iPhone Duo reviews are out today, and while I was hoping that this year I’d get to review this hybrid device under embargo, it hasn’t happened (I hope it will, someday!). I’ve spent the past few hours reading, annotating, and watching as many Duo reviews as I could, and I’ve compiled the most interesting bits and common themes in the roundup below.
The broad strokes are consistent across all the reviews: the Duo’s hinge and the matte inner display are terrific; the lack of Face ID and a telephoto camera are serious trade-offs; and most third-party apps aren’t ready yet. But there’s plenty of nuance in the details, and even some disagreement (about the speakers, of all things).
Let’s dive in.
Design and the Hinge
There’s near-unanimous praise for the Duo’s hinge. As Jaron Schneider wrote at PetaPixel:
This is an intricate, complicated design and the result is an opening and closing experience that is remarkably satisfying. The resistance you feel changes with the angle, and the hinge features a custom alloy that is nitride-treated to preserve it over time. Basically, the Duo’s excellent opening and closing experience is meant to last.
Brian Tong called it “the best hinge on a foldable that I’ve experienced because it flows, it feels smooth.” Joanna Stern, meanwhile, had a machine fold her Duo over 32,000 times while she slept:
The result, the hinge was actually a little bit stiffer. But in everyday use, I really couldn’t feel a difference. So, after 32,000 folds, it felt pretty much the same as day one, which is pretty darn impressive.
As for durability, Raymond Wong at Gizmodo ran an unplanned test of his own:
I had an unfortunate mishap where the unfolded iPhone Duo slipped out of my hands and fell down a few steps that also happened to be wet from rain. While not an intentional test for durability or the device’s IP68 water and dust resistance rating, the fact that the iPhone Duo survived with no major damage (only a few minor scuffs to the metal frame) and both screens had no scratches or cracks really shows how tough it is.
Opinions on the weight are more mixed. Chance Miller at 9to5Mac found the Duo easier to hold than its weight would suggest, though not easier to open:
But one key difference is weight distribution. Despite being slightly heavier, I find the iPhone Duo significantly more comfortable to hold than the iPhone 18 Pro Max.
Unfolding the iPhone Duo is very much a two-handed operation. The hinge has enough resistance, and the two halves fit together securely enough that you really need both hands to open it comfortably.
Marques Brownlee was more direct: “after you use this thing for like a week or two, you would be happy if it was 20% lighter.”
The Nano-Texture Display and the Crease
For most reviewers, the matte inner display is the star of the show. Michael Fisher said that “the inner screen is a masterpiece” and that “this paper-like nano-texture is a revelation that also camouflages the crease beautifully.” Marques agreed:
Now, the inside screen is the part of the Duo that does not feel first generation at all. They did an incredible job with it. I love it.
Max Weinbach explained what’s going on under the hood:
On iPhone Duo, the nano-texture coating is etched into the polymer cover using maskless laser lithography that essentially writes a micro-lens over each pixel individually. Yes, each pixel.
As for the crease, I think Chance put it best:
Here’s the best way I can think of explaining it: anyone who says the iPhone Duo’s crease is invisible is misleading you. Even Apple doesn’t say that. It talks about the work it’s done to reduce the crease’s visibility, but nowhere does it claim the crease is invisible. At the same time, anyone who says the iPhone Duo’s crease is visible enough to be a problem is similarly misleading you.
Nilay Patel and Allison Johnson at The Verge pointed out that you can still feel it:
The matte display is indeed there to help hide the crease, which Apple keeps calling “perceptually flat” because it’s more fun to invent science-y marketing phrases than just saying “you mostly don’t see it.” But it’s true: You mostly can’t see the display crease, although you can definitely feel it.
Jaron, for one, is into it:
Another point that I’ve seen talked about is how it will feel to run your thumbs or fingers across that hinge as you’re using the Duo. “You’ll feel it,” I’ve seen said. Yeah, you do. And you know what? I like it.
When I’m scrolling Reddit, I kind of get excited for the moment that I’ll drag my thumb down across that hinge. The only way I can describe it is as a subtle, soothing bump. It feels nice!
Not everyone is sold on matte, though. Mark Spoonauer at Tom’s Guide missed the punchiness of a glossy OLED:
But while the iPhone Duo’s main display gets plenty bright, it doesn’t offer the perfect blacks or vibrant hues I normally associate with OLED.
And Joanna had a more practical complaint:
But what bothered me more were the fingerprints that seep into the screen and that were much harder to clean off than on a glossy screen. Apple, you could have included the $9 polishing cloth with the $2,000 phone.
The Small Outer Display
The 5.4-inch cover display is probably the most debated design choice. From The Verge:
Apple says you’re getting 90 percent of the screen area of an iPhone 18 Pro, but that’s pretty small for today’s apps. It’s like having an iPhone 5 in a world of iPhone Pro Maxes.
Brian compared it to his old iPhone mini, saying that “it feels really small on the cover screen. Too small.” Chance ran into the limits of the outer display in Safari:
But the awkwardness of the iPhone’s 5.4-inch outer display shows up in Safari. The web simply isn’t optimized for this form factor.
