Tuning in to Apple’s announcement, I expected not to want the rumored Duo. I’ve seen plenty of folding phones (mostly while visiting China) and have still always preferred the single-slab-of-glass design of the iPhone. I also like keeping my devices for multiple years, don’t need to buy every new thing Apple releases, and kind of doubt that day-one first-class support in my apps will move the sales needle much.
But I watched the reveal, and much to my surprise, I really wanted one. I’ve sat with it since then, watched video reviews, played with the Xcode 27.1 simulator, stared at the painful price point, and even more to my surprise, I still want one. It’s a risk writing this down before I’ve even held one, but here are my thoughts.
The passport size looks great. Even if I rarely open it, I think I’ll like the shorter, wider, asymmetric phone layout and right-side toolbar; it looks good to me and seems much nicer for thumb operation. (Yes, my Mac’s Dock is on the right edge of the screen, why do you ask?) But I do think I’ll open it a lot, for reading, watching, and for app usage. I think it was smart of them to pick up split-view multitasking in the older iPad style (just as I thought it was smart to replace it in iPadOS with proper windowing; it was just too restrictive for a full iPad Pro).
The design is not without flaws, though. I expect they’ve tested it with left-handed users, but I don’t know how it can be as comfortable. The vertical toolbar looks tall enough to hold more buttons, but has two large carveouts: one for the camera hole and one for the wi-fi-status thing that is way too big and prominent for how often users need to look at it. On any navigation view, the back button comes next; playing with it in the simulator, I think this is a problem. It’s too easy to close or cancel something you’re doing because that button is right next to your primary tools. There’s a reason why the back button was always on the other side of the title from your main action buttons, and the close button on a Mac window is in the stoplights with other rarely-clicked buttons. But then again, I’m biased by my own document-based app, where “close” is a more significant action that it is in a simpler navigation-stack-based app,
The camera downgrade is a major bummer. On my 16 Pro, I use telephoto all the time, and wide aspect ratio approximately never. But 90% of the time that I really care about my phone camera, for example when traveling or when around my grandbaby, my wife is there too with her 17 Pro, so maybe I’ll be fine.
And TimeStory looks pretty nice in the beta Duo simulator, both opened and closed. Not too surprising; it was an iPad app that I added iPhone support for, not the other way around. I supported split screen, survived Stage Manager, and enthusiastically embraced iPadOS 26 windowing, so it resizes and multitasks and multiwindows just fine. There’s UI refinement to do, particularly in the toolbar, but it’s quite usable right now, which feels great.