Here Are Our First Impressions Of The Apple iPhone Duo

I wasn't quite sure what I was expecting when I first picked up the Apple iPhone Duo. I've used enough foldables over the years to know the drill: admire the engineering, hunt for the crease, marvel at how thin they are despite packing in the screen equivalent of a mini tablet and then spend far too much time opening and closing them. Just because you can.

Apple, of course, has famously arrived rather late to this particular party, so of course, there’s something particularly intriguing about seeing that familiar Apple logo on a device that folds in half. Not to mention, the unusual burden of responsibility: it has to feel new without making the whole idea of a foldable feel new all over again.

I spent about an hour with the iPhone Duo recently, enough time to play with the cameras, poke around the reimagined iOS interface, watch that wonderfully over-the-top unfolding animation more times than I care to admit, and generally get a feel for what Apple has done differently. How the Duo is like to live with every day is a question I'll need considerably more than an hour to answer, but first impressions are fair game. The Duo certainly gives you plenty to think about.

Apple iPhone Duo First Impressions

Pick it up and you get that a sense of truly how dense and concentrated that 254g weight is in your palm, with none of that top-heavy overhang that one would typically associate with a candybar design. Closed, it has that slightly squat, passport-like shape, with a 5.4-inch outer display. The highly polished Grade 5 titanium frame, almost jewel-like in its appearance, gives the Duo a reassuring solidity, with none of that pursuit of insane thinness and lightness that recent Android foldables have tended towards. Coupled with IP68 water and dust resistance, which is still a rarity in the foldable segment, this is not something that needs to be treated with mittens. I’m not entirely sure how the sharp-ish left-hand corners will feel after hours of use, though.

Open, it is rather thin at 5.2mm, and the distinct resemblance to the iPhone Air’s frame is as clear as day. The transformation is remarkable, from a dense, compact design into a thin slab with a 7.6-inch display, one that feels like it’s tough enough to not snap in half.

Then there’s the hinge. It opens and closes with a lovely, controlled resistance, and there’s a satisfying little thud as the two halves come together. You have to use it to appreciate it - much like how the doors close on premium German cars - but these are exactly the sorts of details that make a new form factor feel properly finished and intentional. The cherry on the top is the fluid opening-and-closing transition animation that looks as impressive in person as it did I first saw it during the launch. For lack of a better word, it’s certainly very Apple and I see it being copied over on the Android side rather quickly. 

Unfolded is also the best vantage point to see the star of the show – the Duo’s 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR folding display with a 1.42:1 aspect ratio. Apple has gone with a nano-texture matte finish, similar to what you might have seen on the iPad Pro earlier. It completely changes the character of the screen. Rather than the glossy, slightly plasticky surface you associate with most foldables, this feels almost like paper under your finger.

More importantly, it cuts reflections dramatically and does its darndest to give the screen a near-creaseless look. View it head on and you cannot discern the crease at all – it’s still very much there if you look for it, particularly at extreme angles, but you really have to try to notice it during normal use. More importantly, you don't really feel the hinge underneath the display when you run your finger across it.

Such a simple, ingenious solution, one wonders why Android brands haven’t thought of this over the past half a decade. Of course, as with all matte displays, the inner screen doesn't have quite the same inky look as a glossy OLED, but for most use cases - reading, browsing and watching content in less-than-perfect lighting conditions, the reduction in glare will be worth it. A quick note about the under-display camera that Apple has used – it feels better suited to video calls than selfies and Apple has included some neat tricks to encourage users to use the better rear cameras for those jobs.

It’s when I started using it to try out everyday tasks, like typing out notes, browsing the web and firing up Netflix to watch some content, that Duo starts to make the most sense. Apple hasn't simply stretched iOS across a larger screen. The interface moves and reshapes itself around the form factor. The dock shifts to the right side (somewhat leftie unfriendly), two apps can sit next to each other, and app pairs can be saved for quick access. Even the aforementioned animation just works intuitively - the content appears to flow from the outer display onto the larger one, instantly communicating what the unfolding action is doing.

There are also some lovely touches in tent mode, including Standby and media controls that adapt to how you've positioned the phone. And after seeing the Netflix app redesigned around the new form factor, I’m legit looking forward to app developers updating their apps with the sense of purpose yet unseen on the Android side of things. 

There’s much more to explore in our full review, including how much it justifies the eye-watering base price, but Apple has nailed the desirability aspect just right with the Duo. Increasingly, I came away from the hands-on thinking Apple may have understood something important about foldables: the trick isn't simply making a phone that folds. It's making the folding feel like a natural part of using the phone.