Will the Surface Duo actually have a very special gigantic rear camera?

The Surface Duo handset Microsoft showed off at their event had one unusual feature besides the dual-screen.

The handset had only one front-facing camera, and no rear camera, a choice Microsoft explained typified its productivity focus.

That handset was however not the only version of Microsoft’s dual-screen handset. Wired wrote:

Microsoft had two versions of the product on hand when I visited its campus in Redmond, Washington, last week. One was closer to the finish line in terms of hardware, but the software wasn’t usable. That one was almost an exact replica of the Neo, just smaller, with its screens measuring 5.6 inches each, and around 8 inches diagonally when unfolded.

The Surface Duo that Panay has been carrying around for six months is black, not white, and it’s running a version of Android 9 Pie that’s been tweaked to support the dual screens.

In fact, the most recent version of the Duo doesn’t have a rear-facing camera. The way it’s currently designed, taking a picture would require the person using it to open the Duo, unlock the Duo, and flip its front-facing camera to the back of the device. I question this, more than once. Panay says it’s still early days, that the camera may change, that he’s nervous to reveal this so far in advance because it exposes the design to competitors.

“These are our efforts for the past two and a half years, so there’s a balance to the number of details I can give, even with regards to the camera,” he tells me.

That black device was captured on video by Marques Brownlee, and it shows a very unusual camera hole.

The deeply inset hole brings to mind the numerous patents we have seen where Microsoft explained how to fit a high quality camera in a thin device, and suggests more than the dual screen may be “more than ordinary” for this Surface device.

See the device in the video below:

Thanks Attiq for the tip.