Apple finally graced us with a foldable phone via the iPhone Duo. The smartphone has a 5.4-inch screen that opens to reveal a larger 7.6-inch inner screen. It boasts compelling features like Apple Intelligence with an updated, more contextual Siri, photo editing features, and all the other great goodies that come with iOS 27. It has an IP68 rating, which is uncommon for foldables. In an invisible camera trick for iPhone Duo, the FaceTime camera remains hidden to maximize screen real estate when you aren’t using it. There’s also a custom-designed vapor chamber, ensuring that gamers can get the most out of the larger screen experience. Plus, the foldable phone comes with a massive 2TB option, which means you can store loads of apps, photos and videos, and other files.
All that said, there’s a lot about the new Apple foldable that also looks and sounds familiar. As any Android user has pointed out, foldables from brands like Samsung, Google, and Motorola have had some of the features Apple is touting as new and exciting for years.
Front camera reorientation
Similar to Samsung’s Horizon Lock
The iPhone Duo has the usual Center Stage camera, which adjusts automatically to landscape mode for snapping a photo without you having to physically orient the phone sideways. It’s an AI photo feature that is genuinely useful, especially when taking group selfies. It’s easier to hold the phone while the camera readjusts to fit everyone in the frame. This feature is already available in the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, but something similar has also been available on other phones, too.
Samsung introduced Horizontal Lock with its Samsung Galaxy S26 series, which works in a similar fashion, except for video. As you are recording, you can rotate the phone sideways, even a full 360°, and the subject will remain both steady and in the proper orientation. Samsung wasn’t even the first. When the company launched this feature, many pointed out that Motorola already had something similar on some of its phones since way back in 2019. While it works a little differently for iPhone Duo, with the Apple foldable simply auto-zooming out to expand a frame for selfies, it’s a similar concept of reorienting a camera to properly capture a subject.
Smart Take to get in the pic
It’s like Google Pixel’s Add Me
With Smart Take on iPhone Duo, the phone can detect when everyone is in a photo and automatically snap the shot. This eliminates the need for the photographer to set a timer and quickly run into frame and pose to be included. It leverages on-device AI to analyze the scene and only take the photo once everyone is posing.
Google Pixel’s Add Me works differently but accomplishes the same goal. With that feature, you can take the first shot of a group, then hand the camera to another person from the photo, step into it, and the phone will combine the two images so it looks like everyone was in the same image. Admittedly, this feature doesn’t always work as seamlessly as you want. I have been frustrated by it on more than one occasion. But once you get the hang of it, it can work well.
It’s unclear how well Smart Take on iPhone Duo works. But if it’s effective, it could be much simpler than Add Me, which up until now, was a trick only Pixel phones could do. It’s potentially more akin to gesture controls for taking photos, which has been available on Android foldables for some time, too.
Duo Preview
It’s a staple of Android foldables
Most foldables find great ways to leverage not only the larger inner screen but the ability to use two screens. Apple calls one such method Duo Preview, which shows a live preview on the outer display to help you properly frame a photo and pose. It’s a simple feature that pretty much every Android foldable has.
Samsung calls it Cover Screen Preview with its foldables, Google calls it Dual Screen Preview for Pixel foldable phones, and Motorola calls it External Display Preview on its phones like the Motorola Razr Fold. Regardless of the names, however, they all accomplish the same thing.
Kid Cue for taking kid pics
Google Pixel already has Made You Look
One of the fun and useful features with Google Pixel phones is called Made You Look. When holding the phone up to take a photo of a baby, toddler, young child, or even group of children, you can display a fun animation on the cover screen that faces them. The idea is to both capture their attention and get them to smile. In fact, the feature uses machine learning to detect when the subject is smiling and capture the most natural image. There are various animations to choose from with sounds to accompany them as well.
Apple has reinterpreted this for its Kid Cue feature in the iPhone Duo. It similarly shows playful animations on the front screen while you’re framing to take a photo. But Apple ups the ante by using images from Peanuts versus generic animations. Will young kids care? Probably not. But it’s a simple way for Apple to differentiate its feature even though it’s pretty much a carbon copy.
Split View isn’t groundbreaking
Virtually every Android foldable has it
It goes without saying that one of the value propositions for a foldable phone is multitasking, whereby you have one app open on one side of the screen and another app on the other. This has been a staple with every Android foldable, including the ability to do things like drag and drop content from one app on one side of the screen to an app on the other.
iPhone Duo has this, too, allowing you to open two apps side-by-side. With Dual Windows, you can even open two screens from the same app, like two Safari web pages or two photos you want to compare. Yes, you can drag and drop from one side to the other and even save a pair of pages to go back to if it’s a dual screen you often use, like a spreadsheet beside a stock ticker or your Camera roll alongside your social media account.
The passport style form factor
A new Samsung phone employs it
OK, so admittedly, it hasn’t been years since this form factor has been around, unless you count some of the larger flip phones. Most foldable phones employ a tall and narrow design. But that was until the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 was introduced, a foldable phone that is gorgeous enough to convince you to return to Samsung phones. And now, the iPhone Duo joins it. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 has a 5.5-inch cover display and 7.6-inch inner display, which is similar in form factor to a passport and almost identical in size to the iPhone Duo. This makes it more comfortable and easier to hold, with an outer screen that is more pleasant to use since it’s wider than even a traditional bar phone. This was a game-changing form factor design when Samsung launched it, and Apple has similarly embraced the design principle.
The iPhone Duo affords 90% of the same screen areas as the iPhone 18 Pro on the front, so it really feels like a standard phone instead of a taller, narrow device that isn’t as easy to use when closed. One way Apple differentiates from the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is that both screens share the same aspect ratio, so content is scaled proportionally. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8’s cover display is 10:16 and the inner is 4:3. With iPhone Duo, you should then get better visual continuity when doing things like watching movies or TV shows and switching from opening and closing the device.
Apple is late to the party
Better late than never
Foldables have been around for a while, with Samsung already on its eighth generation! It’s safe to say that Apple is fashionably late to the party. Many of the features of the iPhone Duo are new for Apple but not new for the foldable phones community. Apple has put its own flavor on each one, of course, and adapted it for the iOS world. So, it’s nice to finally see these features arrive for iPhone users along with this new form factor. But while it seem be revolutionary for Apple device users, Android users are sitting back and watching the reception unfold (pun intended) with a smile, because they have been using similar features for years.