a fold to in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? [MUSIC] Before we get into the specs about the screens, let's talk a little bit about aspect ratios because it really does come down to the types of content you're looking to consumers to which one will probably suit you best. So the JIRA because it does have two individual screens. It's generally better for things that involve documents say anything that is more of a four by three aspect ratio just works a little bit better on these screens either discreetly, or if you're using them all together. Yes, you can spread your content across the two screens on the juror, but you do have to contend, With the gap with the hinge and of course being across two separate screens, and there's the question of bezels. So the surface your obviously has much larger chunky bezels than the Z fold two on that interior screen. I didn't necessarily mind it for some applications. Say for example, if I was reading An e-book and I wanted to hold it in the book configuration. I didn't find that my thumb was causing any accidental presses because it wasn't resting on the screen. It was on the bezel, the screens on the Z fold too. Obviously you have that front MLA display at 6.2 inches. 60 hertz and opening it up to 7.6 inches with that 120 hertz adaptive refresh rate screen. The z fold two's interior display is more like a tablet experience. You can see the crease in the screen if you're looking for it, but I didn't find it to present too much of a problem. It seems to be much better for a more immersive media experience, say like watching movies or playing games. The Surface Jio has the two displays at 5.6 inches each. When you open it up, you can essentially combine them into an 8.1 inch display. Analyt as well and the refresh rate is not 120 hertz it is your standard 60. Both the screens are covered in glass over the Z fold two has Samsung's flexible and foldable glass on the interior display. This means that you do need to be a little bit more careful with how you use the phone. So you want to avoid things like Short fingernails, definitely scratches, you know avoid putting any sort of keys or anything you need is screen and dust as well. You probably need to keep giving it a wiper but with a microfiber cloth now the surface joueur is a little bit better in that respect because you can pretty easily wipe it down just given that it's not that delicate Flexible glass, but you still do want to be careful with both of them. Now when it comes to using a stylus you can use the Surface Pen on the surface, but it doesn't come with it and for 1400 dollars, I kind of wish that I had the option just to have it included with the phone, say like the S Pen on the note 20 Ultra. So it just seems that you have to pay a little bit extra if you want to use a stylus with this phone. With the Z fold to don't put a stylist don't put the S Pen anywhere near it. I wanted to try but it's a $2,000 fine. I just wouldn't feel right if I broke it by trying to use a stylus to prove a point. [MUSIC] So productivity is kind of one of those arbitrary terms. That means different things to different people. But I want to talk about these phones in the context of multitasking and being able to get stuff done on them. So let's focus on the duo first. Now, obviously, thanks to those two screens, you have the ability to run apps discreetly on either side if you do have it in a book mode. This is particularly advantageous if you wanna easily say cut and paste things between different documents. You can also group apps together so when they launch, one will launch on one side and one on the other depending on your preferences. It's quite nice to keep things almost sandboxed in a way, so you can very quickly snap back and forth between them. Now, the problem with the joueur is you might have seen. Read some early reviews with the software being a little bit buggy. And when it comes to multitasking, it's still not 100% there yet, when it comes to being able to completely use those screens discreetly in a way that is particularly effective if you're using anything other than the Microsoft Store Suite of software which, as you would expect, is pretty much optimized very well for the viewer. Now the fold two has a couple of different ways in which you can work with apps in particular, the multitasking is to do with being able to divide the screen into segments. So you can have one up on one side and one on the other. You can even add a third app. In a window as well and be able to resize and adjust accordingly. Now, this is a nice thing because you get a lot of flexibility. However, it does mean that you are fairly limited due to the constraints of the screen in that if you want to have two apps side by side, If you wanna have it straight down the middle, both of those apps are going to be fairly narrow. Yes, you can expand one to take up a little bit more of the screen but then you lose the real estate on the other side. So I think for productivity overall if you are a big multi, Tasker doing a lot of say Office documents or working between apps all the time that you might be a little bit better. Now the surface Joe does have a couple of quirks as you probably seen from many other reviews, things I'm talking about include the accelerometer not quite understanding which way I'm orienting the phone and the apps not adjusting accordingly. Some of the gestures still do need some work. And overall like the responsiveness could be improved a little bit somewhat for me at least. Now the zipfel two even though it's a second generation device, it definitely feels so much more solid and polished. Then the first fold that came out just a year ago and I was really impressed. I didn't feel like there was that much that needed tweaking and improving, just in terms of third party developers really coming on board and making sure that their apps are really optimized for both of the screens. On a phone to and I think that's just something that will come with time. [MUSIC] Now it's easy to forget that both of these devices are actually phones as well. So I wanted to talk a little bit about. Be experiencing using them as your phone. And as Android devices full stop. So let's talk about cold quality. First I did a couple of tests calls with both of them. And holding this a fold to to your ear is you know, very retro if it's like candy bar phone, as I mentioned earlier, but the call quality was pretty good all around. The speaker wasn't super, I guess. Defined or crisp for me when I was listening, but they didn't have anything bad to say about the microphone quality from my end. Now the surface juror, actually the microphone sounded better to the cola on the other end I found it a bit louder and a bit more dynamic overall. But they did remark that the microphone was cutting out pretty abruptly as soon as I finished