Microsoft Surface Duo Dual Screen Phone Drops To Red Hot $410 And Here’s How To Unlock It

Today, the 128GB version of the Surface Duo is selling for just $409.99 (brand new, factory sealed), which is nearly a $200 discount from its previous low. If you want to double your storage to 256GB, that'll add $100 to the price tag.

• Microsoft Surface Duo Dual-Screen Android Smartphone 128GB (AT&T) $409.99 @ Woot
• Microsoft Surface Duo Dual-Screen Android Smartphone 256GB (AT&T) $509.99 @ Woot

We should mention that this price gets you a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC, dual 5.6-inch AMOLED displays (1800x1350 each) for an effective workspace of 2700x1800 at 8.1 inches. You'll get a smallish 3,577 mAh battery to handle all that screen real estate and just 6GB of onboard RAM. We must also consider that unlike most new smartphones launching these days, the Surface Duo doesn't support 5G (which was a curious omission even when it launched last year).

The final hurdle to this deal, but still surmountable, is that this Surface Duo comes locked to the AT&T network. However, from this Reddit thread, we discovered it could be unlocked via AT&T (or, more likely, Microsoft) with a bit of work. Redditor HighWingy provided this guidance, which should result in fully unlocking your Surface Duo for use on other carriers:

1. You need a case # with AT&T first. The easiest way to do this is to submit an unlock request on their site at https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/ and then wait a week for it to fail and give you a case #. Or if you want something faster, you can try calling them. But the important thing is that YOU NEED AN AT&T CASE # FIRST. MS will not help you without that.
2. Contact MS, either by phone at 1-800-642-7676 or using the live chat at Surface help & learning - Microsoft Support Now here's the important part, you NEED to talk to a Surface Duo Trained Rep. Politely confirm that the person you are talking with is one, and if not, tell them that you need to speak to one for this issue. If you don't, it's almost guaranteed that they will just punt you back to AT&T.
3. Once you get the Surface Duo rep, explain your situation, that you have an AT&T locked phone, and AT&T does not have the unlock codes and told you to contact MS support. Make sure that you mention that there is already a larger investigation ticket for this issue as well. If all goes well, they should ask for your AT&T case #, and the IMEI number from your phone.
4. Wait till MS sends you your unlock code and then celebrate!!

While we would have preferred a straight-up unlocked device with this deal, we can't complain, given this new low price for the Surface Duo. And the steps outlined above don't seem too difficult; just time-consuming. And it beats paying some shady character on eBay to unlock it for you.

According to Woot, this current deal is active for the next 19 hours as of this writing.