Live Tiles were one of Windows Phone’s most unique features. Like widgets on Android and iOS, Microsoft’s live tiles enabled apps to show information on the home screen for Weather, Calendar, Mail, Photos, news, and as well as your playlists.
Microsoft had big plans for live tiles, including much-anticipated interactive tiles that would have allowed you to control apps directly from the home screen.
Later this month, Microsoft is returning back to the smartphone hardware market, but the long-awaited Surface Duo doesn’t run its own software. While there are petitions for Microsoft to make the Surface Duo with Windows, that voice from the loyal customers probably won’t pressure the company to make such a device this year.
For those who loved live tiles on Windows Phones, Microsoft plans to offer support for Android’s interactive widgets.
Android widgets have been around for a long time and although our reliance on widgets has waned over time, there are some things like note-taking that will always work better in a widget format, especially on dual-screen hardware like the Surface Duo.
In addition, Android widgets can remain visible on one screen when you use an app on the other. Likewise, you could be more creative and productive with your widgets on the Surface Duo, thanks to its large 8.3-inch display.
As you can see in the above example shared by Microsoft, apps can provide RSS-based blog posts widget that can be added to the Android home screen. When you click on a blog post entry, the link will open in Microsoft Edge on the second display.
On the first display, you can also switch over to OneNote widget and start taking notes while reading the blog post on the second display.
Surface Duo with Android 10, Snapdragon 855, 6GB of RAM, and 11-megapixel camera is reportedly arriving the week of August 24.
