iPhone Duo Review: Too Much iPhone, Too Little iPad

The iPhone Duo surprised me. After my first hour with it, I went from zero desire for a phone-tablet hybrid to picturing myself living with one. Now, after nearly a week of testing it, I realize I’m not ready for Duo, or maybe Duo isn’t ready for me.

It still needs a generation or two of hardware and software refinements to be the promised jack-of-many-trades device.

Folding phones have been around for over seven years. As is often the case, Apple isn’t the first to the market, but the Duo, which arrives Oct. 23, has some good ideas. The spacious, antiglare double screen is alluring, and the device’s various poses are practical.

Yet the trade-offs of a first-generation product make it hard to justify the $1,999 price tag.

The iPhone Duo is squatter than a traditional iPhone. It’s shaped like a passport, with a 5.4-inch exterior screen. You open it like a book to reveal the larger 7.6-inch screen within.

Unlike on foldables from Samsung and Google, the “nano-texture” display noticeably reduces glare and camouflages the indent where the phone folds. This matte surface is more tedious to clean than a glossy screen, however—you really need a microfiber cloth.

I understand the appeal of a pocketable tablet. I use both an iPhone and an iPad Mini most days. My Mini is my ultimate YouTube-rabbit-hole, TV-binge-watching, ebook-reading device. The Duo’s 7.6-inch inner display, just two-thirds of an inch smaller than the iPad Mini’s, is great for the same activities.

Holding the Duo horizontally, I watched the entire new season of “The Diplomat” on Netflix. In portrait orientation, I devoured long articles. If you are someone who uses a larger text size for reading, you’ll appreciate the extra screen space.

The phone can also hold various positions. On a FaceTime call with my parents, I propped it up like a tent so I could set it down. To type up some of this review, I turned the Duo into the world’s tiniest laptop.

But using the Duo this way required two hands, or a table. And when I’m on my phone, I typically only have one hand free.

Every time I used the Duo in phone mode, one-handed, I felt its heft. It’s wider and thicker than a Pro iPhone—and heavier, even compared with competing foldables. My hand actually hurts after using the Duo nonstop, straining to grip the device securely while trying to reach the far edge of the screen.

An Apple spokesman pointed to the Duo’s titanium frame for durability. Other folding models use a lighter aluminum. The company also moved the dock and common controls to the right to be more reachable (sorry, southpaws). Still, there were plenty of instances where my thumb found its limits: turning off the flash in the camera app, or typing the letter “A.”

There are people who can easily use two hands and won’t see this as a problem, including train commuters, frequent fliers or parents who wait around for kids to finish their activities. For me, I look forward to the day the Duo is lighter and thinner—maybe folding to the size of a deck of cards, like in the movie “Her.”

I thought the Duo was going to be a super-productive iPhone—and it turned out to be a super-chill iPhone.

In the future, I hope Apple pulls more of the iPad’s productivity features into the Duo. Yes, you can see two apps—or two instances of the same app—side by side. But opening another Safari tab in this split view is a pain on the Duo, and it’s easy as drag and drop on the iPad.

Another example: On the iPad, you can make typing easier by splitting the keyboard in half with a quick move of your thumbs. That same gesture doesn’t work on the Duo. But the feature is there, hidden in the keyboard menu.

You can also use a physical keyboard with the Duo, but not a trackpad or mouse like you can with an iPad. While that might be a niche need, I think it’s a fair expectation considering the Duo costs as much as a MacBook Pro.

Like in the early days of the iPad, a lot of today’s apps aren’t ready for the Duo, and it could take some time. Slack, Instagram, Netflix, ChatGPT and others are optimized to take advantage of the larger inner screen, as well, of course, as Apple’s own apps. A Google spokesman confirmed Gmail, Docs, Chrome, YouTube, Google Meet and Maps will support Duo at launch, but didn’t provide a timeline for another app I care about, Google Photos.

Apple says more functionality is coming later this year, including Apple Pencil support and a Duo-specific version of Reachability: On regular iPhones, this slides screen contents down closer to your hand, but on a Duo, it would shift things right or left.

Evolving software could solve many of my concerns, but others can only be addressed with hardware improvements.

The Duo has neat camera tricks, like showing a preview of the rear camera on the outside screen so you can direct the perfect shot. But those features can’t make up for the Duo’s paltry zoom—just 2X, compared with 8X zoom in the 18 Pro—and the lower-resolution selfie camera. That doesn’t quite cut it for picture-happy parents and pet owners.

Touch ID is built into the Duo’s power button, and I missed the simplicity of Face ID, as well as the programmable action button, which I use daily to trigger my Pro’s flashlight.

The Duo’s battery is ample: By my 11:30 p.m. bedtime, the phone still had between 10% to 20% left in the tank, even after a day of nonstop testing. But the 18 Pro Max offers more, 30 hours of “typical use” battery life compared with the Duo’s 24 hours.

Foldables make up only 2% of the global phone market, though they’re more popular in China, which accounts for more than a third of those sales, according to Counterpoint Research. Apple will no doubt expand this market given its appeal with bigger spenders.

This Duo isn’t mainstream quite yet. But with the shipping delays now stretching well into the new year, we might see improved app support and software features by the time most early adopters can even get one.