The iPhone Duo does not solve foldables’ biggest problems | Infinium-tech

After leaking more than a communal tap, the iPhone Duo — Apple’s first foldable — is finally a reality. We are used to foldables around here, but for Apple, this is the first and only major new iPhone form factor in 19 years since the original iPhone. Needless to say, that’s a pretty big deal.

But as stated before, foldables are not new to us. By now, the original Galaxy Fold units have completed seven trips around the Sun, and we have seen countless models from every other major manufacturer since then. Some have come and gone in such a blink of an eye that many people won’t even remember that the first foldable phone with the name Duo was made by Microsoft.

As such, we are all fairly familiar with the fortes and foibles of the foldable form factor. However, it’s really the foible part that you should be concerned with if you are an iPhone user who has never used a foldable before and are thinking of making the switch. While it’s tempting to assume Apple would have taken its time to iron out all issues with the format, that is unfortunately not the case. So before you dive in and donate a small fortune at the altar of St. Ternus, here are some foldable flaws you should be aware of that the iPhone Duo does not fix.

Price

The $2000 price tag has been a mainstay of the flagship foldable since its inception, and Apple certainly wasn’t going to be the first to buck the trend. However, seven years on from the first Galaxy Fold, it’s clear this price barrier exists merely to fabricate an aura of superiority rather than be some hard limit that cannot practically be crossed without ruinous consequences.

Unfortunately, nearly double the cost of a typical flagship smartphone is a hard pill to swallow, even for those willing to shell out big bucks for a phone. Most people seem to have cottoned on to the fact that you’re not getting your money’s worth, so even those with deep pockets have chosen to stay with standard flagship devices.

In the past, Apple has usually been able to get away with stratospheric pricing due to its brand cachet. In more recent years, however, we have seen that even the once infallible brand has seen some high-profile, high-priced misfires, in the form of the Apple Vision Pro headset and the iPhone Air. This is almost certainly why the iPhone Duo doesn’t cost something as ridiculous as $3000 for the base model, as some had speculated, as the recent reality checks have made the company reevaluate just how far it can push its luck. However, the existing $2000 is still a steep price for what is essentially a phone. If anyone can convince people otherwise, it’s certainly Apple, but that’s not as much of a guarantee these days as it once was.

The ‘2-in-1 Phone + Tablet’ proposition remains sketchy

One of the marketing tenets of book-style foldables such as the iPhone Duo has been that it’s like having a smartphone and a tablet in your pocket at the same time. However, as a lot of owners realize, it’s not quite the same thing. What sounds like the best of both worlds can very well turn out to be the worst of both worlds.

Tablets tend to be bigger and have more usable space for seeing your content, working, drawing, or even just doomscrolling. They also have excellent battery life, which lets them go days without charging. Most foldable displays, however, aren’t meaningfully bigger once you open them. The lack of proper app optimization also means the available space isn’t always properly utilized. People also come to the disappointing conclusion that watching a video on the inner display doesn’t feel much different from watching it on the outer screen that often had a similar width when viewed in landscape.

Then there’s the phone part of this purported 2-in-1 experience. Foldables often tend to be thicker, heavier, have worse cameras, worse battery life, worse thermals, and worse ingress protection against dust and water. The ‘phone’ part of this experience is objectively worse than a typical phone.

Ultimately, even those with less than Sherlockian deduction skills realize that they have been sold a lie. That this is not better than having a phone and a tablet separately, even though it costs more than both combined, and that some things are better left separated. In the iPhone Duo’s case, this is no different.

Worse cameras

A foldable is more or less two phones stacked together. This puts very real limits on how thick each half can be. This creates a litany of problems, one of which is the worsening of cameras.

With each half being burdened with being as thin as physically possible — lest the entire sandwich become too thick — the cameras are often the first to be compromised.

The iPhone Duo has a wide and an ultra-wide camera on the back. The ultra-wide may be shared with the iPhone 18 Pro, but the main camera is not of comparable quality. And of course, there is no telephoto camera to be seen here. Considering how much more expensive the iPhone Duo is than the iPhone 18 Pro, you’d expect at least comparable camera quality, but that’s just not the case here, as we have seen with other foldables.

Worse batteries

Just like the cameras, the battery is another thing that gets nerfed when moving to a foldable form factor. There’s only so much space inside, which is further compromised by the fact that the battery needs to be split in two, which makes it even less space-efficient.

Using Apple’s own limited testing data, the iPhone Duo has lower battery life than the iPhone 18 Pro Max when using the smaller outer display, and considerably lower when using the inner display while streaming videos. You could say that’s a reasonable compromise to make for the larger display, but the difference would also show up in other areas where the display isn’t relevant, such as while making calls. The Duo also charges slower, which isn’t ideal.

Worse thermal performance

Finally, the thinner design of each of the halves also results in markedly worse thermal performance. Without the added thickness and material to dissipate the heat, the chip inside the phone has to throttle much earlier and much more aggressively to maintain reasonable temperatures. This means the iPhone Duo will lose its peak performance much sooner and more aggressively than the iPhone 18 Pro under load, even though both phones have the same chipset.

Worse durability

Foldables are also not known for their durability. Moving parts always add more complexity and an additional point of failure to a device. Imagine then that the entire phone is held together by a giant moving part along with a very sensitive glass layer on top, and suddenly things go up several notches on the risk factor. Add to that generally poor ingress protection ratings, and it’s no wonder that foldables have a reputation for being fragile.

