On a recent live stream.
I have my good friend Craig Don on from the service duo team where
we added dual screen to the board, to my mind cadence application.
And that led to a bunch of questions about foldables and the future
of them for software developers.
So Craig and I break it down.
From Coveo.
Um, they've been using the duo and they were struck with this feeling
that foldables, and these types of dual screen devices are very useful,
especially in work scenarios are wondering what are our views, James
and Craig experts in the field.
Do you see foldables as another foreign factor between tablets and smartphones
or a dedicated segment of devices?
Which can do completely new things that the other two
form factors don't allow for.
Ooh, it's a ladder.
What excites you?
Well, uh, that's, uh, there's a lot into that.
Um, I think the answer is kind of a bit of both.
Like it, it is a new form factor and I think, you know, the obvious
reasoning behind that is that it's the size of a phone, right?
So when it's folded this one or the other ones in the category,
it will still fit in your pocket.
Right.
It's inherently portable in a way that at a tablet generally is.
'cause, you know, even the smallest of tablets, generally, isn't going to
fit into your pocket unless you're, you know, a fan of color pants.
So, you know, it's going to be with you in many more places than a tablet would be.
Um, and, but then when it's, when you're using it, it has
as much space as a tablet.
Um, so, you know, if you want to do real work real work in, in air quotes,
um, you know, there's enough space on the screen to be able to see.
And kind of furthermore, like even versus having a tablet, there's a few areas
and times where this form factor, we're having something kind of folded over
like this, um, can be super helpful.
So one of them is like just participating in a teams meeting or
a conference call a zoom, any other like trademarks, like video calling
thing that you want to mention.
Um, the, the, the service duo and, and other foldables.
Popped up on a desk or propped up on a window sill or something very neatly with
the front-facing camera, looking at you, uh, and the meeting happening in front
of you and with a whole other screen to type chat, um, you know, to, to view a
PowerPoint, to do whatever you want to do.
You know, in a way that you would do on a desktop, like you'd be multitasking, we'd
have two windows open side by side, right.
Um, and this form factor lets you do that in a mobile way.
That is much harder to do on any, you know, candy sticks, aisle,
you know, single screen phone and the same kind of goes for.
I'm actually working.
So I've seen people tweeting and I've seen, I love when people tweet
at us the use cases for the device, um, and folks are using, um, vs
code online by GitHub code spaces.
Um, and they're actually just got a web browser with code, you know, backed
by, you know, a sort of based, um, VM.
And that's the whole top screen, like a view of their website
and the keyboards on the bottom.
And they're doing, you know, you're not going to code like that for eight
hours a day, but to jump in and do a quick code review or a spelling check,
or, you know, for small development tasks, uh, it's much more doable.
And on this kind of device in this posture than, you know, a tablet is
a, is a bit clumsier because you're, you're typing like this and a phone.
You just don't have enough space to get to do both of those things.
So I think that the, the form factor in the questions asking about, um, being
useful for work, I think that it is a lot more useful for a lot of those ways.
And even just having two apps side by side, like the ability to drag and drop
from PowerPoint into outlook and from outlook into your outlook calendar, um,
the, the style of work that you do on your desktop, when you have multiple
screens open and kind of referring to data between them is a lot easier on this.
Uh, than a regular phone.
Um, and it's about the same as a tablet, you know, tablets have
that multitasking ability as well.
But again, it comes back to this goes in your pocket and it's always with you.
So it's, you know, it's not revolutionary in terms of, you know,
uh, it just does a lot of things better than one or the other of the,
the, you know, phone or tablet device.
So, and I'm really interested to see, you know, people will
continue to think of new.
To, to take this one factor into, um, more productivity
scenarios and stuff like that.
Yeah.
I think it reminds me a lot of when Nintendo came out with the Nintendo
DS, the dual screen device, and it was this a no portable before I'd
ever been, you know, a dual screen never had really had a touch screen.
I mean, there were some, but combine this technology into one and it was up to
developers to make software and games for that device that unlocked its potential.
I think the dual screen devices today have the advantage.
You can do some scenarios and apps work out of the box in many scenarios,
like you were just describing, right?
One, like you said, you can just use this device as a phone in a
single, in a single fashion here.
Same thing with all the Samsung devices.
Like it is can be just a phone.
If that's your scenario that you want to use it for the most, but
I don't use my phone as a phone.
I never try to try to make phone calls on my, my computer if I can,
where I think the other scenario is what you're talking about.
Already applications.
We'll just kind of work out of the box to do split screen or side by side
or another advantage of, of that is like multiple tabs on multiple sides.
Um, my wife was just returning some merchandise.
She needed to go online to the online chat, to chat with them about a refund.
And she had, she tried to do it on her iPhone.
Um, and, and basically it says, you know, do not like press any buttons.
