Earlier today, Microsoft released the first emulator for the Surface Duo. And if you"re excited about the product, obviously it"s worth taking a look at. Of course, it"s not nearly finished, and it"s pretty unstable, but it does show a bit of what to expect with Microsoft"s upcoming Android phone.
The build of Android running on the Duo Emulator is AOSP (Android Open Source Project), so there aren"t any Google apps. If you"ve ever ran a true AOSP build, then you know what to expect. There are only a handful of Microsoft apps pre-installed, including Edge, SwiftKey, and Microsoft Launcher.
At this point, you"d still get a better feel for what"s to come with the Surface Duo by running the Microsoft Launcher preview app on your own phone. What we can see from the emulator is just how certain things work right now. For example, you can easily move apps to the other screen from multitasking, or that when you launch an app, the three icons on the dock move to the other screen to combine with that side"s dock.
Check out the hands on video below: