Additional display language support on the Surface Duo

Question

The Surface Duo was released in European markets (France, Germany, UK) as well as in Canada on February 18, even though German and French are already available as display languages from its launch.

Back to the time when Windows Phone 7 (for mobile) and Windows 8 (for desktop) came out, the exact options for display languages depend on these three things:

• Device manufacturer
• Country/region of purchase
• Wireless carrier (for cellular-connected devices)

In fact, when I got my first phone, a Windows Phone, in April 2011, it did not support Chinese at all. I had to upgrade to a new device early to get the full Chinese experience a few months later.

Will the Surface Duo be region locked in terms of language support (based on the region of purchase as well as the wireless carrier)? In other words, will additional display languages like Portuguese and Chinese become available to devices in other markets in the future, or will they only be available on these devices within that particular market (i.e., Chinese and Korean only available in Asian markets, Italian and Polish only available in European markets, etc)? Please clarify.

(A note that I want to point out is that according to the Surface Duo tech specs for all regions (yes, I checked the specs for every single region that this device is released in), it shows that the field Language support shows All supported languages (Android™ 10), but it appeared that this wasn't really the case because the physical devices support only German, English (Australia, Canada, UK, US), Spanish (Spain, US), French (Canada, France), and Japanese.)

As you can see in the screenshot above, the Surface Duo emulator shows all the supported languages here, unlike physical devices, which only support a couple. For example, we want to add English (New Zealand) as a display language, one that is not officially supported on physical devices.

Update: 2/21/2021

From reading a community post back in 2014,here's what they said about changing the language on Surface devices:

The only way to find out whether the default language can be changed to German is to factory reset your device. Although this depends on where the device was originally released, you may be able to choose the default language at the beginning of the initial setup. For example, on US Surface devices, the base language can be chosen from English, Spanish, and French. If German is not one of the base languages available, your device cannot be completely changed to German.

However, this mentions Windows, not Android. We need to focus on the Android-based Surface Duo. Up until the release of Android 7 Nougat in 2016, we had to go to Settings > Language & Input > Language to see the full list of languages supported on the device. But with the release of Multi-Locale support in Nougat, we now have to choose a language as well as its region, and there is a wide variety to choose from, even those not fully supported by the device, as you can see in the screenshot above. If we choose one that's not fully supported, the error message "May not be available in some apps" will appear.

For example, while Cymraeg (Welsh) is surprisingly supported in the Microsoft Launcher (on the left) (notice that Chwilio Apiau means Search Apps in Welsh), it doesn't work in the Surface Duo's menu system for the time being (on the right). When this happens, the next language in the list will be used instead (for example, English (United States)).

While the Surface Duo Emulator and the Windows Phone Emulator support ALL the languages available, what about physical devices? This can turn the tide!

About Display Languages

From what we've seen in the Surface Duo Update History, we have a North American version (TGL/TGM-00001) and a European version (TGL/TGM-00002). As usual, the default language can be changed at the beginning of the initial setup, like with all Android devices. The question I have is: will the language choices depend on where the device was originally released? If yes, then the language cannot be completely changed to one's preferred language if it is not one of the languages available.

For example, here are the choices for each of the regions:

North America (including the US and Canada)

This includes the locked AT&T model since AT&T is part of the North American region.

While Windows 10-based Surface devices sold in North America support English (US), Spanish (Mexico), and French (Canada), some additional language packs are available for the Surface Duo, according to the table below.

NATIVE NAME	ENGLISH NAME
English (United States)	English (United States)
Español (Estados Unidos)	Spanish (United States)
Deutsch	German
English (Australia)	English (Australia)
English (Canada)	English (Canada)
English (United Kingdom)	English (United Kingdom)
Español (España)	Spanish (Spain)
Français (Canada)	French (Canada)
Français (France)	French (France)
日本語	Japanese

While English (Australia) and English (Canada) are part of the English (UK) language pack in Windows 10, these are two separate language packs on the Surface Duo. Also notice that Español (México) (Spanish (Mexico)) is not present in this list, even though it IS preloaded on North American Windows 10 Surface devices. That's because this variant is not natively supported in the Android OS in the factory. This can only be configured by adding a language in Settings > System > Languages & Input > Languages > Add a language > Español > México, as you can see below.

Europe (including France, Germany, and the UK)

Since the Surface Duo was recently released to the European market, we don't know about language availability. Will the European variant have more languages than the North American version, or will it be the same across all regions?

(Even though English (Australia), Spanish (Spain), and Japanese are listed as display languages, we still have no word on availability in Australia, Spain, and Japan, respectively.)

Still waiting for clarification...

Answer 1

Still waiting for some clarification about language support. We want to keep the conversation going.