It’s easy to find yourself on a Safari webpage where you can’t see anything but a cookie popup or newsletter banner. Granted, you can’t really blame Apple for that. It’s clear the modern web isn’t optimized for such a small, squat form factor.
David Imel, on the other hand, sees the small screen as a feature:
The Duo feels like the most task-oriented iPhone ever. That’s because the outer display is small, so when I’m doing anything substantial, I need to commit to opening it and using the inner display.
Righties, Lefties, and Volume Buttons
With the dock and app controls on the right side of the screen, the Duo is, in Marques’ words, “a very right-handed phone.” Abrar Al-Heeti at CNET had a message for left-handed users:
But my condolences to all the lefties, as you can’t shift controls to the other side of the screen.
The volume buttons, which are now on the top edge, take some getting used to as well. Joanna:
And that means when you’re on a phone call, I almost never hit the right button because I have to tap up here and I can’t feel which is up or which is down.
Brian went as far as saying:
In some cases, in some ways, I actually found the Z Fold 8 more natural to use than the iPhone because they have the dock on the bottom.
The Verge summed it up nicely:
A lot of using the Duo is just figuring out how to use an iPhone again, which hasn’t happened in a long time.
Third-Party Apps Aren’t Ready (Yet)
The biggest problem at launch appears to be third-party apps for the Duo. The Verge explained the three levels of app support, including what they call the “messy middle”:
The second category is what you might call the messy middle: apps that have been updated for iOS 27. They get some automatic layout fixes so they’ll automatically expand to fill the inner screen in landscape orientation and don’t look quite as silly as standard iPhone apps. But you can tell they haven’t actually been designed for these displays, and those rough edges are super obvious.
Joanna was less diplomatic:
So, how do I say this nicely to some of the third party apps I’ve been testing. You’re drunk. They’re sloppy. They’re inconsistent. And they just sometimes refuse to behave.
(She also found a calendar app for ants.) Marques had a similar experience:
But the general experience has been flipping between a whole bunch of not optimized apps that look pretty terrible on the Duo right now.
Things are moving fast, though. According to Max:
The reason I want to bring this up is because over the ~6 days I’ve been using my iPhone Duo, apps went from not at all optimized (except for Perplexity and Claude), to nearly half of them being updated.
And Julian Chokkattu at Wired made a fair point:
But it is a little maddening that some app developers, who for years have never seemed to care about optimizing their app for Android folding phones, are so quick to embrace Apple’s fold.
The Fun Apps
When an app is properly optimized, Julian says, “the experience is chef’s kiss.” Several reviewers also fell for apps built specifically for the Duo’s form factor. Michael said that “Tiny Laptops is quite possibly my favorite iOS app of the past 5 years,” and Raymond is optimistic about what’s coming:
Every day I open X and see imaginative app designs for the iPhone Duo, like a Nintendo DS emulator for playing retro games, and it feels like we could be on the verge of app renaissance for the iPhone platform. That’s exciting in a way that it hasn’t been in more than a decade.
Multitasking and the iPad Question
The Duo is the first iPhone that can run two apps side by side, but the implementation is more limited than on iPad. Chance:
I wish there were more iPadOS elements sprinkled throughout the iPhone Duo’s software. It’s great having Split View, but I wish there was an iPadOS-like way to drag and drop apps into that Split View interface. Slide Over also seems like a piece of low-hanging fruit.
Julian:
If you have two apps split-screen on the Duo, Apple won’t let you resize one app to be slightly bigger than the other like you can on Android. Here, a 50-50 split is always enforced.
Portrait orientation is even more limited, according to The Verge:
If you want to have two apps open when you’re holding the Duo in portrait mode, you’re basically out of luck — unless what you want is to watch a video on the top while scrolling an app on the bottom.
Julian also tried working with a keyboard and trackpad, which only worked after enabling AssistiveTouch:
If the Duo is the iPhone that lets you do more, Apple should natively enable cursor support just like it does on iPads.
Max, interestingly, prefers the constraints:
Something I’ve also found myself enjoying a lot about the iPhone Duo is actually the fact that multi-tasking is a bit more limiting.
Max also confirmed on X that Apple Pencil support is coming with iOS 27.2
Poses, StandBy, and Watching Stuff
As Joanna put it, “Apple’s basically turned the iPhone into a yoga class.” Marques thinks the half-open poses are where the Duo stands out:
But the other thing it’s actually really good at better than a lot of other foldables is the halfway open state because this hinge is so sturdy in the middle that it’s probably the best foldable at just being partially open.
Raymond noted that “the iPhone Duo’s StandBy mode works even when it’s not plugged in,” and Mark found a good use for the laptop pose:
For example, when watching “Man of Steel” for the hundredth time on the Apple TV app, I could put the Duo in tabletop mode like a laptop, and it showed the video up top and the playback controls down below.
For watching and reading, iJustine said that “the Duo as a content viewing machine is just that. It is a machine,” and Tyler Stalman thinks that, for some people, “if you use an iPad a lot, this might be able to replace both.”
