Foundry
Unfortunately, he majority of popular apps are not yet updated for the Duo, even more than a week after launch. Some, such as Gmail, TikTok, Reddit, or Google Maps, are built using the iOS 27.0 SDK and can therefore resize to mostly fill the inside display. But they don’t understand the size of the device they’re on so they don’t make practical use of the Duo. For example, my Gmail inbox is just stretched across the whole screen instead of showing folders and a reading panel, for example. It’s better than an app that doesn’t use the space at all, but next to other apps that treat the Duo properly, it’s still not great.
Worse, there are just scores of everyday apps that haven’t updated to the iOS 27 SDK yet, and just appear in an iPhone-shaped window in the middle of the screen with huge black bars around it. Turn the Duo to portrait orientation and it’ll float in the middle with black bars all around and a return of the old iPad “expand” button to double-size the app to fill the screen. But this is actually worse, because the interfaces are designed around a smaller-size device and become really cumbersome and hard to reach on an open iPhone Duo.
It’s an awful experience, and it stings all the more because you paid over $2,000 for it. And there are so many popular and oft-used apps in this category: Google Home, Ring, Uber, Teams, Snapchat, Hulu, nearly every popular mobile game, Venmo, Google Docs, Audible, almost all the credit card and banking apps… the list of “black-bar apps” goes on and on and includes scores of the top names.
Foundry
You can always run two apps side by side, wether they’re optimized for the Duo or not, and you can drag and drop content between them. It’s a simple and intuitive multitasking experience that requires absolutely no learning curve; it’s just like running two iPhones side by side. It makes me wish Apple would actually pare back the iPad multitasking experience to match. Sometimes less is more.
