iPhone Duo
Apple (video, MacRumors, Hacker News, Slashdot):
Apple today introduced iPhone Duo, the first foldable iPhone. Opened, it is the thinnest iPhone ever, with a 7.6-inch inner display that provides a large canvas for viewing content, gaming, and multitasking, and a special nano-texture finish that minimizes glare for an unparalleled viewing experience. Closed, the 5.4-inch outer display delivers 90 percent of the screen area of iPhone 18 Pro in a compact, pocketable design. Both displays share the same aspect ratio, so content scales proportionally, ensuring visual continuity. iPhone Duo is built to last with an innovative hardware design and a precision hinge that offers a smooth, satisfying feel with every use.
[…]
The 48MP Fusion Ultra Wide camera — the same as on iPhone 18 Pro models — captures wider fields of view and enables macro photography, while the Center Stage front camera can automatically take photos and videos in any orientation, so users don’t have to rotate iPhone for landscape selfies. Upgraded Photographic Styles with new texture and grain controls let users further dial in their desired appearance and have more creative control over their photos. […] The foldable design with dual displays unlocks camera experiences that are not possible on any other iPhone.
[…]
Lock Screen controls, the Dock on the Home Screen, and app navigation and controls now appear on the side to maximize vertical space for content. When iPhone Duo is open, the display shows two Home Screen pages with Today View — a vertically scrolling list of customizable widgets — on the left. The status bar includes a circular, flexible system that nestles into the corner of the screen, showing relevant information like Wi-Fi, cellular strength, battery, and more.
[…]
The expansive display supercharges productivity, letting users do more at once with new multitasking capabilities. Split View allows users to open two apps side by side on iPhone for the first time.
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iPhone Duo is available in star white and night sky, and starts at $1,999, or $83.29 per month for 24 months, in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB storage capacities.
I love the idea of the larger screen and how it can be balanced half-folded like a laptop, upside-down, or on the short side. The camera is better than I expected. The price is high enough to make me lose interest but perhaps not unreasonable if it can actually replace your iPad. My main concern is that the wide passport-style shape doesn’t look very comfortable to hold or keep in your pocket. It’s great that it can unfold, but the compact form factor is how most people will probably hold it most of the time. How well does the side Touch ID work if you’re left-handed?
The release notes of Xcode 27 RC doesn’t contain the phrase ‘Duo’…
Learn how to update and optimize your app for the foldable display of iPhone Duo. Discover how to opt in to the full-screen experience, adopt flexible layout best practices, and simulate poses in Device Hub with Xcode. Find out how to use size classes instead of interface orientation, handle asymmetric safe areas, and test Split View multitasking to ensure your app shines in all the ways people use it …
This is like a whole new platform dropping with a month’s lead time
The app design implications alone that are now basically forced onto app developers is nuts. Vision Pro was opt in but… all iPhone apps have to support this new device right? What a nightmare. Ugh, websites? New safe areas?
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As an anecdotal data point, I’ve had my foldable OnePlus Open for over 2 and a half years. It’s fallen on tile and cement, been kicked accidentally, and swatted across a room by my cat. The hinge and screens have no problems.
Here’s the list of tech products that have the Duo moniker[…]
Previously:
- iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max
- UIKit in iOS 27
- iPhone Air
- iPhone 18 Pro Variable Camera Aperture Rumor
- Galaxy Fold Review
- Galaxy Unpacked 2019
Update (2026-09-11): Tim Hardwick:
In a joint interview with Tom's Guide and TechRadar, new Apple CEO John Ternus and marketing chief Greg Joswiak explained why the company waited until now to release a foldable, its design philosophy, and how it kept the iPhone Duo under wraps.
So here are my biggest unanswered questions from yesterday:
They said the iPhone Duo will fit in a pocket and is great for one handed operation.
Whose hands?
WHOSE POCKETS!?
The iPhone Duo does not include an Action Button, according to the device’s technical specifications page.
“The iPhone Duo’s under-display camera wasn’t placed in the top-right corner of the inner screen because of engineering difficulties,” said the leaker in a Weibo post this morning.
