Surface Duo internals show Microsoft?s fanatical commitment to thinness

Minimizing the motherboard surface area as much as possible leaves more space for battery, and if you look at a teardown of a modern smartphone, you'll see only the tiniest scraps of area reserved for the motherboard, which is now a dense little chip sandwich.Thinness is going to be a key component of foldable smartphones, since folding a device in half means doubling the normal thickness. Unfolded, it's a pretty normal 7.6mm thick smartphone, but fold it in half and add a bit more for the hinge mechanism and you get a 17.1mm brick that you're definitely going to notice in your pocket.Microsoft says the Surface Duo is not a secondary device, and it wants people to "rethink how they want to use the device in their pocket." Thinness is a key part of pocketability, but it seems like Microsoft got a bit of tunnel vision in the process. I am not sure building a device with the profile of a salad plate is the best approach to pocketability.No one has spent any significant time with the Surface Duo yet, but the phone ships September 10.You must login or create an account to comment.Join the Ars Orbital Transmission mailing list to get weekly updates delivered to your inbox.