Microsoft released the Surface Duo emulator and preview SDKs last month to get developers on board and begin the narrative about development for dual-screened devices. The Surface Duo is expected to be released sometime later this year and runs Android. The preview SDK is receiving an update, labeled the 02202020 update (based on the date of release) that brings with it a few improvements.
The release includes bug fixes and improvements to how display sizes are reported to apps and modifications to the DisplayMask API to improve app compatibility. The firm notes that it found some inconsistencies with how “activity, window, and display metrics were returned to apps and games”. To combat the inconsistencies, the way that display sizes are reported has been changed to provide apps with appropriate display sizes that the app is running on.
- For apps on a single display, windows and display metrics will be related to a single display
- For apps across both displays, window and display metrics will be in relation to both displays, including the display mask
There are also updates to the DisplayMask API that provides appropriate details to an app relative to the display metrics. The company adds that the API has been updated to return a “bounding rectangle relative to the display metrics” to ensure that apps that use this API can accommodate the hardware hinge and for spanning across the displays.
The apps that use the API will run in one of the following scenarios:
- App running in single screen mode: DisplayMask will be an empty list
- App running in spanned mode: DisplayMask = hinge mask rectangle
Additionally, another change that is part of this update relates to the Duo Image Build Flavor. It is now a USER build and not USERDEBUG. You can read about the changes in detail in the blog post here. You can download the SDK preview from here.
Source: Microsoft DevBlogs via WindowsCentral
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