In the end, every Apple product—and probably every product—is a story of trade-offs. So, the thinking went, what will we give up to get the benefit of a small iPhone that unfolds into a larger iPhone?
The answer: some things, but less than I’d feared.
The company’s view is clear: the iPhone Duo, even when open in all of its glory, may evoke an iPad, but it is very much not an iPad.
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It’s not an iPad that you fold up to put in your pocket. Or an iPad with a little iPhone glued to the front. It’s not running iPadOS. You won’t be installing or running iPad apps.
Apple’s iPhone Duo is the first iPhone that can run two apps side by side, but anyone expecting the sort of freedom that Split View offers on iPad might want to temper their expectations.
I’ve been using Samsung’s latest folding phone that has a very similar form factor to what Apple just announced, and it’s gotten me accustomed to what the folding phone experience is. I personally very much like it, and it’s the most joy an Android phone has brought me in close to a decade. That said, I just watched Apple’s iPhone Duo unveiling, and it immediately made my Samsung phone feel behind the curve.
Most of the UX we saw so far was both predictable and familiar to anyone who’s played with a Samsung Z Fold (Apple did not invent screen splits, app swaps or drag and drop), and so was the camera placement.
Imagine an iPad mini in your pocket. This is my dream!
Well, you had me in the first half; not going to lie. It’s a dream, but not at $2200.
[…]
Now admittedly part of me doesn’t trust the IP68 rating Apple claims for the Duo.
Apple says that you need the Apple Pencil with USB-C for the iPhone Duo, so if you have the Apple Pencil Pro, you may be out of luck.
Charging is the least of the problems. Because the Duo doesn’t have the magnetic attachment for Pencil Pro, there’s no way to even pair a Pencil Pro.
[…]
Imagine you own an iPad Pro and a Pencil Pro, and you love using the Pencil. You’ve always wanted to be able to use a Pencil with your iPhone. Now you can, if you buy a Duo. But you also have to buy a different Pencil — and then pack two different Pencils whenever you leave the house with both your iPad and iPhone. That’s ridiculous.
Also let’s not forget that the USB-C Apple Pencil doesn’t have pressure sensitivity, so the artists are already posting their disappointed reactions. I feel like this backs up that @markgurman report that they were planning on creating a bespoke Apple Pencil for the iPhone Duo that later got cancelled, and the USB-C version is the fallback.
Previously:
Update (2026-09-14): Kirk McElhearn:
Folding smartphones are extremely popular in China: there are about as many foldables sold in China as in the rest of the world. Samsung, Google, Huawei, Motorola, Xiaomi, and other brands sell devices like this. Apple will likely sell a lot of devices in China, but given the reactions I’ve seen, they are poised to have a successful product elsewhere, in spite of the high cost.
[…]
For me, a folding phone would mean that for non-work tasks, I would have a larger display, not quite as big as my 11″ iPad Pro. I doubt I would do much work on it, but if I need to check my online accounting app or make a quick edit to an article on my blog, that larger display would be much more practical than my iPhone.
In addition, my eyesight isn’t great. Since the iPhone 8 was released with a larger screen size, I have always bought larger iPhone models. Even with that size, I need to zoom the text on my iPhone a notch above the standard size. A larger display for when I’m reading articles would be a help, not to mention a small, portable device that makes it easier to read PDFs.
I may not be the target audience, but I’m sure there are people who aren’t price-sensitive, spend a lot of time watching videos or playing games, and only ever carry their phones in a pocket or bag. But I don’t regularly encounter such people—I hear complaints about phones being too big, but never that they’re not big enough.
I’ve made my choice. I’m buying the iPhone Duo instead of the iPhone 18 Pro Max.
I do wonder whether iPhone Duo’s splitscreen multitasking mode will come back to iPad. People have been complaining all year that it went away, but it feels like Duo’s implementation is a simplified, easier-to-understand model. It might make sense to bring back in the future, especially for smaller iPads.
Update (2026-09-17): Riccardo Mori:
I really like the iPhone Duo. I like the hardware, the form factor, the construction, and how Apple has adapted iOS to work on this specific iPhone.
