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The Surface Duo is dead — Microsoft pulls plug on $1,500 Surface Duo 2 after just one Android OS upgrade
(www.windowscentral.com)
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This article is silly, are they also still mad about the Zune? People who bought a Duo for $1500 in a world where the Galaxy Fold existed shouldn't expect Android updates forever. It was always going to be an experimental niche product.
Call me crazy but I expect trillion dollar companies to be required to support the devices that they sell. Granted, I would have never bought this but I'm not gonna blame the purchasers for Microsoft's inaction.
They promised three years of updates and they delivered them (at least security fixes). Not great, but also not terribly bad.
I'd actually be fine with them stopping support but then unlocking for self supported.
No, I do not remotely expect MS to have done that, which is one of the reasons I wouldn't have bought one if I was interested in a folding phone right now, but I do think its the right solution for customers. Not limited to MS of course.
Will absolutely require regulation to have that happen though.
That's exactly my point. Regulation for support should be significantly longer and more comprehensive for these profit hoarding companies. Regulation should also require that once a device is unsupported, a company should have to open source the firmware along with repairable hardware.
The oceans of ewaste will not end but it might certainly reduce it.
It would go so much further than just abandoning them, definitely. Especially when the hardware is perfectly fine.
I've got a Nexus 10 that's still putting in work with postmarketos. The battery needed to be replaced recently, but its otherwise a perfectly usable device. A huge portion of my hardware consists of older and discontinued devices I can breathe some life into, because why wouldn't I?
I know corporate reasoning is that I wouldn't buy a new device. And they are right, because I shouldn't have to.
Such a frustratingly straightforward answer to better support consumers, manage waste, slow climate change, etc, etc, etc...
They supported it with security for as long as they said they would. Microsoft sold an estimated 50k of them and killed the product line. They shouldn't be required to invest further in Android upgrades on a device that barely deserved to exist to begin with.
Did not buy, but i like the Form factor and the fact that the screen is protected when you fold it together.
I bought one and I loved it. The only reason I stopped using it is because I dropped it at just the wrong angle, and it would have cost $750 to get it fixed by Microsoft, and no local repair shop would touch it. I didn't have the tools to fix it myself either, so I was forced to replace it. I was eventually able to fix it most of the way, but fucked up some parts on the process, so I just use it as a tablet type device now.
If they were going to continue supporting it, I would have coughed up to have it repaired, and if they had made a Surface Duo 3, I would have bought it in a heartbeat. It was so disappointing to see them drop this device line so quickly.