Android is the Right Choice for Surface Duo (Premium)

I guess this shouldn’t surprise me. And yet it does: An individual is petitioning Microsoft on Change.org to redesign Surface Duo to run Windows 10X instead of Android, turning the device into a Windows phone that runs UWP apps.

That is a terrible idea.

This proposal selfishly promotes the needs of a tiny handful of developers---those who target both UWP and Windows Mobile specifically---above those of the user base, who are today and will continue to be better served by Android and its apps platform. In other words, this isn’t about you, UWP/phone developers. It’s about the exponentially bigger group of people who will (hopefully) actually use this device. It being Android-based makes it far more likely that it could succeed.

And not to be a jerk about it, but it’s not like there’s some wellspring of high-quality Windows Mobile apps waiting in the wings to pump up this platform. Windows phone died for a lot of reasons, but one of the top five, certainly, was the lack of apps overall and the lack of good apps specifically. The Windows Phone Store was a wasteland of amateur offerings, with very little meat to make up for all that gristle.

I know. I’m doing it again: Writing a bit too bluntly about something that I feel should be obvious to everyone. Sorry if that bothers you, really. But if you actually think this thing needs to be running any kind of Windows, you are literally not paying attention. It’s almost not worth even discussing.

And yet, there it is. A petition. Signed by a few people, most of whom probably aren’t even developers but are rather well-meaning Windows fans holding onto some past that Microsoft walked away from literally years ago.

Whatever. Let’s step through the points.

Windows UWP developers and Microsoft fans want a Surface Duo device that runs the new Windows 10x OS and that emulates Android apps.

As noted, neither of those groups matter in the face of the much broader userbase. Normal people don’t want emulation. They want Android apps.

There are many developers still out here that want to write Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps that run on all form factors.  When UWP was announced you promised one code base to run on any form factor... including phones and other small form factor "pocketable" devices.  Many developers, both on the consumer and enterprise sides of things, still really really want to target small form factor devices with UWP, it's just that there doesn't exist any since you killed Lumia!

Yes, Microsoft wanted this too. The market did not care. Microsoft shouldn’t perpetually throw money in the toilet because it announced a strategy that failed.

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

This door was slammed shut in 2015 when Microsoft announced that it was abandoning the Windows phone platform.

BTW by allowing us to emulate...

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