this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023

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136

Microsoft cuts ties with the Surface Duo after just 2 Android version updates (www.windowscentral.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/445850

Microsoft is done supporting the original Surface Duo, three years after it first launched on September 10. The company has stated from the very start that the Surface Duo would receive just three years of OS updates, meaning today is the last day that Microsoft has to stay true to its word.

Going forward, Microsoft will no longer ship new OS updates or security patches for the original Surface Duo, meaning Android 12L is the last version of the OS it will ever officially receive. Surface Duo only ever got two major OS updates, one shy of the average three that most high-end flagship Android devices get these days.

Like I said before, I will never stop making fun of the Juicero of Android phones.

all 41 comments

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Why the hell would anyone buy these devices when the support is so short? And I'm not even specifically talking about this foldable, rather all these devices from Google and MS? You're basically paying good money for e-waste.

Their slogan should be "here, you throw it away for us".

I really hate Apple for other things, but they rarely pull this kind of crap when it comes to support.

I still have my Sega Genesis that I bought on launch day and up until a year ago,it still worked. Thatsa 30+ year old device. Somewhere in my parents basement is an ancient fake Walkman. It might not work as it,but but if you changed some o-rings, chances are it would work. That's gotta be well over 35 years old. I still have G1 Transformers when they were first released. These are all items that (for the most part), still work. And yet today, people can't even get more than 3 years on most devices. Not because the device is broken. Rather because the device is made to have a very short lifespan on purpose. This shit makes me so damn mad.

I know Europe has flirted with the idea of life cycle product management (can't quite remember the full name). Basically manufacturers are required to take back their products at the end of their life and dispose of them properly. These kinds of programs encourage manufacturers to make their products easier to tear down, and thus also easier to repair, but also to minimize the amount of non recyclable materials. When you put the responsibility on manufacturers to take care of these things, it is in their best interests to keep their products from turning into useless e-waste. It definitely wouldn't solve all the problems of products having super short lives, but it could help because if something is easier to tear down, then it might be easier to maintain ans possibly upgrade.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I understand the sentiment, but the comparison with Apple and the Sega Genesis is flawed.

Microsoft has been very good at supporting backwards compatibility with other products, and Apple has EOL'd products too soon as well.

Open a 30-yr-old laptop with Microsoft Windows 3.0 and, oh surprise, it also works... just like your Sega Genesis! Plus nobody said that the Surface Duo was going to stop working. Store it away for 30 years amd turn it back on. I'm sure it will work just fine. Just don't attempt to connect it to the Internet 18.0.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

and Apple has EOL’d products too soon as well.

What examples were you thinking of?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

iPhones, for example. https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/08/apple-user-backlash-dropping-iphone-7-ios-16/

Granted, the lifespan is longer than the surface duo, but still. Apple does the same.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Oddly enough, I have an iPhone 7 I still use occasionally. It got a security update yesterday - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213913

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

6 years + 2-3 more years of security updates is a pretty good support cycle for a phone.

Complaining that the company that provides some of (if not the best) support for their phones is pretty silly. Especially considering that Google, androids gold standard is ~~a year~~ three years less than that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is it silly, though? Phones are essentially supercomputers at this point. It's hardly excusable that companies can't provide longer support.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They've always been computers. They just need to do different tasks than a computer would.

The phones OS is basically a firmware with how tightly integrated it is with the hardware. VS the EFI on your PC just hands everything off to windows and then it's up to drivers which may or may not be there after a major version update.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You don't have to explain to me how an electronic or digital phone works, but I appreciate the comment regardless.

And to be very technical: No, phones have not always been computers. I can't do Turing-complete work with a rotary phone from the 70s.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I can't say if it's what the person you're responding to had in mind but I noticed Macs have shorter supported lifespans than a comparable Windows machine. Of course there's factors like Windows being more hardware agnostic but it effectively means that today, no Mac older than 2013-2014ish/that aren't supported by macOS Big Sur isn't getting security updates. They do have options in terms of Windows (potentially), Linux, patched versions of newer macOS releases but for a user that's non-technical I think that's too soon. I was able to end my college career in 2019 by pressing my 2008 ThinkPad and Windows 10 into service. (albeit hi-res video and 3D games were naturally out of the question, it was up-to-date and got the job done - EDIT: but now that I think about it I did need patched Intel integrated graphics drivers...)

