To understand the iPhone Duo and its ability to turn sceptics into believers, you could do a whole lot worse than crib from the wisdom of Jay-Z. Sure, Steve Jobs was a noted fan of Picasso’s “good artists copy, great artists steal”. In this case, Hov called it better with “you made it a hot line, I made it a hot song”.
The point? Folding phones have been around for almost eight years now. A few of them are seriously accomplished devices in their own right. None have the ability to blow up your timeline, bag a spot on the News At Ten and compel a succession of distant acquaintances to slide into my DMs asking some variation of, “So do I have to spend $2,000 on an iPhone now?”
Until the Duo’s 23 October release date, I can’t give you a definitive answer to that question. Having spent a good few hours last week with Apple’s first foldable and the people who made it, I’ve got a pretty good idea of why this device is already a phenomenon. “This is why we do what we do,” says Apple CEO, John Ternus. “It’s really special because it provided an opportunity to just think all-new.”
Made like a notebook
I’ve reviewed a lot of new tech over the past decade or so, and the ideas that tend to stick are almost always some variation on a theme you’re already familiar with. That’s why the Apple Watch managed to usurp a vast swathe of Casios and G-Shocks overnight, while the Vision Pro has struggled to convince folks that strapping a computer to your face is something worth doing on the regular. So rather than emulate the existing, widely-held aesthetic for foldables—tall and thin for as big an inner screen as possible—Molly Anderson, VP of Industrial Design at Apple, sought to lean on a more traditional form factor.
“Everyone knows what a notebook feels like in the pocket and what it feels like to carry around,” she says. “So that was a big part of the inspiration: ‘How do you get to something that gives you space but also feels compact?’”
If you want to get technical, the Duo’s proportions are derived from the international A-Series paper system, so that they remain the same when opened and closed, helping to deliver the thinnest-ever iPhone. And while I’m not sure that its curved titanium frame will hold up to the same abuse as your average Moleskine, there’s an undeniable tactility to this phone that feels intuitive (so long as you hold it right-handed). That sensation is only elevated by a Duo-specific version of iOS that existing iPhone owners can grasp from the off. Even when splitting apps across screens and half-opening it into an alarm clock mode – the whole operating system dynamically adjusts to how the phone is shaped in your hands.
