This is Microsoft's canceled Surface Duo 3 foldable smartphone
A newly filed patent gives us our first (and only) look at the design Microsoft was working on for its now canceled folding phone.
Remember those ads long ago from Microsoft where everything was a to the edge display? And your taxi cab window was also a display? And the sidewalk was a display? And some random piece of plastic was also a display? And your fucking desk, surprise, is also a display but also one you type on! And so on...
I mean all of that looked cool I'm sure at the time, but all of that would be horrible to use, structurally unsound, and require device interactions unheard of.
Unfortunately, this patent is likely just an echo of a project that will never see the light of day
This patent is likely a "we would love to use this to sue someone remotely trying anything that might look like this, but isn't someone who has a legal team that could convince a judge to send us home with our tails between our legs." This kind of shit gets pulled by Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, et al all of the time. It's to ensure their continued ability to keep new entries in the industry away.
To me, the most unrealistic part of that ad is not the edge to edge displays, or the holograms emanating from them, or the overall inefficiency of it all, but rather just that you could never have a place that full of screens without ads being everywhere.
I remember first watching that video on my first smartphone and thinking "When will they ever make a phone without bezels?" And now they pretty much have, but my experience was not some artistic interface full of aesthetically pleasing data and art. It was a YouTube video completely surrounded by ad content.
you could never have a place that full of screens without ads being everywhere
I audibly laughed.
Everything's a drum!
