Biggest reason not to buy Microsoft Surface Duo over Samsung’s foldables

Instead of pursuing the foldable smartphone dream like Samsung or Huawei, Microsoft is going a different route. The Microsoft Surface Duo and the newly announced Surface Duo 2 simply join two displays together instead of having a single large display fold and unfold, and that means it’s not exactly a direct competitor to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold lineup.

Still, when you do draw comparisons, the Galaxy Z Fold 3 is superior to the Surface Duo 2 in many ways, but there’s one particularly important reason why anyone eyeing the latter should think twice about actually getting one: software support.

The original Surface Duo launched back in September 2020, but to this day, it’s running Android 10 out of the box. And do you know when it is scheduled to get Android 11? Sometime before the end of this year. That’s the same ETA Samsung has provided for the Android 12 update for the Galaxy S21 series. Need we say more?

There’s also no word on exactly how long Microsoft intends to support the original Surface Duo, let alone the new Surface Duo 2. Microsoft is new to making phones that run Android so we guess we could cut it some slack, but in this day and age it’s a poor excuse to not provide crazy good software support to devices that cost upwards of $1000, especially when you have as many resources as Microsoft has at its disposal.

Of course, if you don’t care about software updates all that much, the Surface Duo could be a solid device for you, and we won’t judge if you do decide to get one. But we would recommend looking at the Galaxy Z Fold 3 instead, and our review is a good place to start if you’re looking for reasons to pick one up.

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Image credits: Microsoft