Surface Duo at Microsoft Build

Hello developers!

Microsoft Build starts today with a keynote by Satya Nadella. The session catalog includes several Microsoft Surface sessions for developers looking to enhance their mobile applications for Surface Duo. Join the Surface Duo Developer Experience team in a mix of live and on-demand sessions that will help you build amazing experiences for dual-screen and foldable Android devices. We’ve highlighted a few of the sessions you may be interested in below.

Application design and development for Android dual-screen and foldable devices

In this session, Andy Himberger and I give an overview of Surface Duo, the unique experiences you can create with dual-screen devices, and dive into a Microsoft Outlook case study. They’ll also cover user experience design patterns, cross-platform developer tools that can target Surface Duo, and all the details of the SDK for Kotlin and Java developers.

Visit MyBuild to watch this on-demand session any time!

Ask the Experts

This is a live and interactive question and answer session on building Android apps for Surface Duo.

Register now and join us on Thursday, May 27th at 7am Pacific Daylight Time (10am Eastern). We’ll be ready for questions on building dual-screen apps with Kotlin and Java, Xamarin, React Native, Flutter, Unity, and the web. In addition, Mehul Shah will be joining us to talk about foldable app user experiences.

Deeper skilling sessions

There are three developer-focused sessions that cover some of the different platforms for building apps for Surface Duo. These sessions are available now to view online.

Developing dual-screen apps with Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms

This session focuses on the Microsoft Learn module Building a dual-screen Xamarin.Forms app and will walk through the steps to enhance an existing Xamarin.Forms application using TwoPaneView, and show how it results in a responsive layout that works well on phones, foldables, and dual screen devices, and larger screens like tablets.

Developing dual-screen web apps

Microsoft Edge supports CSS and JavaScript enhancements for dual-screen devices. The additional media queries and environment variables make it easy to extend your responsive design to also account for folds and hinges.

Web developers should also check out the Ask the experts: Microsoft Edge session on Wednesday, May 26th at 3pm PDT (6pm EDT) to learn more.

Dual-screen native SDKs and samples

Cesar Valiente walks through all the resources available for Kotlin and Java developers to build apps for Surface Duo.

Tips & tricks live

Drop in for some developer tips and tricks with Joy Liu at 6:30am Pacific Daylight Time (9:30am Eastern) on Thursday, May 27th. Joy will be showing how to implement some dual-screen features in your apps using Kotlin and Android Studio.

Resources and feedback

Quick links to all the sessions mentioned above:

Visit the complete session catalog to plan your Microsoft Build 2021 experience.

Visit the Surface Duo developer documentation and past blog posts for other ideas on enhancing your apps for dual-screen devices.

If you have any questions, or would like to tell us about your apps, use the feedback forum, message us on Twitter @surfaceduodev.

Finally, please join us at 11am PST each Friday in your calendar to visit twitch.tv/surfaceduodev and check out the archives on YouTube. This week we’ll review all the latest news from Build.