[…]
But, believe it or not, what makes the iPhone Duo unappealing to me is not the price. It’s not my diminished trust towards Apple as a company. It’s not even the fact that I’m slowly but surely abandoning the Apple ecosystem and don’t want another device that’ll pull me back in.
The defining aspect of the Duo isn’t that it folds open and closed — we’ve seen almost a decade of Android phones that do that — but its aspect ratio, roughly 1.4 : 1. Because that’s effectively the square root of 2, doubling the outer display’s shorter dimension when you unfold it produces an inner display with roughly the same aspect ratio. That’s elegant and satisfying conceptually. And I think in practice it will feel right, too.
[…]
This aspect ratio is so different that it demands a different UI layout for the Duo to have any chance at being a good experience. That’s exactly what Apple has done, and what Steve Lemay was there in the keynote to unveil. A lot of UI chrome that previously was at the top or bottom of the display is now on the right — the dock on the home screen, the toolbars in apps, etc. And these elements are always on the right. You can’t turn the Duo upside down to move them to the left, nor is there an accessibility setting to move them to the left. This layout puts these controls on the right not because 90 percent of people are right-handed and Apple thinks lefties can get bent, but, I think (and so I’ve been told in conversations with Cupertinoites), because that’s the nature of a book-like shape.
[…]
I’ve only spent a few minutes, in total, playing with the Duo, so I really can’t say whether it succeeds or not. But I will say that it’s weird. Not saying it’s weird good or weird bad — just weird different. In some ways iOS on the Duo feels more different from iOS on all other post-iPhone-X phones than iOS on the original iPad felt from iOS on the iPhones of that time. The original iPad just felt like a much bigger iPhone. The Duo feels like a different layout entirely, in every single app that I had time to poke around with.
[…]
If you only have one display you don’t want it to be the size and shape of the Duo’s outer display. So the questions are: How tolerable has Apple’s UI redesign made it? And how will Duo users split their time between using it closed vs. using it open?
Update (2026-09-18): Hartley Charlton:
Apple’s design team reveals how notebooks helped inspire the iPhone Duo, along with interface principles and expectations for future features, in a new interview with GQ.
Update (2026-09-23): Imthaz Ahamed:
Apple is rightly celebrated for its accessibility work. So I’m left thinking the Duo’s locked layout is a v1 limitation, and that a future software update will offer orientation flexibility. But right now, Apple’s most ambitious new iPhone in years has shipped without it. A book-shaped iPhone should be able to accommodate the people holding it on either side.
Apple hardware engineering VP Tom Marieb spoke with TechRadar and shared some candid thoughts about Apple’s upcoming iPhone Duo.
[…]
When asked if the iPhone Duo ‘s crease would be more visible over time, as that’s what tends to happen on other foldables, Marieb said the nano-texture display would help. He asked people to hold the company “accountable” on crease visibility.
Perhaps Apple would justify its USB 3.1 selectivity in reverse. The 10 Gbps transfer speeds capable with its recent Pro models are necessary for recording ProRes video to an external hard disk, after all, and professional video codecs are only available on the Pro model iPhones; ergo, those are the only iPhones that need a fast USB controller. But that is no longer an accurate reason, either, because there is now an iPhone which can do 10 Gbps USB transfers but has none of the professional camera technologies. It is the iPhone Duo. And that gives me hope that the rest of the iPhone line will catch up.
That said, the company had initially planned to build a new Apple Pencil for the Duo. It would’ve been smaller and attached to the hinge side of the iPhone Duo.
According to Bloomberg, that pencil ran into “technical problems” prior to mass production, so the company scrapped it and went with the traditional USB-C Apple Pencil.
28 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
The reason I'm on a TouchID SE3, and will never buy a FaceID iPhone; ApplePay, in a mask, and sunglasses. That's my world. That world didn't change when everyone else decided to stop masking, indeed it became more extreme.
FaceID (with a mask) is explicitly not supported while wearing sunglasses. I haven't used cash, or a physical credit / debit card for about a decade.
Every purchase, I reach into my pocket, my thumb naturally locates to the home button, I pull the phone out of my pocket and move it straight to the POS terminal, I feel / hear the beep, usually don't even bother to look at the screen, phone goes straight back into pocket.
