iPhone Duo review: The best and worst iPhone in ages
Macworld ·
Macworld At a glance Expert's Rating Pros Duo-optimized apps change how you use your iPhone The nano-texture display is great No real compromise on performance Cons Unoptimized apps are worse than on previous iPhones Battery life varies widely based on inner/outer display use Cameras are a step behind recent flagship iPhones Touch ID can be annoying Our Verdict Folding phones come with some inherent tradeoffs, but even so, the iPhone Duo is hard to recommend right now. It simply requires optimized apps to provide a good experience, and there aren’t nearly enough of those. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Apple iPhone Duo Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide The iPhone Duo is very appropriately named, and not just because it has two screens, two rear cameras, two front cameras, and is shaped sort of like a capital “D”. This is a phone of dichotomies, where each facet of the experience delivers something wonderful and exciting while also delivering something frustrating and backwards. For every aspect of the iPhone Duo that you can say something good about, there’s an “on the other hand…” that cuts the other way. I find the iPhone Duo almost impossible to recommend to a casual buyer, and yet it’s the most fun I’ve had exploring a new iPhone in over a decade. It is simultaneously delightful and frustrating, big and small, useful and hindering, inviting and off-putting. iPhone Duo: Performance and battery life This might be an off place to start, but the iPhone Duo is so unique and has so many interesting facets that its performance and battery life are almost boring by comparison. So let’s get that out of the way first. Foundry The Duo has the same A20 Pro chip as the iPhone 18 Pro , which as I noted in that review, is crazy fast . This is far and away the fastest folding phone you can buy. Foundry You can generally look at any benchmark result for the iPhone 18 Pro and just consider that the iPhone Duo will perform the same, with a two small caveats. First, 3D graphics benchmarks tend to run just a little slower on the Duo. It’s still faster than any prior iPhone and blows the doors off any other foldable, but the small difference was consistent in my testing. Foundry Second, heat is a little bit more of an issue than with the iPhone 18 Pro. Yes, the Duo gets pretty hot during extended video-taking, gaming, or other intensive applications, but not hot enough to cause serious issues. It’s noticeable, though, and impacts performance a little bit more than when running the same tasks on an iPhone 18 Pro. Foundry Our standard battery benchmark relies on an old app that crashed on launch on the Duo, so I can’t deliver strict comparison numbers. In a week of use, however, I can tell you that battery life is highly dependent on how often you use the big inner screen. Play games or edit video with the big inner screen a lot, and you’ll be looking for the charger by mid-afternoon. Spend a lot more time with the device folded, and you’ll wrap up the day with plenty of battery to spare. It’s either one of the longest-lasting iPhones around, or a $2,000 phone that can’t even make it to sunset on a charge, depending on how you use it. There’s that “Duo” thing. iPhone Duo: Cameras you’ll tolerate The most expensive and ostensibly best iPhone in the world does not have the best cameras. For a start, it’s missing the telephoto camera you get on the Pro iPhones, but the camera issues go deeper than that. The main rear camera is good, but not as good as Apple’s latest on the iPhone 18 Pro–it’s about on par with an iPhone 17. The Ultra-wide camera is the same 48MP camera Apple has used since the iPhone 16 Pro, which is fine. The selfie camera on the outside display is a 12MP camera that resembles the one on the iPhone 17e or earlier, but it has Center Stage and can zoom and rotate without rotating the iPhone, features that were previously only available on the superior 18MP selfie camera that was introduced with the iPhone 17. The camera software experience isn’t what you get on Pro iPhones either. You can’t shoot ProRAW images or ProRes video, there’s no Log 2 gamma, no shutter speed or histogram. That seems like a ripoff in a $2,000 iPhone. But you do get the new Photographic Styles that give you control over grain and texture, and focus peaking, and white balance. The Duo cameras are serviceable, but missing Pro features you’d expect at this price. Britta O’Boyle Then there’s the inside FaceTime camera, which sits under the display behind a small circle you can easily spot because it doesn’t have the antireflective nano-texture over it. I quickly ignored this anomaly and soon hardly even