Surface Duo SDK Isn’t (Just) for Developers (Premium)

It’s somewhat ironic to me that after criticizing Microsoft for so long for its inability to communicate effectively that the company this week slipped out a stealth communiqué of staggering proportions. I hope it was purposeful, because I’d like to believe that there’s still a spark left in a part of the company that, frankly, hasn’t exactly been firing on all cylinders.

I’m referring, of course, to yesterday’s release of the first preview version of the Surface Duo SDK, which seems on the, ahem, surface to be aimed solely at developers. But it’s not.

I woke up this morning surprised to discover that at least a few non-developer bloggers had successfully gotten an early version of Surface Duo running in the Android Studio emulator. I had always intended to check this out, had, in fact, been harboring a secret desire to write a basic app that would work properly in this new type of system. But how had these guys overcome the many technical hurdles that using Android Studio presents so quickly? I had to find out.

Turns out, they didn’t. Yes, you do have to install Android Studio to use the Surface Duo emulator. But you don’t have to create a new application project in this byzantine IDE, nor do you have to try and figure out how to get the emulator properly installed and configured for Android Studio. You just … install it. And then it runs, as an SDK. It’s so easy even a child can do it.

And that, folks, is clearly the point.

Microsoft doesn’t want only developers to take a peek at Surface Duo and its new capabilities. Instead, this release was aimed right down the gullet of the enthusiast community. It was specifically designed so that people like you and I would look at it and get excited about a future of dual-screen devices. All you have to do is run an EXE and—bam!—there it is. Surface Duo. Running right there in a window on your PC.

And if you can, I strongly recommend running this emulator on a multi-touch PC like Surface Pro to get the full effect. Yes, you can navigate around the environment using a mouse and keyboard, and see how Microsoft has tailored its custom Android launcher for two screens. But you can only get the full effect, for now, with a Surface Pro or similar, since you can swipe, drag, and press and hold with your fingers naturally. As you would—maybe will, as Microsoft hopes—on the final, shipping hardware.

But whatever the PC, the emulator provides a nice peek at what Microsoft is planning for 2020. You can run apps and move them from display to display, but you can’t (easily) install new apps: Google Play Store is not included. The built-in apps are just the basics, and there aren’t much of Microsoft’s own offerings beyond Edge and SwiftKey, at least for now.

From what I can see, each display appears to act as its own Android device from a window management perspective (aside from the fact that you can drag an app window over from the other display). The act of dragging a window between displays is pretty natural, too: You swipe up from the bottom to display the task switcher and then just continue by dragging the large app thumbnail over to the other display. It’s very discoverable.

(That said, task switching is weird because the app thumbnails are vertical, not horizontal, as is typical on Android.)

Put simply, if you’re excited about Surface Duo specifically, or about dual-display devices more generally, you’re going to want to install both Android Studio and Microsoft’s Surface Duo emulator to check this out. I can’t believe I waited this long myself. And now I’m even more curious about the developer experience. I’ll look at that next.

– Android Studio

– Surface Duo Emulator

– Microsoft’s instructions if you need them

PS: Don’t forget to try portrait mode!