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iPhone Duo: The five most important things you need to know

Macworld After years of rumors, leaks, and speculation, the folding iPhone is finally here. This project has been reported on for so long that our first article about it dates to 2018 ! Its name is iPhone Duonot iPhone Ultra as previously expectedand there will be a lot to say about it over the coming weeks before and after its release on October 23. But for now, here are the five most important things you need to know about iPhone Duo. $1,999, two colors, mid-October As expected, the iPhone Duo is about twice the price of an iPhone 17 Pro. The starting price is $1,999 with 256GB of storage, which is actually on the lower side of the rumors. Adding more storage inflates the price, with options up to 2 terabytes for $3,199. Preorders start on October 16, and the iPhone Duo goes on sale on October 23. There are two colors available: Star White and Night Sky. These are very similar to the Silver and Midnight colors weve seen in previous Apple products. Apple Its all about flexibility One thing the rumors didnt pick up on: Both the inner and outer displays have the same aspect ratio: 1:1.4. That makes the outer display exactly one half of the inner display, and Apple uses this symmetry, along with a lot of orientation sensing, to alter the way iOS works. Apple Currently, many iOS apps, and the operating system itself, do not adjust to multiple orientations. With the Duo, Apple has updated its own apps to work in portrait or landscape, and even behave differently depending on whether theyre on the outside or inside screen. The inner display shows two home screens at once, and the dock is on the side. Apple The Dock now runs up the side of the screen, allowing more vertical room for the Home Screen, and the inside display simply shows two home screens at once. Most app toolbars and controls are also now on the side edge, along with a new more compact status icon area. Speakers are on the top and bottom, so no matter which way you hold the iPhone Duo, open or closed, you get proper sound orientation and stereo separation. Apple The trick is that apps can adapt to present themselves to both the dual-screen nature and shifting orientations of iPhone Duo. You can show your FaceTime call on the outer display as well as the inside, so other people can see and participate in the call. You can partially fold the phone and use it that way and the interface reacts. Fold it like a tent and it goes into Standby mode to show big clock, calendar, photo, and weather widgetseven when youre not charging. Apple even showed a quick glimpse of the Duo acting like a tiny laptop with touchscreen keys. Fold the Duo over and it goes into Standby mode, even when not charging. Apple And of course, you can run two apps side by side, or even two instances of the same app in some cases. Plus, you can save married apps for easy access later. And later this year, youll even be able to use the USB-C Apple Pencil on both the inner and outer displays. The focus is on letting you use both the inner and outer displays in all sorts of flexible ways. A new camera experience The two outside cameras are 48 megapixel wide and ultra-wide. Its not the new variable-aperture camera of the iPhone 18 Pro and theres no telephoto, as expected. But there are a few software tricks up Apples sleeve. iPhone Duo reacts to being propped up or folded in various ways to let you do unique things, like take selfies with the outside cameras while it is unfolded, using the outer display to show you the shot. Fold it halfway to prop the camera up and step back to take shots with the new Smart Take feature that automatically takes the shot when everyone is posed and ready instead of relying on a strict timer. You can mirror your FaceTime call to the outer display so others can participate, too. Apple And the new FaceTime camera on the inside is now under the display, so it disappears entirely when youre not using it. Theres even a new Kid Cue feature that plays Peanuts animations on the outer display to grab your childs attention, so they looks at the camera when youre trying to take their picture. A focus on durability and display quality Apple has clearly heard complaints about other folding phones and has given Duo a polished titanium frame, and an ultra-precise hinge design using over 100 elements. Embedded magnets give you that satisfying click when you close it and keep it shut. The result is an IP68 water and dust rating, which is a lot better than weve seen from most other foldable phones and equivalent to other recent iPhones. Apple spent years perfecting the Duos hinge. Apple Apple went to great lengths to highlight the superiority of its inner display. It uses a new nano-texture matte finish that helps make the crease harder to notice, and a multi-layer bonding process for durability and to make the display fully flat so you dont get that annoying waviness or creasing you sometimes see with foldable phones. The multiple display layers slide past each other like pages on a book, to reduce warping and waves. Apple A20 Pro and C2 modem, and battery life The A20 Pro is at the heart of the iPhone Duo, and its just like the one in the iPhone 18 Prothere arent any disabled GPU cores or anything like that. Sustained performance will be a little lower because cooling the chip is more challenging, but it will still be much faster than the iPhone 17 Proup to 35% higher sustained performance, according to Apple. Like the iPhone 18 Pro, the iPhone Duo also includes both Apples N1 chip for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and the new C2 modem. Apple says the new modem provides better reliability and efficiency, 50 percent faster uploads, and supports mmWave in the United States. Both halves of the iPhone Fold have a high-density battery, which gives it very good battery life specs. Apple says you can expect up to 44 hours of video playback on the outer display, and 31 hours on the inner display. That falls right in between the battery life of an iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro, and is quite a bit longer than the iPhone Air. And yes, MagSafe and Qi wireless charging are still supported.

10 Sep 2026 1:06 am