noticed it’s there, but the atrocious quality of that camera is impossible to ignore. It’s got poor resolution, terrible clarity, and awful dynamic range, takes paltry 4MP images, and is saddled with all sorts of over-processing artifacts. It’s meant for video calling apps such as FameTime or Zoom, where it does an okay job since your streaming video is low-res and highly compressed anyway. But that does little to make me feel better about it. The main camera (left) takes decent selfies, while the under-display inside camera (right) is a mess. Thankfully, the outside display has a much better camera. It’s position in the corner is a fine solution, and the Dynamic Island’s move to a vertical orientation there is actually quite delightful. I’ve don’t know what engineering challenge prevented Apple from simply using a similar cutout camera with Dynamic Island on the inside display, but it would have provided for much better quality and would exactly mirror the outer display. The camera can do some neat tricks with the outside display. Britta O’Boyle Because it’s a folding phone, there are a few neat tricks up the Duo’s sleeve. A mode called “Smart Take” will watch the viewfinder for you and take a photo whenever the people in view are holding still and facing the camera, so you can easily take multiple shots where everyone is ready. It’s a good idea that should come to every iPhone. You can also flip the viewfinder around to the outside screen even when the Duo is open, which will let you take a selfie with the 48MP main or ultra-wide camera. This gives you better selfie quality than any iPhone ever before, and when taking photos with the phone opened up, you can mirror the viewfinder to the outside screen so your subject can see themselves and strike a pose they’re happy with. If you’re trying to get a kid to look at the camera, Kid Cue plays a Snoopy animation on that screen to attract your child’s attention. These are all impressive and delightful features that show off how special this phone is. There’s that Duo thing again. The camera hardware is frustratingly backward in some cases, and Pro features are missing, but there are some unique new capabilities you can’t get on any other iPhone that are genuinely useful. I’m okay with the cameras on the iPhone Duo, but I’m just okay with them, and that’s not what I want from a $2,000+ phone. iPhone Duo: Two very unequal iPhones I hear all the time from users who really wish Apple would make an iPhone mini again . It’s not so much that they were in love with the tiny screen, but rather that they were in love with the tiny phone , and were willing to deal with a small screen and lesser battery life for something so light, pocketable, and easy to use with one hand. That’s why the Duo is so frustrating to use when it’s closed. The area of the outside screen occupied by apps is tiny, but the phone itself is thick, wide, fat, and heavy. It’s all the drawbacks of the iPhone mini and none of the benefits. Open it up and you’re in a whole new world. The phone’s weight seems more appropriate for its size, and it’s nice and thin. The expansive screen looks wonderful. Apple’s nano-texture screen layer saps away a bit of contrast and “pop,” as with any matte display, but it’s still a beautiful screen. Plus that matte finish makes it much nicer to use outside where reflections are distracting. The crease is visible in the right light, but when the screen is on, the matte texture really hides it remarkably well. Jason Cross / Foundry The the main purpose of a n inside matte display may have been to hide the crease, which it does very well, but it also hides any minor smudges, scrapes, or other imperfections. Yes, a flexible screen with a nano-texture covering is not nearly as scratch-proof as a typical iPhone display, but it’s folded away and protected when the phone is in your pocket or bag. The speakers are surprisingly good, with decent stereo separation and clarity. The bass is as poor as it is on any other iPhone, but this is a surprisingly good device to watch a TV show on. One of the tradeoffs Apple had to make with the Duo is the removal of Face ID in favor of Touch ID, which is located in the side power button like non-Pro iPads. I still miss Face ID every day. Touch ID on old iPhones was always in the same place, so you built a muscle memory around tapping on the sensor. The same is true of Touch ID on a MacBook. However, since the iPhone Duo is meant to be used in four or five different “postures,” the side button’s location moves as you change the phone’s orientation. You can unlock your iPhone automatically if you’re wearing an Apple Watch, but that doesn’t help with the many times you authenticate with Touch ID to input a