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Review: Apple iPhone Duo – On a path of its own

Apple's iPhone Duo is a foldable phone in a new way.

Published 12 November 2026 - 16:16 Modified 12 November 2026 - 16:18

It would be easy to think of the iPhone Duo as a small iPhone combined with a small iPad. But Apple has thought differently. One of the things that most distinguishes the foldable iPhone Duo is that it combines the small outer display and the larger foldable display into a continuous user experience. You notice this in the creative animation when you open the phone, and in the fact that apps work just like iPhone apps rather than like they do on iPad.

To make full use of the large display on the iPhone Duo, the app you are using must be specifically adapted for it. This has already been done for Apple's included apps, but all other apps require their developers to update them. Today, few apps have been updated. When I downloaded and checked how the 160 most popular apps in Sweden work on the iPhone Duo a few days ago, only a handful were fully adapted and able to use the foldable display to its full potential. In some cases, the rest were not adapted at all and were shown as a box in the middle with wide black borders around it; others filled the area, but did so simply by stretching the content rather than actually displaying more information than on the small outer display.

Going its own way

Now that Apple is entering the foldable phone market, it is doing so in its own way. The small outer display is glossy and wider than we have seen on many previous foldables, although competitors have now quickly copied Apple's approach. I quickly notice that the squarer outer format means I get caught up in pointless scrolling far less often than with a conventional phone. The display is wider horizontally and shorter vertically. Even so, regular old apps fit here, because Apple's status bar with the time, signal, battery level and so on takes up space along the right-hand edge. If the app is adapted, it can make more efficient use of the otherwise black empty space that is also present here.

In several ways, it is clear that this is a first-generation foldable phone. Apple has put a great deal of care into software and hardware details, but at the same time much of it feels noticeably unfinished.

In several of the apps that have actually been fully adapted for iPhone Duo, I find mistakes, with buttons hidden beneath other buttons or menus. Apps need to be adapted for so many different scenarios that it is clearly easy for developers to miss something.

Many years after the first foldable phones made their debut, it is clear that Apple is doing several things differently. Perhaps most noticeable is the matte surface of the foldable display. The nanotexture glass surface reduces almost all reflections, and this makes a clear difference in making the crease in the middle less visible. I can still feel the crease when I run my finger across the display, and over the two weeks I have used the phone it has become somewhat more pronounced, but it is often more or less invisible when simply looking at the display.

Poor camera under the display

This foldable display has a hidden selfie camera positioned beneath the screen glass. You can make it out even when it is not in use, but unfortunately the fact that it is hidden means the image quality is very poor. It is okay for video calls, but still images are very low-resolution and lack detail. I would instead recommend using the main cameras for selfies, as that is one of the advantages of foldable phones: you can do that and use the outer display as a viewfinder.

The cameras involve compromises

Looking at the cameras themselves, they are a reminder that a foldable phone involves compromises. Here we get only two cameras on the back rather than three as on the iPhone Pro models. These cameras still produce good images in many situations, but compared with an iPhone 18 Pro, there is no optical zoom. The other selfie camera – because in addition to the camera in the foldable display, there is also a selfie camera built into the small outer display – is considerably better. If I switch between the two selfie cameras by closing and opening the phone, it becomes very clear how details and colours turn completely grey and washed out on the poorer of the two.

Apple makes use of the fact that the phone can be folded in several ways. By placing the phone half-folded on a flat surface and thus letting it act as its own stand, you can take group photos that include yourself, and with the feature called Smart Capture, the phone can take photos automatically and determine when, for example, everyone is looking at the camera.

Fast, thick, heavy, warm

The iPhone Duo has the same fast system chip as the new iPhone 18 Pro models, so there is plenty of performance. However, the titanium frame and the phone's slim design seem to make it heat up easily under load, and when I have to hold the phone steadily for a longer period, to read an e-book or record, for example, a time-lapse, the weight also becomes a noticeable factor. The performance is there, but Face ID is not, and that becomes a constant irritation if you are used to the quick facial recognition for unlocking your phone. Especially as Apple has made an effort to make switching between the outer and inner screens seamless, unlocking with a fingerprint becomes an obstacle every time you pick up and use the phone. If you have an Apple Watch, you can choose to let it unlock the phone, but that still involves, just like the fingerprint reader, some delay and waiting before you can continue with what you wanted to do.

Further complications arise because a foldable phone offers flexibility. It can be opened and used folded shut, horizontally or vertically, while the fingerprint sensor is fixed in place. You therefore need to think about where to press to unlock it, depending on how you are holding the phone. The same applies to the volume buttons, although you can choose to set them to adapt their function for raising and lowering the volume depending on how you are holding the phone at the time. So that up increases and down decreases.

Flexible format

The screen format Apple uses in its foldable phone differs from most foldable phones we have seen in recent years. The format means you get black bars when watching a film in the standard 16:9 format, that the screen is filled completely when viewing photos you have taken, and that you can display two standard iPhone apps side by side on the screen. It is therefore a versatile format that is a fairly good compromise for several uses.

Although the screen proportions are similar to those of an iPad, the functionality in iPhone Duo and its multitasking capabilities are nothing like an iPad. In recent years, the iPad has become increasingly computer-like, with the ability to run several apps in resizable floating windows. On iPhone Duo, as the name suggests, it is two apps side by side that applies. Possibly a video in a floating window too, but no more than that. You can at least place the film at the top of the screen so that the apps adapt and fill the rest of the display area. You start an app in one half of the screen by holding your finger on its icon and selecting Split View. You can then open the next app, and if you wish save the two as an app pair for easy access later. However, we miss much of the development the iPad has received in recent years, none of which is visible in iPhone Duo. The on-screen keyboard is one such thing. On the iPad, it can be split in the middle so that you can easily reach it from both edges of the screen, but on iPhone Duo the keyboard stretches across the entire display area, making it difficult to reach the keys in the middle. It may be obvious, but iPhone Duo is a phone that often requires both hands to use, without giving you all the benefits that the format could potentially enable in the long term.

Questions and answers

Big and heavy or small and handy?

Yes, a bit of both. The most expensive iPhone ever with the largest screen, but also the thinnest iPhone and at the same time the heaviest, at 254 grams.

How is the fact that it folds put to use?

You get a special standby mode that is shown when the phone is standing like a tent, apps can adapt to the half-open position, and the outer screen can be used as a camera viewfinder or entertainment for children when you are taking pictures of them.

But is it an iPhone and an iPad, all in one?

No, it lacks the adaptations and advanced multitasking that iPadOS has, despite the screen space available in iOS.

Camera samples

Many good pictures and good dynamic range, but no Pro camera.

How well apps make use of the screen area varies greatly

Review: Apple iPhone Duo – On a path of its own

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