Happy Holidays 2022

Craig Dunn

Hello Android developers,

Inspired by the growth of AI and its role in products like GitHub’s Copilot this year, we asked ChatGPT to “propose some applications for Surface Duo owners to use over the holidays”…

One possible application for Surface Duo owners to use over the holidays could be to use the dual screens to create a digital holiday card. You could use one screen to design the card, using a combination of text, images, and graphics, and the other screen to preview and fine-tune your design.

Another application could be to use the Surface Duo as a mobile cooking companion in the kitchen. You could use one screen to display a recipe and the other to keep track of timings and instructions, freeing up your hands to focus on cooking.

Additionally, the Surface Duo could be useful for managing your holiday travel plans. You could use one screen to view your itinerary and the other to access maps and navigation tools, making it easy to stay on track and avoid getting lost.

Finally, you could use the Surface Duo to stay connected with loved ones who are far away, using the dual screens to make video calls and share special holiday moments in real-time. Overall, the Surface Duo offers a wide range of possibilities for making the most of the holiday season.

The AI did a pretty good job with that, so we moved on to something a little more challenging: “write a poem about the things I like about the Surface Duo; use this list 1. two screens 2. drag and drop 3. multitasking 4. video calls”

The Surface Duo is a marvel to behold
With its two screens, it never gets old

The ability to drag and drop, it’s so neat
Makes multitasking a breeze and so sweet

Video calls are crystal clear and bright
Bringing loved ones close, day or night

In my hand, it feels just right
The Surface Duo, a true delight!

We then asked DALL·E for “a computer programmer building an android mobile phone app over the holidays”

OpenAI.com is an interesting technology to take a look at over the holidays!

If you prefer your blog posts to be written by humans, our present to you 🎁 is re-gifting our most popular posts! Check out these highlights from 2022:

Kotlin

Probably the biggest news of the year for foldable app developers was the official release of Jetpack Window Manager in January! We covered all the features in this post and ensured our SDKs and samples were updated soon after.

This included the Navigation component and Navigation Rail, as well as the rest of our dual-screen components. With Jetpack Window Manager (and the various components that use it) you can create responsive designs that scale from phones to foldables and large-screen form factors.

Compose

2022 was a big year for Jetpack Compose. The Surface Duo team released TwoPaneLayout (and some updates), and Google also released their Accompanist library. Both offer great additional support for Compose developers building foldable and large-screen apps.

We also covered Accessibility, drag and drop, and created Compose-specific samples for our dual-screen design patterns. For those with existing apps, we also started migrating parts of one of our larger samples to Compose to share that experience.

Flutter

Flutter 3 was announced this year, which bought foldable support into the framework. This enables the TwoPane widget layout control that adapts to different screen sizes as well as foldables.

For developers wanting to experiment with foldable Flutter experiences, we shared Space Rocks game and Twoplayer tip detection for you try.

.NET

Big news this year in .NET was the release of .NET MAUI at Microsoft Build. This provided a new, more powerful upgrade for Xamarin cross-platform mobile developers. With the release of .NET 7 in November, .NET MAUI was updated to include a TwoPaneView control (based on Jetpack Window Manager) that provides a responsive foundation for Surface Duo user experiences (as well as other foldable and large screen devices).

Livestreaming archive

Finally, there are over 100 livestream videos available on the SurfaceDuoDev YouTube channel, including a session for each of the blog posts linked above. The livestream is a good way to get a little more detail on the content we publish – and the archive is a great way to “get started” with many of these topics.

Feedback

Which content did you prefer this week – AI or human? Reach out and let us know via the feedback forum or on Twitter @surfaceduodev.  

Our Twitch livestream is taking a break over the holidays, but you can view the full archive on YouTube. We look forward to seeing you online again soon!

Craig Dunn Principal SW Engineer, Surface Duo Developer Experience

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