Surface Duo photo gives first sample of the phone's camera prowess

Surface Duo Source: Windows Central

What you need to know

Microsoft's hardware chief Panos Panay shared a photo taken with his Surface Duo on Instagram.
This is our first look at the quality we can expect from the Surface Duo's camera.
The camera has remained one of the wild cards of the Surface Duo's capabilities.

If you've been waiting with bated breath to see what the Surface Duo's camera is capable of, we got our first tease today. Microsoft's Windows and hardware chief Panos Panay shared a photo taken with his Surface Duo on Instagram today. Check it out below.

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A post shared by Panos Panay (@panospanay)

The Surface Duo's camera capabilities have been a major point of interest in the leadup to the phone's launch, expected later this year. It's hard to draw any major conclusions from one photo, and impressions are sure to be subjective. There's also the Instagram's compression to worry about. Still, we're probably a ways off from getting full resolution, untouched photos from the Duo's camera, so this is all we've got to work with for now.

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Microsoft is more focused in its messaging on the productivity features of Duo than pushing it as a pro shooter meant to compete with some of the top smartphone cameras on the market right now. That means pushing the dual-display form factor as a productivity booster — something that some early adopters may be willing to accept with camera quality as a tradeoff. Surface Duo has also been in development for a rather long time, so it's possible we could see some major advancements to features like the camera, connectivity, and more in a Surface Duo 2 or 3.

In any case, we may get to see how the Surface Duo a little earlier than expected. Windows Central senior editor Zac Bowden was the first to report that Microsoft wants to launch Duo earlier than the initial holiday 2020 timeframe it stated at the phone's reveal. That's no guarantee that we'll see it this summer, especially given global circumstances right now, but it's a possibility.