password or approve a purchase or download. I can live with Touch ID on this thing, but I don’t like it. For $2,000, the iPhone Duo gives you two iPhones. One is a thick, heavy, wide, uncomfortable iPhone with a tiny glossy display. The other is a big, expansive, thin, beautiful iPhone with a nano-texture display. It’s that “Duo” thing all over again. Your enjoyment of the Duo is in direct proportion to how often you use it in the unfolded state, and to do that, you need the right apps. iPhone Duo: The apps that make the phone Developers are having a blast with the Duo, making fun little apps that don’t serve much purpose other than to make use of the unique capabilities of the hardware, just as they did in the early days of iPhone. Back then it was apps that make it look like you were drinking a beer or holding a flickering lighter , today it’s a faux-Walkman or digital panini press . These are silly gimmick apps that will be forgotten in time, but they recapture the fun of the first few years of iPhone, when developers were just making cool little toys and experiments for a buck just because they could. Of course, apps that aren’t just gimmicks or toys can make great use of the larger inside screen, but they have to be updated for the Duo to do so. These Duo-optimized apps look and function differently. They show two views at once, or a persistent sidebar, an expansive map with an info overlay, or other “wouldn’t fit on a normal iPhone” layouts that truly make them better. They gracefully lsupport landscape or portrait views, and some even change layouts if the Duo is folded slightly like a book or folded over like a tent to show the outside screen proppep up on your desk. From Slack to Netflix to Yelp and more, these apps built with the iOS 27.1 SDK or later, and optimized for the Duo, are so nice to use, with interface elements along the right edge when you use the outside screen and thoughtful use of the expansive inside screen no matter how you hold your phone. Of course, nearly all of Apple’s apps have been Duo-optimized like this, though the Apple Store is curiously unoptimized, and Safari could use some interface tweaks to make it a little easier to use on the inside screen. Apps like Outlook make great use of the expansive inside display and are so much more productive than on a regular iPhone. Foundry Unfortunately, he majority of popular apps are not yet updated for the Duo, even more than a week after launch. Some, such as Gmail, TikTok, Reddit, or Google Maps, are built using the iOS 27.0 SDK and can therefore resize to mostly fill the inside display. But they don’t understand the size of the device they’re on so they don’t make practical use of the Duo. For example, my Gmail inbox is just stretched across the whole screen instead of showing folders and a reading panel, for example. It’s better than an app that doesn’t use the space at all, but next to other apps that treat the Duo properly, it’s still not great. Worse, there are just scores of everyday apps that haven’t updated to the iOS 27 SDK yet, and just appear in an iPhone-shaped window in the middle of the screen with huge black bars around it. Turn the Duo to portrait orientation and it’ll float in the middle with black bars all around and a return of the old iPad “expand” button to double-size the app to fill the screen. But this is actually worse, because the interfaces are designed around a smaller-size device and become really cumbersome and hard to reach on an open iPhone Duo. It’s an awful experience, and it stings all the more because you paid over $2,000 for it. And there are so many popular and oft-used apps in this category: Google Home, Ring, Uber, Teams, Snapchat, Hulu, nearly every popular mobile game, Venmo, Google Docs, Audible, almost all the credit card and banking apps… the list of “black-bar apps” goes on and on and includes scores of the top names. Using the Ring app as a tiny strip surrounded by black bars is a miserable experience. Foundry You can always run two apps side by side, wether they’re optimized for the Duo or not, and you can drag and drop content between them. It’s a simple and intuitive multitasking experience that requires absolutely no learning curve; it’s just like running two iPhones side by side. It makes me wish Apple would actually pare back the iPad multitasking experience to match. Sometimes less is more. Running two apps side-by-side on the Duo is intuitive and useful. Foundry The situation is changing rapidly, and apps are being updated all the time. Works on Duo is my favorite crowdsourced database to keep informed. The site’s readiness report currently shows just 34 percent of the top 100 apps are either optimized specifically for the Duo or at least