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Apple iPhone Duo is two phones in one, ultra thin, and decidedly gorgeous
In a short window of time spent using the iPhone Duo, two things become immediately clear. First, this is incredibly slim. Secondly, Apple’s ensured there is no visible or apparent crease on folding display
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The first foldable iPhone is finally here. Much awaited, long overdue. And almost immediately as I held up the iPhone Duo in my hands post the keynote, it became clear why Apple waited this long to enter the foldable phone battles. The geopolitical and supply chain challenges may have perhaps added a bit more to the bill of materials and therefore some pricing pressure that Apple would have hoped wasn’t the case. Two things immediately stand out. The iPhone Duo is incredibly thin, and I immediately link this to last year’s iPhone Air, which gave us a glimpse at what Apple could do. Secondly, there is no visible crease on the foldable display. Not even the slightest.
Since Apple played the waiting game and arrives to the foldable phone party much later than Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo and others, it draws on advantages of tech evolution over the years. The advantages of that patient approach are more than apparent almost immediately, even in the limited time I had with the phone. This is designed to be a generally more reliable foldable phone technology. Grade 5 titanium and Ceramic Shield on the back and Ceramic Shield 2 on the front for 3x better scratch resistance, and the IP68 rating for splash, water and dust resistance. For a phone that is the slimmest iPhone ever in unfolded mode, that collective is quite an achievement.
Then there’s the magnetic hinge system, which Apple says has been engineered from more than 100 components for the dual-pronged purpose of precisely control opening and closing, as well as act as a support for the centre of the display. This, Apple says, delivers a “delivering a smooth, satisfying feel.” Inside the hinge, there are support ribs to reinforce the structure for additional stiffness. Secondly, antenna splits with ceramic fibre inserts, they say, enhance the frame’s rigidity.
I’ll say it again—the Apple iPhone Duo is that truly rare foldable that doesn’t have a pronounced crease on the screen when unfolded. In fact, it’s not even slightly pronounced. That’s something for the competition to contend with, and consider for their next iterations. I haven’t seen the Xiaomi 18 Fold to be able to judge their foldable display technology. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold8, in the similar passport style form factor, has a significantly less apparent screen crease than its elder book-style foldable siblings. But the crease is not eliminated entirely.
The iPhone Duo is also the most expensive iPhone ever, with prices starting at ₹2,99,900 in India. Globally, similar passport-style dimensioned foldable phones include the recently launched Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8, prices for which start at ₹1,74,999 in India, and the Xiaomi 18 Fold. Costly components and supply chain volatility have defined phone pricing this year, and Apple is balancing the same challenges.
Analysts had expected that Apple’s foldable iPhone will infuse momentum into a stuttering foldable phone market. At these prices, those estimates may be slightly tempered in reality. While the iPhone Duo is absolutely gorgeous with very neat iOS integration of smarter elements including multitasking and the repositioned dock, this is still an expensive phone particularly in markets where Apple doesn’t have options such as Apple Upgrade to stagger the cost over 12 or 24 months. In India, EMI options on credit cards will play a role.
The iPhone Duo’s short and wide design compared to book-style foldable phones, will enable app multitasking, much like an iPad. The passport style dimensions, which make this shorter and wider than the book-style foldable that has been around longer, give the iPhone Duo key ergonomic advantages. Speaking of neat iOS elements on the iPhone Duo, the transfer of content from the cover display to the main foldable screen brings about a very sophisticated transition effect. Secondly, sharing the screen between two apps for multitasking, is extremely easy to get the hang of and visually well done.
Key specs of the foldable iPhone include a 5.4-inch OLED Super Retina XDR cover display with 120Hz refresh rare, a larger 7.6-inch foldable main Flexible OLED Super Retina XDR display with 120Hz refresh rate, TouchID fingerprint recognition, and dual 48-megapixel wide and ultra-wide cameras (but no telephoto camera in this generation) with a 12-megapixel FaceTime camera. Storage options are 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB.
The 48-megapixel Fusion Ultra-wide camera, is the same as on the new iPhone 18 Pro models, while the 48-megapixel Fusion Main camera, also largely the same as the iPhone 18 Pro, should draw benefits from a new computational image pipeline—there’s data from a large sensor, fast aperture, and sensor-shift optical image stabilisation to work with. However, the iPhone Duo doesn’t get the variable aperture.
At the demo post the keynote, I saw some smart elements the Netflix app has already integrated into the version available for the iPhone Duo. For instance, this foldable can be positioned in a sort of a laptop mode, and controls are available on the bottom half of the screen on a very nice textured background before they fade away. StandBy also gets the trick of being an alarm clock with a warm, welcoming glow emerging from the main display, as a means to gently wake you up. First, it’ll be interesting to see what this sort of usage means for standby battery life, and secondly, how well it works in the real world.
