April firmware update for Surface Duo is now available

Surface Duo, the only non-Windows device under the Surface brand, received the April firmware update. It contains Android security patches and a few quality improvements.

It is worth mentioning that Microsoft released the update several days ago, but the official changelog became available only now. Here what is new in the April firmware update for Surface Duo.

What's new in the April firmware update for Surface Duo

• Addresses scenarios outlined in the Android Security Bulletin - April 2020.
• Improves device stability and UI stability.
• Improves device performance when opening and closing apps, accessing your recent apps or swiping up to see all your apps.
• Fixes the scenario where the wallpaper was not appearing after unlocking Surface Duo.
• Fixes the scenario where a notification badge appears on top of a running app and causes the screen to turn black.

This update is available in Europe and North America. Both US and European versions share the same changelog, although the version number is slightly different - 2021.314.91 for the US and 2021.314.93 for Europe.

There are no known issues in this update, so it is safe to install it right away. You need at least 338 MB of free space on your device, which is significantly more compared to previous firmware updates that did not exceed 100 MB in size. Despite being three times larger, the April firmware update for Surface Duo is still based on Android 10. While Google is slowly moving closer to the release of Android 12, Microsoft is yet to update its only smartphone to Android 11.

Surface Duo is currently available for consumers in the US, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK. Several days ago, Microsoft announced plans to start selling this quirky dual-screen smartphone for business customers in 9 more European countries. These include Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Netherland, Sweden, and Switzerland.