iPhone Duo: Apple’s first foldable is finally here
John Ternus has kicked off his tenure as Apple CEO with a classic Cupertino ‘one more thing’: the iPhone Duo. Apple’s first ever foldable smartphone is finally here after years of rumours, and it might just be the most revolutionary iPhone since the very first one.
The iPhone Duo comes with the largest screen ever on an iPhone, with its main display a 7.6-inch 1878×2670 screen that when folded becomes a 5.4-inch 1398×2034 outer display. Both panels are Super Retina XDR Displays with ProMotion refresh rates, Always On and 3000nits of peak outdoor brightness. Perhaps more importantly, they both also share the same aspect ratio, allowing for a seamless experience on either display.
That seamless experience though is largely down to the new iOS 27 for iPhone Duo. The first major change is that a bunch of UI elements such as Lock Screen controls, the Home Screen dock and app navigation and controls have been moved to the side to maximise vertical space for content, making it less awkward when watching TikToks for instance. There’s even support for the Apple Pencil (USB-C) coming later to the iPhone Duo.
Opening it up though reveals two Home Screen pages with a Today View on the left panel, which is basically where all your widgets will sit. The status bar will not also have a circular system icon that shows your battery percentage, WiFi signal and cellular strength among others. There’s no punch hole cutout here either for a true full screen experience (more on that later), with the Dynamic Island now redesigned to fit vertically on the side. And as expected from a foldable, content and apps will react and reorient as and when you close and open the display.
The iPhone Duo also brings split view functionality to the iPhone for the first time, letting you use two apps side by side, or have two windows of the same app such as your browser open at the same. There’s a Flex Mode-like tool too, letting you partially close the Duo to have it prop up a video or to take hands-free photos. StandBy gets a huge upgrade too, as you can now prop it up open to use either the outer or inner display as your hub for widgets, music, clock and more.
As for the hardware itself, the iPhone Duo is built out of grade 5 titanium and has a mirror-polished finished, along with a 3D-printed micro-blasted hinge cover. You’ll find a layer of Ceramic Shield on the back, while the outer display gets Ceramic Shield 2 instead. The main display meanwhile has a scratch-resistant coating and a nano-textured cover layer to protect the surface. That’s on top of an IP68 dust and water resistance rating for the iPhone Duo.
Under the hood is the same A20 Pro system-on-chip as in the iPhone 18 Pro models, along with the same Apple Intelligence and Siri AI features on the regular slab iPhones. Keeping the lights on is a dual battery system delivering up to 44 hours of video playback on the outer display and up to 31 hours on the main display, though Apple rates it for an ‘all day battery life’ with normal usage.
As for its cameras, the iPhone Duo gets a 48MP Dual Fusion camera system, which is basically a 48MP main camera and a 48MP ultrawide; no telephoto here. The main camera delivers a default 24MP shot with up to 48MP resolutions, and ‘optical quality’ 2x telephoto, while the ultrawide is essentially the same as the one on the iPhone 18 Pro.
There’s a 12MP Center Stage camera on the outer display as well, while for the main display you get an under-display camera for a true full screen experience. You can however just use the main camera for everything, thanks to the two screens, with an enhanced dual camera video experience too.
Other things to note is that there’s no Face ID anymore on the iPhone Duo, with a side-mounted Touch ID fingerprint sensor for biometric logins instead. It also has the Apple N1 wireless networking chip and Apple C2 cellular modem for WiFi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, Thread, and 5G wireless connectivity, along with USB 3 support via USB-C. Also, there’s no physical SIM slot here globally, so you will have to use an eSIM on the iPhone Duo.
The iPhone Duo starts at RM9,499 for the base model with 256GB of storage, and is available in Star White and Night Sky colour options. Pre-orders begin on 23 October onwards in Malaysia, with full availability from 30 October onwards.
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