run full screen on the inside display. That could double and you would still run into black bars every day! The gaming situation is even worse at only 14 percent of the top 100 games properly running full screen. The “Duo” principle strikes again: Optimized apps gives you exciting new ways to work and play but every other app is actually worse on the Duo than on any other iPhone. iPhone Duo: Durability and reliability Durability is a top concern for buyers of Apple’s first folding phone, especially considering the price. At this point, you should not be surprised to hear it’s another good news/bad news situation. The good news is that the iPhone Duo is IP68 rated for dust and water ingress, while nearly all other folding phones are IP48 and more sensitive to dust and dirt. Apple’s matte nano-texture coating on the inside display also hides micro scratches an imperfections really well. Obviously any phone with a mechanical hinge and folding glass is going to be more sensitive to rough handling and strenuous environments than a standard iPhone. Clear any dirt away before you work the hinge, because you can absolutely ruin it if enough grit gets in there. It’s far too soon to see if there are long-term problems, but early tests using machines to open and close the hinge tens of thousands of times show that it holds up just fine and the crease does not get meaningfully worse. It’s impressive engineering. In many ways, the iPhone Duo is more durable than most other folding phones, though clearly must be handled more carefully than a typical modern iPhone. That’s just one of the tradeoffs inherent to folding phones. A disturbing number of Duo owners are reporting that their screens break, in the same place, under normal operation. Midnight_Slump / Reddit Then there’s the other side. Users are reporting defects that cause the inner display to break thanks to a potential defect in the hinge design or manufacture, and it’s widespread enough to get comment from Apple. And no matter how good that inner display is, it definitely does scratch more easily than the outer display so you’ll want to keep it away from keys, coins, and the like. Apple will repair or replace iPhone Duos with the screen/hinge defect as you would expect, but in general, repair of the Duo is very expensive. For example, repairing the inner display will cost you $999, half the price of the whole phone. So I definitely recommend AppleCare+ ($20/month or $200/year) if you’re spending all that money on a Duo, which will bring the cost of an inner display repair down to $99. The iPhone is new again Folding phones intrinsically carry with them some tradeoffs that some users would rather not make, and on top of those, Apple has made some design decisions that not everyone will be happy with. Add on a constantly changing app optimization situation and you have an iPhone that takes a certain amount of tolerance to enjoy. At the same time, it’s refreshingly new; perhaps the first truly new iPhone since the original. This is the first time since those very early days where apps truly behave differently; not just slightly taller or higher-res, but functionally different. My time with the iPhone Duo has been filled with discovery. Apps I hadn’t considered before are worth a look simply because of how they have been “Duo-fied,” and some of my old mainstays feel fresh and new. On the other hand, this is the first iPhone I’ve ever used where a great many of the apps I rely on every day just aren’t as good as they are on my old phone. Small and awkward on the outside screen, and centered (or stretched) on the inside screen with black bars and interface elements that are hard to reach. I can’t imagine paying $2,000 or more for an iPhone that is worse than my old one, but there are times when that is definitely true. Even for those who are accepting of folding phone compromises, it feels like the iPhone Duo is not ready yet. Apple has a little bit of work to do on its own apps and OS, but more importantly, there are thousands of popular apps that need to be updated to provide a decent experience. And there’s nothing they can do that will make that inside selifie camera good. The iPhone Duo is not for everyone, and not just because its price puts it out of reach. It just imposes a set of compromises around durability, cameras, and usability that some people won’t want to make. Some people are just not folding phone people. It remains to be seen how quickly most of these issues will be worked out, and one can’t review a device based on its unrealized potential and promise. That’s why, even though I’m having more fun exploring the iPhone Duo than I have any new iPhone in over a decade, I can’t really recommend anyone buy one. Yet.