Microsoft release updated Surface Duo emulator

While Microsoft has put the Surface Neo on the back burner, we have heard the Surface Duo is still full speed ahead.

Supporting the rumour, Microsoft has today released a refresh to their Microsoft Surface Duo Emulator Image.

Here’s what’s new in updated build 2020.429.2

• Support for using a keyboard in all posture and flip modes
• App Drawer and App searches support
• Improved Notifications support
• Improved Settings and quick settings experience to support dual screens
• Enhanced Camera experience (you can access that via the Emulator too!)
• Several platform improvements to better support App Compat around rotation, resizing, fullscreen, and spanning scenarios

Microsoft says they have more improvements planned for future releases.

You can download the latest Emulator image here. It is recommended that you uninstall the previous version before you download and install the update.

As part of the developer push for the dual-screen handset, Microsoft is also open-sourcing  Surface Duo samples and helper functions.

This means Microsoft’s Helper Functions, Layouts, and Controls code available on GitHub at github.com/microsoft/surface-duo-sdk and open for contribution.

This code, along with their Kotlin and Java samples, helps developers to understand how to build dynamic layouts for dual-screen devices.  Microsoft hopes developers will use the issues list to provide feedback.

You can also find the previously published Xamarin.Forms and React Native dual-screen SDKs on GitHub.

Microsoft will talk more about their dual-screen work at Build 2020, with a dedicated dual-screen session for C# developers where they will discuss their Surface Duo SDK as part of the React Native and WebPlat talks.

Read more at Microsoft’s Dev Blog here.