The iPhone Duo is Apple’s first folding smartphone. The company announced the device at its annual September event at Apple Park in Cupertino, California.
The iPhone Duo comes in Star White and Night Sky, and costs $1,999 for 256 GB of storage. While preorders kick off on October 16, the device won’t officially go on sale until October 23.
It arrives alongside the pro versions of Apple’s handsets, iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
The Duo has a 5.4-inch screen on the outside, and when you open the Duo up, it reveals a second, 7.6-inch display—remarkably close to the iPad Mini’s screen size. Apple says it kept the aspect ratio consistent across both the front and inner screen for the highest quality when viewing content.
The Duo has a titanium frame with a mirror finish, Apple’s Ceramic Shield glass on the back, and Ceramic Shield 2 glass on the front. It even sports an IP68 dust- and water-resistance rating, beating Samsung to the punch. (Right now, Google’s folding Pixels are the only phones with an IP68 rating.
Apple says the hinge has a “custom variable torque profile” that precisely opens and closes the phone in an “effortlessly smooth” way. When it’s open, Apple says it’s the thinnest iPhone ever. As Samsung does with its “Flex Titanium” technology, Apple uses a carbon fiber metal plate below the display to better control the stress caused by bending the display. That. alongside a nano-texture finish, helps keep the display flat and “minimizes crease visibility.” An Apple-designed scratch-resistance coating sits on top.
Surprisingly, there is no Face ID sensor, likely to save space inside the phone for the folding components. Instead, like some of Apple’s tablets, the iPhone Duo brings back the fingerprint-sensing Touch ID integrated into the side power button. This is also the first iPhone to support the USB-C Apple Pencil later this year, though there’s no way to naturally store the stylus on the edges of the device like the iPad’s magnetic Pencil dock.
Apple says the Duo has the biggest battery ever in an iPhone; like most book-style folds, it’s a split system where a battery rests on both sides. That will net you up to 31 hours of video playback with the inner display, and 44 hours with the outer display—or 24 hours of mixed overall use per charge. It also sports Apple’s new custom C2 modem (with mmWave 5G support in the US) and the A20 Pro, the same chip powering the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max.
There are only two cameras on the back—a 48-megapixel primary camera and a 48-megapixel ultrawide. The lack of a telephoto zoom option is a sacrifice even Samsung made on its latest Galaxy Z Fold8. Like most book-like folds, it has two selfie cameras—a 12-megapixel camera on the outer screen and a second “FaceTime camera” on the inner display, though this one is hidden under the display.
There are familiar folding phone features here with the camera, like distracting a kid with a fun cartoon character on the outer screen to get them to look at the camera. Or your subject can preview the photo before you hit capture. The iPhone Duo can stand upright by itself, so you can set it down and it will automatically capture group photos if everyone stands at the ready.
Hardware is just one part of the story, though. The software needs to adapt and take advantage of the larger screen. Apple has been improving how apps adapt to different screen sizes for some time, making it easy for developers to scale apps from the iPhone to the iPad to the Mac, and even visionOS on the Apple Vision Pro. That means you’ll be able to enjoy iPad-like apps when unfolding the iPhone Duo.