The foldable phone, if the power button is easily discernible with a thumb, you'd slide your (left) hand over it, draw it out with your thumb on the button, and palm mostly covering the screen, put it straight to the reader, presumably press the button.
For me, I could envisage buying one of these, with no interest in the internal screen whatsoever.
Same question as you about left-hand usage: I wonder if like an Apple Watch there is a preferred orientation setting. Holding it with the hinge on the left means that the camera is in the bottom left corner though, which may push Apple to not offer this option at all; too bad for the TouchID "thumb convenience".
Too many devs and designers are freaking out over the work to support this thing. It's the same crowd that thinks they have to adopt every new feature or change come WWDC.
Just stop.
Your existence doesn't have to revolve around an evil megacorp suddenly dropping shit on your lap and giving you little time to figure it all out.
If you're there on day 1 or day 100, you're still an early adopter. You can't be this cucked to a megacorp. The more you revolve your life around Apple's dumbassery, the more Apple will keep doing it.
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The Duo looks much better than I expected, but it's $2000 for another locked-down iOS consumption device so I'll pass. It looks perfect for executives and managers who want to showcase their wealth by possessing [NOVEL EXPENSIVE TOY]. Not exactly the target market for a most app devs and their products, I think.
It took very long time for most apps to support iPhone X, and that was relatively straightforward. And it was also a completely different era in Apple developer relations. I am skeptical of how much adoption this will see outside of the podcast darling indie scene. I just don’t see it being that worth it. Even when Apple enforces support for it, I still see apps that don’t support safe areas properly and the iPhone X UX has now become standard across most phone models, whereas this will forever remain a niche product almost nobody cares about.
> iPhone apps have to support this new device right? What a nightmare.
With SwiftUI you should be able to just run watchOS apps without any code changes 😂
I think it looks great. I love that they went with a squat form factor, and I really hope they stick to it.
My only nitpick would be that my experience of combined power button and fingerprint reader is that I prefer under the display fingerprint readers.
Sometimes I just want to look at notifications or the time, without unlocking my phone.
Details...
As for left handed people I think they can just use their index finger to unlock with ease.
The tech is cool as hell (10 layer or whatever screen, hinge made of 2500 parts) and this device is for someone but it's not for me. Everything about it is asymmetric to the max, everything is weird, the cameras are all in weird places it has no faceid and everything in the ui is sideways (dock etc). It's what it takes to make a foldable today but it's not a nice balanced looking device in any way. It's for people who absolutely must carry a folded iPad mini in their pocket for whatever reason.
@Kristoffer To be fair, left-handed people already struggle with the current power button placement on relatively narrow iPhones, but with FaceID, the button is mostly used to lock the phone while putting it away, which limits the awkwardness of using the index finger to press it. Here, with TouchID on it, it would need to be pressed way more often while the phone is wider: wrapping the index finger around the phone will make this even more difficult to do. This is where a fingerprint sensor under the display makes a lot of sense.
> It's for people who absolutely must carry a folded iPad mini in their pocket for whatever reason.
I suspect a folding phone is one of those things you didn't know you needed until you've had one for a few months. I've never, not once, thought "I wish I had an iPad mini". But I never once thought "I wish my front door would unlock automatically when I come home", yet I absolutely LOVE it now that I've gotten used to it. And when I've left bluetooth off I get super annoyed at having to punch in a code.
"I suspect a folding phone is one of those things you didn't know you needed until you've had one for a few months"
This. I've had folding phones for a few years, and I'll never buy a non-folding phone again. Coincidentally, my favorite folding phone was the Surface Duo, so I'm happy to see Apple going with that form factor.
@Plume Yeah, I’m not even a live-on-your-phone person, but the idea of the larger screen really appeals to me. There are so many times it would come in handy when I’m out and about but I don’t have my iPad with me (and probably wouldn’t want to go to the trouble of pulling it out even if I did). What is the typing like in the unfolded form? I don’t think they showed much of that.
@Plume I was always intrigued by the Surface Duo.
The other thing that's a departure abut Apple's foldable, is Pencil support, which again would be a further "it can be a portable sketchbook" justification.
