| ▲ | anonu 4 hours ago |
| As a recent Android foldable phone owner (Google Pixel), I'm excited that the Duo will get developers to actually design apps for foldables. Right now, some apps don't work at all and others are just stretched. I feel a better use of the screen space is around the corner for both Android foldable and Duo users. |
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| ▲ | cosmic_cheese 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| As a dev who regularly works on apps for both platforms, I think one of the main causes for poor support for form factors beyond a standard smartphone on Android boils down to Google refusing to give developers fully fleshed out APIs to support said form factors. Instead, they just hand you some poorly documented loose parts in a box and tell you, “good luck” and you’re on your own to fill the gaps. Compose is a little better about giving the tools you need than the preceding Android Framework, but it’s still much more “assembly required” and “batteries not included” than the UIKit+SwiftUI world is. Many iOS apps built using system components will behave 90%+ correctly on the Duo by just compiling against the iOS 27.1 SDK because there are well supported methods of doing things that Apple can leverage to reduce dev work. In contrast, on Android there's 10 ways of doing anything none of which get full-throated support (on top of all the other ways devs invent), and so any time it gains support for a new form factor almost nothing is automatic and it all falls on the devs’ shoulders. |
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| ▲ | fchicken 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Instead, they just hand you some poorly documented loose parts in a box and tell you, “good luck” and you’re on your own to fill the gaps. Google is fundamentally a spy company, not a product company | | | |
| ▲ | well_ackshually 23 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | ??? WindowSizeClasses, Postures, Navigation3, ListDetailScaffolds, the list goes on. Android & Compose is pretty much flawless when it comes to develop for it, it's thoroughly documented and works well. Layouts will not magically be not dog shit on iOS because Apple put out another version of SwiftUI that you can't use in prod because nobody has the update. 90% of the apps will be stretched. Horizontally. The reality of it is, it's pretty much never worth it to make layouts that are specialised for foldables/tablets. Also, it's pretty fucking funny to be worshipping Apple like that when they have a single device to support, and then complain about Android that literally had to pave the way and today works on phones that can unfold three times, phones like the galaxy Z Flip that have instead half screens, etc. Apple will tell you they can't back port dynamic islands on last year's release, while latest Compose is happily running on devices from 10 years ago. |
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| ▲ | seanalltogether 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > "A large fraction of the flaws in software development are due to programmers not fully understanding all the possible states their code may execute in." This is a quote from John Carmack and should sit over every developers monitor. At the same time, OS designers should be doing everything in their power to reduce the number of states a developer has to think about. |
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| ▲ | torginus 8 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Like one of the things I hate about frontend development - and admire people who do this professionally - is the stupid and arbitrary rules browsers impose on you. 'You may only play audio if such and such conditions are met. However these are different based on browser and platform. Good luck making a solution fitting all these.' 'The browser might lie about what's the available screen estate is, but only sometimes' 'There is a perfect API for what you wanna do, however it's not in Safari' And a testament on how obscure and arcane knowledge is on doing things right is that I thought there would be some npm packages that do these things for me, but no - you have to hunt around for solutions and fix things yourself. And LLMs are completely useless and confidently wrong mostly about everything involving this. |
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| ▲ | kccqzy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It would depend on the sales volume. For a long time the iPad has been available and many developers simply are content to have a stretched version of their iPhone app on their iPad, because the sales volume isn’t sufficient. If foldable phones sell like iPads, this could very well happen to them too. |
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| ▲ | sajithdilshan 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Exactly, I remember until recently even instagram didn’t have a proper iPad app that uses the complete screen space |
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| ▲ | Readerium 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I don't want to be pessimistic, but I can see a single app now showing two different feeds to doomscroll. |
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| ▲ | etchalon 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Developers will design apps for Apple's foldables. |
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| ▲ | bel8 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Cross-platform is a thing. If anyting, Apple stands to gain from what was already developed for Android. Like https://developer.android.com/phones-tablets-foldables Which targets iOS also: https://kotlinlang.org/compose-multiplatform | | |
| ▲ | raydev 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | React Native and Flutter are way more popular than KMM/CM, and yet both have struggled to support even small iOS visual changes in a timely fashion. This is ignoring the fact that developers who choose these cross-platform frameworks don't seem to care much about quality and general polish. | |
| ▲ | balder1991 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It is a thing to some extent, but there’s also a correlation of companies that do cross-platform for simple apps being cheap on development, and making it work very well on some specific platform isn’t their priority. |
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| ▲ | can16358p 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thought it will bring "desiging for foldables" onto the table which would benefit Android foldables too. |
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