Petition demands Microsoft release a Windows 10X version of the Surface Duo

Chris Merriman
@ChrisTheDJ
07 October 2019

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MICROSOFT IS ALREADY facing a petition from users who fancy the look of a Surface-powered phone but don't fancy it being an Android.

The Surface Duo was finally revealed last week but isn't quite being marketing as a phone, but as a smaller version of its dual-screen Surface Neo, toting a customised version of Android, rather than its new multi-screen variant Windows 10X.

We expressed our own suspicions about this move, but now a Change.org petition has appeared, demanding that Microsoft offer a Window 10X variant as well as an Android one.

Under the title "Panos & Satya... Give us a Microsoft Surface Duo "phone" running Windows 10x", it declares: "The newly announced Surface Duo running Android ONLY does not accomplish what many windows UWP developers and Microsoft fans want. We want a Surface Duo device that runs the new Windows 10x OS and that emulates Android apps."

"By announcing an Android-ONLY Surface-branded device you effectively also slammed the door shut on there ever truly being a "universal" Windows app," it adds.

It's true - it does - and almost completely destroys the point of having a Universal Windows Platform (UWP).

At time of writing, the petition has had 1,048 signatures against a target of 1,500, which would, we suspect, be enough to justify a limited production run, perhaps by mail order.

The decision to use Android on the Duo was something of a surprise in the first place - after all, we wouldn't expect to see a Pixel device running Windows as its primary OS.

We suspect that this is just an attempt by Microsoft to "keep its hand in" with Android, which it adopted after the failure of its own Windows Phone platform.

Microsoft has said that it will only use Android for ‘mobile devices', despite the fact that technically, all Surface devices are mobile, suggesting that the policy isn't exactly nailed down yet. µ