Don't go anywhere.
Don't do anything.
Like if you close this chat window and that's not what it's made for, it's
made for a popup on, on a, on a desktop.
That's what you had to go over there and do that, not to say that it's
impossible to do on your iPhone or your Android, just normal phone, but having
the ability to do multiple things or have that space at something isn't going
to come up and interrupt it is really.
Um, but yeah, I think that it's more than just the worst center.
I could see the game scenarios for it.
And of course I think, yeah, definitely as a companion, but the
key of it is for these devices.
One less device to carry around.
If that's your scenario.
Like if you are a towel, if you're always carrying around a tablet and a
phone, it can re you know, replace that into a singular form factor to be a
companion, um, to your main desktop setup.
So for me, I am excited about them.
I'm even more excited as we're seeing more come out.
I think that's what excites me about it.
The innovation coming from, um, from not only from the service, do a
team, but also from Samsung and other vendors that are out there creating
devices, because the more there are the more, you know, encouragement that
means for developers to go create.
And up, you know, enhance their applications for it because the one
thing that you don't want to have is, and what my fear is, if we test
my cadence on my device is they put it into the dual screen longer form.
And then it's a bad experience and that you get a one star review for that device.
You're going to be encouraged to go update your application for it.
But I don't see these devices going anywhere.
Forever.
We've been in thrawled with multi display phones and tablets, everything,
a Westworld with the folding out tablets, the three screens that are on there.
Right.
We're we, we love, that's all.
We love our tablets.
They closed down, they open up.
So to me, they're here for the longterm.
I think we're just going to see more innovation in the space.
Let me get thinner.
They're going to get lighter.
They're going to have more features and gizmos on them.
And.
There'll be nice.
And especially if you're looking at like the full, is that folds, like
the third version of it or whatever, second for a second or third?
Yeah.
Third.
They just released the full three, maybe.
So it's like, you continue to see the innovation there.
So that's, that's my answer there.
Yeah.
Actually, before we move on, I can't believe I forgot gaming.
Like Xbox game pass, like was out maybe six months ago
now for the surface, do you.
And in that situation, like you're streaming games, like from the cloud
on the top screen and the controller is on the bottom screen and the
controller is adapting to the game style that you're planning and the.
Easily, just search for game pass surface.
You are, you'll see videos and folks you've seen everywhere, but it's
an amazing experience just today.
Someone was tweeting about X-Box game pass on the surface.
You vote the beach, um, which is like totally separately.
Like you can spend hours just playing games in, in this foreign factor
and, uh, having a good experience.
So yeah, there's stuff that, you know, you didn't originally think of that, that it.
Uh, now I got to go and saw game pass on my spies up on there.
Awesome.
Uh, we have went to other questions.
Oh my goodness.
There's so many questions.
Um, hopefully that answered the question with the whole
point of forms being shared.
Do we think iOS will ever migrate to foldables you'll have
to ask iOS about that formal.
Um, I don't know.
Well, there's an apple event in four days.
I'm pretty excited.
I'm excited for it.
I think, I think we're just going to get, what is it, iPhone 13 on there's going to
be anything special and maybe a new watch.
Right?
So, yup.
Yup.
Always.
Yeah.
I th I mean, the question ends with, uh, it feels Android specific.
Um, I guess like, yeah, because all of the phones are Android phones right now.
The ICO iPhone ecosystem is one manufacturer, but, um, you know,
if it becomes hugely popular on Android, You know, that's going to
be hard for, you know, other OEMs to ignore whether it's apple or not.
So who's to say, but, um, if you're building, for example, xamarinforms,
you're still trying to do that responsive design between the se
phone, which is four inches and the pro max phones, which are six inches.
And then the iPad mini, which is like six and a half inches and right
up to the iPad pro, which is 12.
So the actual thinking that I described earlier, where you actually want
to try and have a user experience that, that scales through all of
those, uh, you can do that and have it work on iOS and Android.
And also within this little niche of, you know, Android foldables.
Um, so even though the, the bolding bit is, um, Andrei specific for
now, the thinking about responsive apps and responsive layouts, I
think applies to both ecosystems.
And if you're on tamarind phones, you're building for both and
controls, like two pane view are going to be able to help you.
Uh, even if you don't particularly care about the surface you are right now.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
And I think that that's a good point.
It's like, I want to take the app.
If I do some optimizations, just open it.
My iPad, which is actually what I used to cycle on and then see what it looks like.
Cause that could be pretty nice.
I hope you enjoyed this live stream highlight and if you like more live
stream highlights, let me know.
I live stream pretty much kind of every other ish of Friday on twitch.tv/james
Monza, Magno cover all sorts of topics.
If you have suggestions, leave them in the comments below.
Code live, or if you have questions about foldables for Craig or for me, let me
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