Quick Look: DUO-De For Microsoft Surface Duo

Hey everyone it's Andres and I'm giving you a look at DuoD which is a custom ROM for the Surface Duo. This is the first generation Duo. I decided to flash this from the final update which was Android 12 L for the Surface Duo. So this DuoD has its own settings and let's see what this one is running. So the updater is accessed immediately from there. This one is running Android 15. Last update was August 1st 2023 and I believe the project is not being updated. This is not. I haven't seen any update on this project for about a year. So June 2025 was probably the last time anyone was dealing with this project. So I don't know if it's been abandoned or something's being worked on in the background. But this one has a ton of different features that you can access here. As you'll notice that this thing is running on its own window. Let me open Chrome and then I'll open this the Play Store. It won't give me, there we go, now it's behaving. Sometimes it doesn't really respond all too quickly. But yeah let me see if I could move Chrome and I'll just make it a bigger screen. So now it's full screen it goes across both screens. This one doesn't work like the Surface Duo's stock ROM because where you can launch one app on one screen you can also launch another app on another screen. If you were to turn off the resizable windows or opening in their own floating windows, when you open an app it'll literally just open the entire screen. So in order for you to get one app opening on either side you have to press and hold on the icon of the app and open in split view. And then you have to open your other one and then you'll get an experience which is very similar to the stock experience on the Microsoft Surface Duo. But I probably will go back to the older one even though it's running on Android 12L versus this one running Android 15 because there are some noticeable bugs here that have been quite literally bugging me. And this is something that I haven't been able to fix is right here when you go to search and if I type if I tap here there's no on-screen keyboard. I have to literally go to the toolbar hit the side hamburger button and then it'll give me this. Now I can move the toolbar to different positions such as switch to vertical toolbar so now it's over on this side. But it won't automatically give me the keyboard so I have to quite frankly every single time hit show the keyboard. And this is G keyboard Google keyboard and I could try resizing it but I can't get it across both both screens here to be full. And while this works in in a sense it's frustrating that I have to always trigger the keyboard for it to appear. I've messed with the settings I haven't been able to get it to just automatically appear as soon as I tap. It's really giving me the options like well do you want to use a stylus do you want to go handwriting with your finger or things like that. And I have not been able to find a setting here where I can pair this to my Surface Pen Pro because I have not been able to find a setting here that lets me pair it to my Surface Pen because I was able to do that with the stock Microsoft software not with this one. That's one of the reasons I haven't been able to use this or willing to really use this. There's a lot more intentionality and involvement. We're just trying to do some menial things. I have liked that I'm able to get different floatable windows here when you go to the developers settings and they work pretty well for the most part. It's just that you know you might have some apps that don't resize so you have to force resize them. That's another thing on the developer options. But overall the whole keyboard experience has been a drag and the fact that I haven't been able to pair up my Surface Pen to this device has also been a little disappointing because I like using it with OneNote. But as you'll notice I haven't really installed that many apps here and that was on purpose because I immediately ran into those issues as I was trying to use this device. But now I'm going to let this thing reset itself. All right so there you have it. That's what it looks like when you first boot up. Double tap to wake doesn't always work that's why I have to push the power button when it's lying down and sometimes that bug happens when you're trying to use it. It's working okay right now but sometimes it bugs so bad that one screen stays on the other one stays off and there we go and sometimes you have to either wait a bit or restart the device in order to get both screens working. So it is a stable build to be able to use but there are some noticeable bugs that have made it difficult for me to actually try to use this more on a regular basis. I haven't seen any update on the project and on XDA developers someone posted I think on May asking hey has this project been abandoned and no one's responded to that message either. So I don't know if this thing is going to be updated anytime soon because there were some bugs on the roadmap that were supposed to be ironed out. So I'm going to flash this back to stock Microsoft software and stick with that otherwise if for anybody out there that wants a de-googled Surface device then this is the best route to go. Now obviously I'm running Google stuff here but you can choose which software you want to flash when you have already unlocked the bootloader and I'm preparing to flash another ROM. So you'll be able to get this with or without it. I downloaded both builds but I decided to go with this one just to get the full experience to see how it'll handle and if it's anything like this one then it'll probably run into the same issues in terms of bugs. So I really don't know if it's going to be the same full experience with the same bugs with the other one because maybe one ROM was getting more support than the other but overall this has been my experience with it. There are some known issues including with cameras so like I said this is really a beta stable software but hey if you want to run Android 15 over Android 12 L then of course this is going to be your option on the market and probably your only option at this point. Originally I was going to flash Andromeda to this but I decided not to because of just how awfully buggy I heard that it was so I decided to go with this one and if this one's still that buggy then like okay fine I'm going to go back to stock software from Microsoft but yeah anyway that's your quick look at Duo D I think I said it right for the Surface Duo. I still love this device it still works really great I'm surprised it actually lasted me this long. So do you have the Surface Duo? Are you interested in giving this thing a try for yourself? If so I'm leaving the links in the description down below so you can give this a shot. The flashing was pretty painless for the most part but just understand there's partitions here and you gotta know which partition you're using partition A or partition B. Your mileage may vary just letting you know but the help is quickly searchable on Google so good luck to you and who knows maybe we'll have another folding device like this sometime down the road. Would it be Apple? Would it be Samsung with their wide formats? I don't know but Microsoft Surface Duo was one of the best ones to implement it in my opinion I just wish that this project could have been supported a heck of a lot longer than just abandoning it but anyway that's Microsoft for you. So that's it thank you for watching this video follow me across socials at TheUnderSegovia on xTwitter underscore UnderSegovia anything you ever think about me is at TheUnderSegovia.com I'll see you in the next one.