Microsoft’s next-gen Surface Duo cellphone may very well be a single-screen machine, based on a Tuesday report—and that’s in all probability for the most effective.

Windows Central’s sources say that the “Surface Duo” may very well be a foldable cellphone utilizing a single display moderately than the twin screens that outlined the Duo identify. While Microsoft initially deliberate a dual-screen Duo as their next-gen Surface Duo 3, that machine has been scrapped, the positioning studies.

Though my review of the Surface Duo 2 was middling, I stored utilizing the machine for months afterwards, simply so I might absolutely expertise its strengths and weaknesses. Everything that the assessment said remains to be legitimate, however I discovered that over time I simply fell out of affection with the 2 screens. Yes, in sure situations the Duo 2 excelled, akin to putting Mail on one display and the Calendar app on one other.

But in lots of circumstances, the 2 apps merely have been random pairings, and never complementary. In this case, swapping from one random app to a different felt arbitrary, and I by no means felt assured sufficient within the controls to belief that the cellphone understood what I wished it to do. That uncertainty prolonged to the context switching between panorama and portrait mode, which altered the interface, however not at all times. For instance, I actually favored with the ability to flip open the highest display and watch a sporting occasion on the ESPN app, in panorama mode. But whereas the Twitter app or messaging would open on the opposite display, the keyboard wouldn’t. That meant that it didn’t supply a lot of a bonus over any of the opposite conventional single-screen telephones I had obtainable.

I do not know if a standard single-screen Microsoft-designed folding machine just like the Galaxy Fold will promote, although the Fold and its competitors argue that the format is successful. Microsoft’s power, nevertheless, has at all times been in its ecosystem of apps, and I will surely anticipate that any machine Microsoft launches will proceed to be a showcase for what it has quietly and successfully finished within the cellular app area. As for the {hardware}? That’s at all times gave the impression to be much less necessary.

Unfortunately, that’s a lesson that Microsoft has had issue studying—Windows Mobile was a cult basic, but it surely ran a distant third to Android and iOS. When Microsoft shifted over to compete with the huge ecosystem of Android telephones, it thought that the Duo’s twin screens can be sufficient to distinguish it. They weren’t. Now Microsoft should give you one thing distinctive to distinguish its providing from the opposite folding telephones which can be already established throughout the market.