I'd be curious how well the internal screen handles the pen tip point loading, however.
> What is the typing like in the unfolded form?
IMO the most convenient way to type on a virtual keyboard. I've never really gotten used to virtual keyboards, and I type in a bunch of different languages, which causes all kinds of auto-correction problems. But on an unfolded phone's keyboard, the keys are roughly thumb-sized, so it's easy to hit them exactly while holding the phone in both hands and typing with both thumbs.
I always unfold my phone to type.
> I'd be curious how well the internal screen handles the pen tip point loading, however.
Foldable phone screens are more scratch-resistant than I expected. I've had my current foldable phone for about 18 months, and part of its folding screen is exposed. I just carry it in my pocket, and there are no visible scratches.
For a while, I carried a Samsung Fold with an S Pen, and using it never caused any visible scratches, either.
@Plume
> Foldable phone screens are more scratch-resistant than I expected.
I was more thinking about it sagging in under the pen tip as you cross the hinge... does it become like using a resistive touchscreen.
If one was to draw a line with steady pressure from one side to the other, would one be able to feel the hinge, or would it feel undifferentiated, like drawing across an iPad.
It doesn't sag noticeably on the hinge, but you do feel the fold when drawing over it with a pen, and you can see an artifact of that in the drawn picture.
It seems like Apple have done an exceptionally good job with the crease reduction.
YouTubers are shitting their pants with joy
I've never understood why iPhones have such giant radius curves on the corners. Clearly Apple can make it more square like they did for the left side of the exterior screen on the Duo! Would be much better for every iPhone screen to be more squared off.
But what about the left-handers?
I’m not in the market for one of these (I get too much utility out of Face ID), but I figure they can add in an option in iOS 28 that’ll be useful for left-handers and also make the UI more LTR/RTL-agnostic for people who think in Arabic and Hebrew. Not everything useful needs to make it into the 1.0.
Not really impressed by the design of this thing. Unfolded, it looks fine. Folded it looks embarrassing like most foldable phones.
This would explain why there are no photos of the side of this thing fully folded on the Apple's product page.
Considering how much more device there is with this compared to an SE 3 or 13 mini, I'm impressed it's only about 4 oz./112g heavier.
>Kristoffer
>I suspect a folding phone is one of those things you didn't know you needed until you've had one for a few months.
Dude, get off the hedonic treadmill. There’s no end to the things they can upsell you on and there’s no end to the things we can become acclimatized to. Why go down that road any further when it just means your comfort is controlled by a corporation who knows this and will purposely cause discomfort to shake you down for more money?
@Ben G
> I've never understood why iPhones have such giant radius curves on the corners.
If I was going to hazard a guess at a practical reason, I'd suspect it's to do with impact resistance, and how force is distributed on a larger radius curve, vs focussed on a pointed corner.
Probably also something about pocket entry / exit, and the likelihood of snagging the corner, leading to dropping the phone.
>Dude, get off the hedonic treadmill.
I agree that these Apple events are a lot about making people think what was completely amazing a year ago is now embarrassingly outdated, and I should ABSOLUTELY buy this new version (that will be laughable in a year).
That's not what I was trying to say wrt folding phones.
I have noticed a couple of times that there are things you simply can't know if their good or bad until you try them. A door that unlocks itself, 3D printers, VR helmets are three examples where experiencing the product completely changed my opinion on them.
Conversely, the first time I saw a pizza I instantly knew I'd like it.
Wow. Kudos to Gruber for getting the name right (even if he hedged it against "Ultra").
I wonder if the rest of the industry will follow Apple's naming scheme and leapfrog ahead with the "Trio" or "Quattro" or even "Quadio" (hell, let's bring back quadraphonic sound while we're at it?!).
"I’m sure there are people who aren’t price-sensitive, spend a lot of time watching videos or playing games, and only ever carry their phones in a pocket or bag."
What about people who use apps that work better on larger screens (like book readers), or who want to use two apps at the same time without constant switching? That's what I mainly use my folding phone for, not videos or games.
"I hear complaints about phones being too big, but never that they’re not big enough."
The Duo is smaller than most other phones, not larger.
