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.
That’s Android. You want an Android. Buy a Samsung and flash whatever rom you want onto it.
So the alternative to Microsoft is Google?
I dunno, that sounds very Out of the frying pan and into the fires of hell to me.
No, the alternative is an open source rom on Samsung’s hardware. No Google required, at least for now. Though I do expect that to get much more difficult in the future.
No it’s not. Android is shit
Android is literally Linux, and also you can put whatever custom rom you want on your phone. Write your own if it’s that big a deal to you. Don’t stick with stock Android, but if you want a customizable phone, that’s your option. Microsoft and Apple don’t give you the option for custom firmware. Android does.
No, it isn’t. Can you install Flatpak apps on Android? Can you plug it in a monitor and run GIMP or desktop version of Firefox? Because actual Linux phones can.
The difference is that Android phones only use Linux kernel and it is so much modified by SoC maker and OEM that by side effect it can’t run anything beside Android anymore. There are projects like PostmarketOS trying to port real (mainline) Linux on phones but it takes awful amount of work and supports like 5 phones still with no things like cameras. There are also systems like Droidian trying to strip Android to bare minimum and run Linux on top of it like an always-on-top app, but this also is only for a couple of phones.