Of course, Microsoft's ditching of so many machines with the jump to Windows 11 and putting a 2025 expiration date on many machines (without bypassing or Linux) is abhorrent too and potentially renders part of my complaint moot but I still hope the ARM Macs have longer supported lifespans but too soon to say if anything will change.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, you caught it already, but I was gonna say, however good Microsoft has been about this before is irrelevant, because going forward their intentions are very clear with how little they care for backwards compatibility. The fact we have, what, 2 more years of Windows 10 support when most people still use it and can't update to 11 tells you all you need to know.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Windows 11 can still run programs made for old versions of Windows. I think it can still run Win32 programs as well.

Office products can open documents in old formats.

So yeah, they care about backwards compatibility. On the hardware front, I agree with you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That would make sense apart from the ‘open a 30 year old laptop’ comment. There are plenty of 30 year old Macs about that will run on their original OS

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I didn't say 30-year-old macs wouldn't run. As the matter of fact, that would be another example of the counter-claim that a 30-yr-old Sega Genesis can still run "while a surface duo couldn't do the same."

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

New Google Pixel devices have 5 years of Android version and security updates. And as someone else said, if updates end the hardware will usually continue to work if you take good care of it.

I have old Acer, Asus, HP and Toshiba laptops that still work despite being out of warranty and some are over a decade old, and I'm about to get my hands on a Thinkpad T480 that I'm hoping to upgrade to keep it for another few years.

The issue is mainly the apps. For the old laptops I mentioned for example, they have only two cores, and modern stuff like background removal in video-conferencing or playing some Netflix movie will bring their CPUs to their knees. Apps became extremely demanding without us noticing.

Same thing on phones. Frameworks based on web technologies, requiring something like Chromium WebView, are appealing to app developers because they're extremely convenient as they help them create shiny UIs with cool effects with a few lines of code while benefiting from portability (ie the app will usually be cross-platform and work on an iPhone too). The only issue is that is usually much more demanding than a native Android app. So this trend gives us the impression that phones become slower, that manufacturers are playing some tricks on us and that we need to upgrade, whereas it's much more complicated than that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Dual cores can be fine if they have the necessary support for the features that the software asks for, like h.264 decoding for video calls. I worked in a charity that gave out repurporsed laptops for vulnerable communities and an 8th Gen Intel works really well for office work. Heck Zoom requests an 8th gen for said background removal.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The reality is, that most people don't care.

I know several people (and not only older ones) who actively avoid updating, because it annoys them apparently.

Others don't care, know about or value updates at all. Some will happily use outdated android versions 5 years after support was dropped, others buy new phones every 2 years anyway.

I'm not saying that's good, but from a fuck-everything-but-money capitalist standpoint, not supporting older devices does make sense.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Outdated devices can't run some newer apps. If yiu can't get security updates, then some banking or online trading apps might not run. Many businesses use 2FA. I might be wrong, but if a device isn't being updated for security then the device can't use used for 2FA. Similar deal with using it for payment at a store or using it as your key on your newer model car.

It all starts to steamroll.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

You don't need to convince me. Fact is, enough people don't care. And if enough people don't care, 2FA vendors will get more lenient so they don't lose customers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

That's before the companies realised that this is not where the money is unfortunately. Reminds me of the infinite light bulb story

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Life cycle is shorter and shorter specially if the product is not a success. This one was expensive and buggy. Probably launched too early.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be honest I didn't check the end of support and end of life, still it's very short...too short for this kind of expensive device. Even if it looks very promising. I still belive it was a good try. But it failed...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Microsoft is using Android, not its own proprietary OS? Preposterous /s!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Microsoft tried a mobile version of Windows. And, it was actually not terrible. However, it suffered from a major problem.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I miss my Windows Phones. Had 2 of em and they were the best. App gap was terrible though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I too miss using my windows phone. I loved it while I used it. I still use it sometimes as a music player. I use a windows style launcher on my android phone. I find it very convenient and productive to use.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It had too many developers?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I actually like Microsoft's Android apps, like, a lot. Pretty much nothing to complain about across their entire line.

It's their hardware design I have a problem with.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Does outlook still steal your emails even if you don’t use it with a Microsoft account?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Define steal in this context. What does this mean?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I actually have no idea.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Its* own propietary OS.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fixed

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You're pure class :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It does have an impact. Apple has all the interest in keeping devices working for as long as possible because they make money from the app store. Microsoft makes money from selling the device and its surfaces but it's google that benefits from the play store.