A history of Microsoft foldable phone project

Microsoft began working on its secret Andromeda project at some point throughout 2016, not too long after the company had decided to give up on Windows 10 Mobile internally. It was not until November 2016 that I first started hearing about the Andromeda project from sources. I teased the Andromeda codename in a tweet alongside several unrelated things that I was looking forward to the future to mark the occasion.

At the time, I did not know too much. My job is to dig around for information, and back then, information about the project was scarce. I knew it was a phone, and I knew it would be running a new OS from Microsoft called Andromeda OS. But that was it for the time being. Over the next two years, I would slowly but surely find out more information about this secret mobile project.

In January 2017, I started hearing more details about Andromeda. I had been told that the device was a dual-screen phone focusing on pen and digital inking. What I mostly heard about, however, is the software side of things. Known as Andromeda OS internally, this was a flavor of Windows Core OS designed specifically for foldable devices. Its UX was a mix of both Windows 10 desktop and Windows 10 Mobile.

This UX layer was a sticking point for me, as it was being described as an integral part of the Andromeda project. This UX layer was called CShell and was a universal shell designed to adapt and be modularized to run on many kinds of form factors. That would be a key component for a device with two screens that can fold into different orientations.
CShell was the first component of Andromeda that I took a keen focus on. After talking with several sources on the subject, I wrote up my first piece towards the Andromeda puzzle on January 16. Two days before this, a patent revealing a device with two screens appeared online, and it was at this moment, I started to understand the device Microsoft was trying to build.

Satya Nadella was later quoted saying that Microsoft’s future phones would not look like normal phones. Not too long after, references to this “Andromeda” device started showing up in code, and leakers like WalkingCat had begun to dig up these references online. On May 20, Cassim Ketfi fired all cylinders and wrote the first report on his findings around the Andromeda project as a whole. At the time, I still had not written about Andromeda itself, as I still had lingering questions about its OS.

Andromeda’s OS was an interesting topic of conversation with sources, as, at the time, not everyone I was speaking to seemed to understand what it was full. It was not immediately clear that Andromeda OS (as it was known at the time) was part of a much larger effort known as Windows Core OS. When Andromeda OS was being described, many were calling it a modular platform designed to scale to any form factor.

On September 20, I wrote up the second piece of the puzzle towards Andromeda. This article detailed the OS and how Microsoft built a modular and universal version of Windows that would run across all kinds of different devices, including Andromeda. At the time of publishing, I was still calling this effort Andromeda OS. Over the next week, several sources would clarify that Andromeda OS is just one part of this modular project known as Windows Core OS.

Finally, on October 26, I published my findings around Microsoft’s secret Andromeda project, tying together the CShell and Windows Core OS articles before it to paint a picture around how enormous this effort was internal. I was told that Microsoft would not be positioning this device as just a phone. At this point, I was hearing that Andromeda was on track for a late 2018 launch, with the possibility of a developer kit being released at Microsoft’s Build developer conference in May 2018.

Andromeda, a dual-screen foldable phone by Microsoft that runs a new version of Windows, was happening. And it was super exciting.
As 2018 rolled around, I started to learn about some cool camera tech that would neatly slot the device into the Mixed Reality category with capabilities such as 3D scanning and more. Still, new details around the project had slowed significantly outside of patents, seemingly revealing new ideas every week. Many of those ideas were not part of the Andromeda project, of course.

As Build 2018 approached, it became clear that Microsoft would not be shipping an Andromeda developer kit, as the project itself had slipped behind schedule. In May, I heard from sources that the company was looking at many different ways to combat the “app-gap” problem that Andromeda would ultimately face. The company was considering running Android apps on Andromeda via emulation, similar to Project Astoria.

The problem with Project Astoria is that it worked too well, and there were licensing and political issues around using similar tech in Andromeda.
In May 2019, whispers around Microsoft doing an Android phone started making its way through the Microsoft bloggersphere. Mary-Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott were the first to detail such plans on Windows Weekly; however, the idea seemed so ludicrous that no one wanted to write it up.
It appears that in the fall of 2018, Microsoft decided to swap out Windows in favor of Android on Andromeda. That was a move very few of us saw coming. It is obvious now, but at the time, we all assumed an Android smartphone by Microsoft would be a traditional slab of glass. Even though I continued to hear that Andromeda was being worked on, I never once connected the Android rumor and Andromeda.

In October, those two things would finally come together spectacularly as the most surprising Microsoft announcement ever. Microsoft had decided to take the Andromeda hardware and slap Android on it, solving the app gap problem in one fell swoop. Known as the Surface Duo, this is the first pocketable Surface, a phone, and it is finally official.
So that’s a not-so-brief look into the journey we have taken together with Andromeda. It’s been a rollercoaster for sure; a device that started as the future of Windows on mobile became a device with Android instead. I think this is an excellent choice for Microsoft, as it is the only realistic way Microsoft can make a phone in 2020. Windows has no ecosystem on phones, and as such, Android is the only way forward in this department.