Microsoft promises Surface Duo will get Android 11 by end of year

Although a lot of attention has been on the shiny new Surface Duo 2 Microsoft announced this week, some came out of the announcement wondering about the original Duo.

Namely, will it ever get Android 11? It kind of seems like a no-brainer — Microsoft is launching Android 11 on the Duo 2, so it shouldn’t be hard to bring it to the O.G. Duo too. Right?

Well, the good news is that the Surface Duo will get Android 11 (yay!). The bad news? There’s no official date for it, although Microsoft did tell The Verge it would be before the end of the year:

“We remain committed to providing updates to Surface Duo, and we’re working to bring Android 11 to existing customers before the end of this year.”

While it’s good to know that Android 11 is coming, a few questions still remain unanswered. For one, we’re not sure what features and improvements Android 11 will bring to the Surface Duo. That said, Android 11 does have native support for dual-screen devices, so that alone may significantly improve parts of the software experience.

The Verge also notes that during its hands-on time with the Surface Duo 2, the multitasking system seemed largely unchanged with only some minor tweaks. It’s not clear how much of that will come to the Duo, or whether it will fix the bugginess that has plagued the device since launch.

There’s also a concern about how long it took Microsoft to bring Android 11 to the original Duo. It’s not uncommon for Android phone makers to roll out a major update roughly a year behind Google’s annual upgrade cadence, but when you’re paying the amount of money Microsoft charges for the Duo or Duo 2, that shouldn’t be the case. Hopefully the Surface Duo update process isn’t indicative of the Duo 2.

Source: The Verge