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.

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.

> "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.

I don't want to be pessimistic, but I can see a single app now showing two different feeds to doomscroll.

My immediate thought seeing this design was how expensive this is going to be for companies to get their existing apps to look good on this thing.

> I'm excited that the Duo will get developers to actually design apps for foldables.

For Apple foldables yes. Not Android.

Same here. I ditched the google pixel fold after a year because the hardware had some issues, also tbh I prefer the iOS ecosystem. I’m so glad this is coming out.

Developers will design apps for Apple's foldables.

> a better use of the screen space is around the corner

I see what you did there :)

> As a recent Android foldable phone owner (Google Pixel)

"There are dozens of us!" (not me though, I wouldn't buy a Pixel foldable)