talking, which could be something to do with some background noise cancellation, perhaps the speaker also sounded a little bit better to my ear when I was using the surface. You're Even though when I was holding it up like so I felt like I was talking into a giant tablet and I felt like a bit of a fool. As I mentioned, both run Android but the launches and the experience is very different between the two. Now that you are there kinda reminds me a little bit of a nerd Android back in the day kit cat, for example, the big chunky, app icons and the iconography overall and the look and feel of it Just feels very retro. That might be something that you really like. But I think coming from a modern day Android smartphone with, custom launchers and everything like that. I didn't like it as much. Now the full two runs one UI and it looks pretty much like any other Samsung phone from, the past few years that runs one UI. Such as the Note 20 Ultra. The experience is very similar in that respect. I did find that I was tweaking things a lot more in the settings just to make the most of having those two screens. Now the keyboard experience is interesting on both of these phones due to the configuration of the screens. As you would expect, there are some things that you do need to get used to when it comes to texting on both of these. For example. [MUSIC] The exterior screen on the Z fold to the keyboard is very, very compact and very small. So fat fingers like mine tend to make a lot of typos. So do just double check all your messages before you send them because I found I was making a lot of mistakes even when swiping on that keyboard Opening it up the keyboard inside was actually not as problematic as I'd seen some other people talk about when using it, swiping across was totally fine and I found it oriented itself pretty well in general, the jeweler on the other end. Had the keyboard experience was one of the most frustrating parts. For me when I was having apps open on one screen in book configuration and trying to use the keyboard, sometimes it would appear correctly and sometimes it would span across both screens and sometimes when I was orienting the phone in the configuration like SAR, but I wanted to use it as like a little laptop replacement and have the keyboard on the bottom and the content on the top which I love doing. Sometimes the keyboard doesn't oriented so correctly either so it's just a little bit frustrating. As for cameras Well, there's no surprise here it's pretty clear that the xivo two wins this one it has the benefit of five cameras all up on the outside, one on the inside the selfie 10 megapixel cameras And then three main rear cameras your ultra wide, your regular wide and telephoto lens all at 12 mega pixels and the photo quality is good. It looks the same as pretty much any other modern day Samsung smartphone, It's very satisfied if you just want to do some nice point shoots in the night mode, some portrait modes, so on and so forth. Surface your. Now let's talk about that camera. Now of course there are compromises because this is such a thin white device and it does so much more than just acting as a camera. But I was super disappointed that there was only one camera. It's 11 mega pixels and it's just just not right. It does 4k video at 60 frames a second but it's a little bit jittery And just overall, it's not my primary device that I would reach for if I was taking a fighter. And finally, let's talk about The other key point of difference between these files which is performance and battery life. Now, the processor on the Z 42 is the Snapdragon 865 plus no matter where you are in the world and the surface duo is the Snapdragon eight 55 the RAM is different on both there's 12 gigabytes on the Z fold two, and six gigabytes on the surface joueur I definitely found that the fo two felt snappier overall in terms of multitasking, having multiple apps open and lots of things on the go. It really didn't skip a bit at all. And I was very impressed. The Surface Duo was pretty good when you first turn the phone on, but the more apps you start having open and the more you start doing with it over time, definitely at the end of every day, I felt like it was a good idea to restart. Just start clean and fresh because that really helped with overall performance given that it didn't have as much RAM as the Z fold to the Z for two is five g whereas the surface duo is 4g LTE. As for battery life, of course that does depend on how you use your phone and a number of other variables. Both of these phones do have a battery that's split across either side of the device. This evil two does have a higher capacity battery than the surface joueur but I was pretty surprised with the ability that I got a full day of use out of both of these phones. So I started off at 100% charge about 8:30AM and then it was able to go through an entire day on both of them. To be fair, I was probably watching a few more movies on the Z for two just because the experience was so much nicer. I was doing the productivity and work stuff a little bit more on the JIRA, which can also affect battery ratings. Overall between about nine and 10 hours of screen on time on is equal to and between eight and nine on the surface Joe so definitely get you through the day, no problems [MUSIC] So now we've seen the five key differences between these two phones. Hopefully it's giving you a bit more of an idea of which phone is the right one to choose for you. So for me, the answer is pretty obvious. Like it's pretty clear that the Z fold two is the device that just has that X factor to it. I just don't want to put it down. And everything works pretty seamlessly. And I just really enjoy the flexibility of having that entirety of the screen to do things like watch movies and games and have a really good camera as well. Plus. The front screen is super valuable if I don't want to open the screen and try and reduce my overall screen time. So that's why I really like this a fold to the surface drew is definitely something I would look at if I was seriously wanting a companion device to my laptop. Something that's much more portable that I can take out into the field for example and have the flexibility of being able to orient the screens in pretty much whichever way I want cuz that hinge and the overall look and feel is fantastic. I'm just really excited to see where this goes in generation two, you know, it's gonna be so much better. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this episode and that it was really helpful for you to work out which one of these phones is right for you. Do let me know which one you think won this comparison. Or if you have one of these friends let me know your thoughts. I'd love to hear what you think. All right, I'll see you later. I'm gonna go and make some calls and pretend that I have a call phone from the 80s see ya.