Touch ID
The lack of Face ID is the most common complaint across all reviews. Chance wrote:
I think switching from Face ID to Touch ID has been the hardest thing to get used to on iPhone Duo. I’ve become so accustomed to just looking at my iPhone to unlock it. Having to deliberately reach for the side button feels like a step backward, even though Touch ID works quickly and reliably.
Marques:
I really think Face ID is going to be the number one thing people miss coming from other iPhones. Not the zoom cameras, not the thinner and lighter form factors. I think it’s Face ID.
Jaron’s advice:
You’re going to want to register all 10 of your fingers, too, because you never hold this thing the same way twice.
I have found that Touch ID is slower than Face ID for unlocking the phone. It got to the point where I was so grateful that I have an Apple Watch because I could set it to automatically unlock it when it sensed I was wearing the watch. Unlock with Watch is also, somehow, faster than using Touch ID.
Brian came to the same conclusion: “you will want to wear an Apple Watch.” Joanna was more emotional about it: “Face ID. I cannot tell you how deeply I miss you. Please come back.” The Verge, however, got over it quickly:
But a week is long enough to get used to Touch ID life again, and it’s mostly painless once you remember you’re supposed to be using it.
Cameras
The Duo’s dual cameras are a step down from the iPhone 18 Pro, and reviewers are split on how much that matters. Jaron:
The Duo cameras are all middling in quality. That doesn’t mean you can’t get great photos with the iPhone Duo; it just means that there are way better cameras available even in Apple’s own product line.
The Verge:
The Duo relies on heavier sharpening to make up for its weaker hardware, so fine details look a little crunchier than they do on the 18 Pro.
Tyler, who shoots professionally with his iPhone, was more forgiving:
Looking at the image quality of the Pro, it does use a bigger, better sensor. There’s no getting around that. It’s a bit nicer than the Duo, but most people are not going to spot the difference.
Michael put the Duo up against the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and said, “I don’t think it’s a stretch to call this the best camera on a foldable in the US.” Marques described the Duo as “the productivity entertainment iPhone that happens to have good enough cameras,” but he also called the under-display camera on the inner screen “trash” for photos. And David is disappointed by the missing pro features:
There’s also no ProRAW or ProRes, which is disappointing for a $2,000 device.
The good news, as The Verge noted, is that “every camera on this thing is a selfie camera.”
Battery Life
Most reviewers came away impressed with battery life. Michael:
Battery life in particular is just outstanding. I’m talking 10 to 20% left at bedtime after a 17-hour day with hours of gaming or camera sessions, sometimes both.
Julian said, “With average use, I’ve ended most days with around 40 percent left by bedtime,” and David wrote:
I’m always shocked when I still have 90% battery remaining after a few hours off the charger.
Not everyone agrees, though. Jaron called it “just barely good enough,” and The Verge concluded that the Duo “doesn’t seem ready to last a full day of heavy use.”
Heat
Several reviewers noticed the Duo getting warm under load. Jaron:
The Duo can also get warm if you work it. Playing games, editing photos, or doing anything that stressed the processor resulted in pretty noticeable warmth on the right side of the phone when unfolded. It will then gradually spread that heat out across the spine and over to the other side of the phone if you keep using it.
The iPhone 18 Pro is really, really good at heat dissipation to the point that it never really feels hot in a single spot. Rather, the whole phone feels warmer — I intentionally am not using the word hot here. The iPhone Duo still feels hot at a single point when the processor is really chugging.
Joanna:
Apple says the warmth is actually a sign of the new thermal design doing its job, moving heat away from the chip to keep performance up. But to me, it just feels like the phone is really warm.
The Verge saw it affect performance with camera features:
Add in processor-intensive camera features like Smart Take, which automatically hits the shutter button, and the phone gets hot enough to start noticeably lagging after a while.
Chance, on the other hand, said, “I do think the iPhone Duo runs a bit hotter than the iPhone 18 Pro, but not in a way that impacts performance.”
Speakers
And now for the most surprising disagreement of the bunch. Chance wasn’t impressed:
I do think the iPhone Duo’s speakers leave a little bit to be desired. I wasn’t overly impressed with the speaker quality, and I think there’s a notable disparity compared with the iPhone 18 Pro. The iPhone Duo’s speakers sound thinner and quieter to my ears.
Jaron, however, loved them:
Luckily, Apple knocked this one out of the park: they are loud, have surprisingly good low-end rendition, and excellent clarity. Big thumbs up.
Brian called the Duo “the best sounding foldable that I’ve experienced to date,” and Mark’s take was simple: “Surprisingly good!”
Wrapping Up
The Verge’s conclusion captures the general mood well:
It’s incomplete as a product, but complete enough as an idea that you can see where things are going.
Marques thinks some trade-offs are here to stay:
Apple can’t completely engineer their way around the compromises of this form factor, like the slightly worse battery and the slightly worse speakers and the slightly worse cameras. Like, that’s just physics.
Joanna is more hopeful:
The good news is most of my other frustrations can be fixed with software updates and developers figuring out how to make great apps for two very different screen sizes.
I hope to be able to get my hands on an iPhone Duo soon. Once that happens, expect a lot of coverage on MacStories for the next few weeks. Stay tuned.
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