Image credit: Apple
Apple has announced the iPhone Duo, its first folding phone. It starts at $1,999 with 256GB of storage and goes up to 2TB. Pre-orders will open Friday, October 16, and the phone will be in stores Friday, October 23. That puts it up against two book-style foldables already on sale in the US, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 at $1,899.99 and the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold at $1,899. I think the price is fair. I wish it were cheaper, but given where flagship prices are this year, I can't complain much.
When you open the Duo, you get a 7.6-inch screen, with a 5.4-inch screen on the outside. Both screens have the same proportions, so an app will look the same when you unfold the phone, only bigger. It's 5.2mm thick open and 11.3mm closed, with a titanium frame and an IP68 rating for dust and water. You get two colors, Star White and Night Sky. There's no Face ID on the Duo. Touch ID is built into the side button instead, so you'll unlock it the same way whether it's open or closed, which I prefer on a foldable. The Duo is also eSIM-only in every country, which Apple says freed up room inside for the batteries.
What Apple says about the crease
The crease is typically the thing that reminds you, every time you unfold your phone, that you're using a foldable. Apple seems to be fixing that with its matte nano-texture finish on the inner screen, which it says will minimize crease visibility and cut glare. Under it there's a hinge with over 100 parts, a titanium plate, and glass layers on custom adhesives that will let them glide against each other as the phone folds.
Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 has a titanium layer to flatten its crease. Oppo's Find N6 has a titanium hinge certified for 600,000 folds. I've used Oppo's foldables daily for almost four years, and the N6 got the crease down to the point where you stop thinking about it. I don't expect Apple's take to be weaker than Oppo's. Apple does this kind of quiet engineering often, so it seems likely that it has kept the crease to a minimum. However, I'll still wait to see it in person before I can confidently say that Apple has succeeded in that department.
The Duo is on the heavy side, but the size may be perfect
The Duo weighs 254 grams. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 weighs 201 grams, and the Oppo Find N3 I used for a long stretch, still one of my favorites, weighs 239 grams. Foldables getting lighter has been important to how usable they are, so I hope a lot of that weight is battery and not just the overall build (Apple has a cell on each side of the hinge, and the phone will balance the two as you use it). The Duo is also a shorter, denser slab than the Fold 8 when closed, so it may feel fine in the hand. That being said, the Apple's higher weight may still be bothersome to a lot of people.
On the flip side (pun intended), this is the first 5.4-inch iPhone since Apple retired the iPhone 13 mini. As someone who bought both the iPhone 12 mini and the 13 mini, I'm excited to have a truly one-hand iPhone again. The option to swap it into a two-hand device sweetens the deal even more for me.
Cameras, and the missing telephoto
You get a 48MP main camera and the same 48MP ultra wide as the iPhone 18 Pro. The 2x telephoto is a 12MP crop from the main sensor, so there's no dedicated zoom lens. Samsung also sells the Fold 8 without a telephoto at $1,900, which I called ridiculous. My verdict is the same here on a phone that costs $100 more. I'd have liked Apple to use a single wider main lens that can cover ultra wide duty by cropping, with a proper telephoto in the second slot. The Pixel 11 Pro Fold has a 5x telephoto at $100 less.
Image credit: Apple
The inner FaceTime camera is under the display, which means no hole in the big screen. The under-display cameras I've tested so far haven't been great. I'm skeptical until I see this one. Then again, the inner camera on a foldable won't get much use beyond FaceTime, so it may be fine for that. On the outside there's a 12MP Center Stage camera. You can also shoot selfies with the rear cameras using the outer screen as a preview, which is the best way to take a selfie on any foldable. You'll also get a feature called Kid Cue that will play animations on the outer screen to get a kid looking at the camera.
What iOS 27 does with the big screen
The Duo is the first iPhone that can run two apps side by side, in what Apple calls Split View. Apple has moved the Dock, the Lock Screen controls, and a vertical Dynamic Island to the sides of the screen to leave more room for content. I'm excited about this and the wider foldable UI changes with it. Apple has the right idea putting the most used controls at the edges. I hope there's an option to move them to the left as well, since dexterity and accessibility should be accounted for on a phone this wide and expensive.
Image credit: Apple
Battery life is rated at up to 31 hours of video on the inner screen and 44 on the outer. Charging will get you to 50 percent in around 20 minutes with a cable, though that needs the same 60W adapter Apple sells separately for the 18 Pro. The Fold 8 can charge at 45W and the Pixel at 30W, so the Duo should be able to match their charging times.
The Duo is also going to get Apple Pencil support later this year, with the USB-C model working on either screen for notes and sketches. No iPhone has supported the Pencil before, so if you're the kind that will debate getting an iPad, the Duo might be the one for you.
Who should buy the iPhone Duo
The Duo is for enthusiasts, and for people who do heavy on-the-go productivity work and want the multitasking without leaving the Apple ecosystem. If you aren't a die-hard tech person, you can wait for the second generation. This is a first-generation product, and Apple isn't immune to mistakes. If you do want a foldable, though, I would heavily consider the Duo. I'm likely to upgrade to one from my 17 Pro, but that's only because a lot of my photography goes through my secondary device, the Oppo Find X9 Ultra. If your iPhone is your only device and you do a lot of zoom photography on it, you should look at the iPhone 18 Pro instead of the Duo.
