Apple’s iPhone Duo launches with foldable trade-offs, Touch ID, and high pricing

Macworld My first reaction, while watching the iPhone Duo segment of Apple’s Surprise and Shine press event on Wednesday, was a simple one: I’d really like to try it. Which is saying something for a cynical journalist who’s been covering events like these for more than two decades, and speaks to the near-miraculous way Apple managed to sell a device with all kinds of compromises and limitations. For one thing, it’s a foldable, and foldables have problems pretty much baked into the format. Ahead of the launch, leakers led us to believe that Apple had solved the crease, for example, but it’s since become apparent that the iPhone Duo very much has a visible crease, albeit one that’s less visible than those of rival products. And that’s based on people’s first impressions at the launch event. The real test will be how the screen bears up to hundreds of repeated folds over the months and years that a product at this price needs to last. Ditto the hinge, which looks great in those minimalist white-background mockups Apple is so fond of but is an obvious point of weakness, and potentially failure, for every folding device. Will it stand up to six months of folding without growing stiff, or loose, or crunchy, or breaking entirely? Will it manage three years? Apple’s pedigree when it comes to hardware design is strong, but this is a new venture in an area where the company’s engineering work is so far unproven. Apple is asking customers to take a leap of faith. That hinge has a lot to live up to.Apple In other areas, as with the iPhone Air before it, the Duo feels like a step backwards: some compromises have been necessary in order to achieve the new form factor. They’re different compromises than those on the Air, but annoying ones nonetheless. Most notably, Apple has dropped Face ID on its flagship iPhone, with the Duo instead relying on a Touch ID sensor embedded in the side button like the iPad mini. The last iPhone to use fingerprints for unlocking rather than facial recognition was the 2022 iPhone SE, which was not a premium device. You could buy four of those for the price of an iPhone Duo and still have enough money for two pairs of AirPods 5. It’s not a flattering comparison for Apple’s latest and greatest handset. The Duo is also bulky to an old-fashioned extent. It’s 11.3mm thick when closed, thicker than any iPhone since the iPhone 4. At 254g it’s heavier than any previous iPhone. Yet when unfolded it’s just 5.2mm thick, which is even thinner than the iPhone Air. So you’re getting the worst of both worlds: it has the physical worries of a super-thin device, but the inconvenience of a very thick one. It’ll fit in a jeans pocket, no doubt, but it’ll be more of a squeeze than most of us are used to, particularly if you plan to put it in a case. The camera setup is solid but, by the standards of flagship smartphones, hardly remarkable. There’s no variable aperture, since that’s an exclusive feature on the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max. Nor is there a telephoto lens. Your optical zoom capabilities are outclassed not just by the 18 Pro, but by the five-year-old iPhone 13 Pro. (The Duo also can’t shoot in ProRAW, if that’s a priority for you, nor can it take spatial photos and videos.) Again, not a flattering comparison. Where are the rest of the color options?Apple Customers are even short-changed on the color options, which are limited to the tedium of white and Night Sky, which appears to be a very slightly bluish black. As well as the default white and black, buyers of the 18 Pro get burgundy and that nice Glacier sky blue, while iPhone 17 buyers can choose Lavender, Sage, and Mist Blue. But the Duo is stuck in the same black-and-white world as the ancient iPhone 5 and the mid-price iPhone 16e. But in the end, the biggest weakness of all is that appalling, hypnotic price tag: $1,999 for the absolute entry level, scaling up to the giddy heights of $3,199 if you want the maximum 2TB of storage. The appeal of a foldable is that it’s two things at once, a single device capable of offering the utility of a mid-size smartphone or a small tablet depending on your needs. That remains a compelling sales pitch. But you can buy an iPhone 18 Pro and a current-gen iPad mini for a combined $1,798, less than the Duo. You could even upgrade the iPad mini to an iPad Air and still come out a few bucks ahead. At a price like that, the Duo needs to be more than dazzling; it needs to be perfect. And perfect devices don’t have this many limitations. I still want to try it, though. For more coverage, check out The 5 most important things you need to know about the iPhone Duo.

As someone who’s enjoyed foldable phones for several years now, I’m glad Apple’s gotten around to making one. The iPhone Duo, which launches on October 23 for $1,999, looks a bit like a passport when it’s folded up, and it unfurls to reveal an inner display that resembles a small tablet. While foldable phones have been around for years, Apple believes it has arrived at a better design than its Android-based rivals. I can’t yet say whether that’s true, but after using all kinds of foldable phones over the years, I can give you a rough sense of what living with the Duo will be like. Even the best foldables come with trade-offs, and Apple’s will too. Video is the best use case With the iPhone Duo, Apple is emphasizing versatility. You can run two apps side-by-side, prop the phone up like a tent for Apple’s StandBy mode, and take selfies with the superior outer cameras while the cover display provides a preview. That stuff is all nice, and you’ll feel especially satisfied on the occasions that you use them. But whenever I’m using a foldable phone, I always gravitate back to video. Being able to summon a larger screen from your pocket for movies, shows, and sports feels like a superpower no matter which foldable phone you use. Split-screen also comes in handy for video, as you still get a decent-sized view while being able to read or check email. (The proportions of the Duo and Samsung’s Fold8 are both better for this than the taller book-shaped foldables of years past.) The second-best use case is nothing in particular If you’re still wondering what a foldable phone is for, consider this: A small tablet is simply more enjoyable to hold than a phone. You can cradle it in both hands, control it with your thumbs, and have more room to read, type, and play games. Reading an e-book on a foldable feels decidedly less sad than squinting at a phone screen. The use cases may be largely the same, but the experience is better. [Screenshot: Apple] It’ll be harder to use with one hand I’ve been using Samsung’s Fold8, which has nearly the same proportions as the Duo, on and off for the past month. Compared to earlier book-style foldables, this format is more pocket-friendly, and the inner screen’s proportions make more sense for video. But no matter what Apple says, one-handed use is a compromise. Stretching your thumb across the screen will take some careful posturing, and you may find the phone more difficult to grasp if your hands are on the smaller side. Apple is trying to cover for this with some software optimizations, putting menu items and the app dock in a strip along the side of the screen, but that won’t prevent you from having to reach to the opposite side. Ultimately, you’ll sacrifice a bit of the normal phone experience in exchange for that glorious inner display. That thing where you split a book into separate pages on each half of the screen isn’t really that great Roughly 90% of the people who’ve seen one of my foldable phones ask whether you can crease it like a hardcover book and read with separate pages on each half of the screen. Yes, you can do this—Apple briefly showed it during its presentation—but you probably won’t want to. Because each half of the inner screen is about the size of a regular phone, reading those cramped pages is far less enjoyable than using an e-reader or, you know, a physical book. It makes for a great demo, but you’ll probably end up going back to a single page that spans the full inner screen, more like an iPad Mini or Kindle. You’ll get used to the thumbprint reader Apple couldn’t make Face ID work within the confines of its first foldable, so you’re back to using Touch ID to unlock it. Like most other foldable phones, the fingerprint reader is built into the power button along the side of the screen. It’ll be awkward at first, but quickly you’ll develop the muscle memory of resting your right-hand thumb on the power button whenever the phone leaves your pocket. (I also suggest adding your left index finger to Touch ID so you can wrap it around the power button as needed.) You might even come to prefer fingerprint readers again, since they can unlock your phone regardless of whether you’re looking straight at it. The photo features will be less useful than you expect Folding the iPhone Duo out partway so you can prop it up for group photos sounds great, until you realize there’s no great place to put the phone other than the ground. How often do you see folks pose for selfies with their phones held out low? It’s pretty much the least flattering angle for a photo. Using the phone’s outer display to preview yourself while taking selfies with the rear camera is more helpful, but it’s also a bit clumsy in practice. Think about taking a selfie with an iPad Mini and you’ll see what I mean. (It’s great, though, if you’re taking photos of others. It’s even better if you can impress a stranger with your cool foldable phone by having them take a group photo for you.) There’s fun accessory potential Over the years I’ve had a blast not merely using the phone by itself, but pairing it with a foldable keyboard to use as a miniature workstation, or plugging in a grip-style game controller for playing retro game emulators. I bet we’ll see some creative cases and accessories specifically for these kinds of use cases, especially with the iPhone Duo’s MagSafe support. The best part is that it’s an iPhone Invariably when I show someone an Android-based foldable phone, the reaction is along the lines of this is really cool, but I could never switch from an iPhone. I get it. While I’ve personally made a point of being ecosystem-agnostic, most iPhone users are not going to give up things like iMessage, FaceTime, and iCloud Photos (not to mention AirPods and Apple Watches) just to embrace a foldable phone. The lock-in effect is real, and if Apple was not going to sell a foldable phone, iPhone users were not going to buy one. Now that Apple has addressed the foldable gap in its iPhone lineup, everyone (or, rather, everyone with $2,000 to spare) can get in on the fun. Even if foldable phones have trade-offs, there’s no type of phone I’d rather be using.