Modern smartphones have come a long way in terms of durability. A modern iPhone like the iPhone 18 Pro can survive a lot of abuse meted out by daily use. Apple has certainly done more than others with an IP68 rating on the Duo, but anything with a hinge that big and glass that soft is still an easy target for damage. And you can’t rely on cases, since cases for foldables tend not to be very effective due to design limitations.

The awkward fingerprint sensors

The iPhone Duo is the first iPhone in many years to feature a Touch ID. This would feel like an immediate downgrade to those who have gotten used to the incredible convenience of Face ID that works seamlessly without any user input. Due to the design of a foldable, unless you decide to have Face ID sensors on both the outer and inner display, a fingerprint sensor is still the way to go.

However, much like every other foldable on the market, Apple has placed the fingerprint sensor on the right edge of the device. Side fingerprint sensors aren’t always the most convenient or reliable ways to unlock your phone. For one, it leaves left-handed people out to dry, more or less forcing them to use their right hands to unlock the device. But even if you are right-handed, you are also more or less forced to use the same hand to unlock the device comfortably, unless you want to mess around with unlocking with your left thumb and then flipping the phone around.

The side fingerprint sensors have a much smaller surface area, so they are prone to errors while registering and unlocking the device. A simpler solution would be to put the sensor on the back of the phone so anyone could use it easily, but somehow this always gets vetoed in favor of a cleaner design. Also, for whatever reason, the iPhone Duo places its volume buttons on the top edge, which sounds like a hassle no matter how you hold the phone.

The infernal crease

The crease on a foldable has been a longstanding eyesore. Realistically speaking, it makes sense for it to be there. But, after paying over two grand, you expect the thing to fly and make you dinner, and something as mundane as a crease that’s always in your face feels like an insult to injury.

Image credit: Brian Tong (YouTube)

Compared to early foldables, manufacturers have made tremendous progress on diminishing the appearance of the crease. This year’s Oppo Find N6 has one of the least discernible creases we have come across yet, and Apple took it a step further. By having a matte nano coating on the inner display, the company effectively gets rid of glare and mirror-like reflections from the glass. Those are the easiest way to spot a crease, as they visibly distort when going over the hinge. With the panel mostly flattened and the telltale reflections eliminated, what remains is a largely crease-less design.

However, we are not quite there when it comes to a completely crease-free design. The crease on the iPhone Duo, minimal as it is, is still present, as seen in the early hands-on videos. If that is something that bothers you, then perhaps foldables are not for you. Not yet, at least.

Image credit: Brian Tong (YouTube)

With all of that said, the iPhone Duo does do some things better than its rivals, which are worthy of a mention.

Native app support

One of the maddening things about Android foldables is how few developers seem interested in building truly native big-screen experiences for them. Most apps today, when opened on the wider inner screen of an Android foldable, simply stretch out and magnify. This just makes the app look and work worse than before, as there is simply no accounting for the larger canvas.

While it’s still early days, if there is one thing you can bank on Apple getting right, it is third-party app compatibility for the iPhone. The company already showed a handful of apps that have adapted to the new UI layout for both displays on the Duo and the ways they can take advantage of them. There is no doubt in our mind that within a year from now, all major apps will have native, optimized experiences built for the Duo, far outpacing what they have managed for Android foldables over seven years.

Transition between displays

Having a device with two different displays with their own aspect ratios, resolutions, and refresh rates is a nightmare for software developers. It’s no wonder so many apps do not transition gracefully from the outer screen to the inner screen. Games are by far the worst offenders, as many games will simply relaunch to adapt to the new display should you transition from one screen to another.

Gaming in iPhone Duo – 3 perspectives pic.twitter.com/2TEfAx64TQ

— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) September 9, 2026

This is something Apple seems to have handled much more adroitly. In all the hands-on videos we have come across, games running on the outer screen fluidly transition over to the inner screen without as much as a pause screen. You can easily flit in and out of the two displays and also rotate the screen with the game adjusting to the new orientation on the fly.

Half-folded states

Android foldables have had hinges that allow them to stay between fully open and fully closed states, but it never seemed like that functionality was properly explored. With the iPhone Duo, Apple demonstrated the half-folded state of the device as one of the major selling factors of its design.

Apps have been designed to split halfway and display different content on both sides. The keyboard also splits in two different ways depending upon the orientation of the device. Video players will show playback controls on the lower half. Games can show controls on the lower half.

The device can also be placed upside down on its edges in a nightstand mode, and there are special widgets that can be accessed in this mode. There is a lot more thought and intent here with the way the foldable design can be used other than to just have a bigger display.

Speakers

Stereo speakers are tricky for foldables as what’s left and what’s right keeps changing. The solution for this on tablets was to put a speaker in each corner, but foldables don’t have the luxury of that much space. More recently, we have seen Samsung place the Galaxy Z Fold8 speakers on one side, which completely ruins the stereo effect.

The iPhone Duo solves this by having one speaker in one corner and the other diagonally opposite. It then uses software to determine which way you are holding the device, and constantly adjusts the sound to match not just the position but also the relative distance of the speakers to create consistent stereo sound.

So all in all, Apple has made some important strides in making foldables a practical alternative to the standard iPhone. However, the category is still beset with several inherent problems that are going to take a lot of time and engineering to overcome. As such, if you’re someone with over $2000 burning a hole in your pocket, you should still carefully consider your options, and only when you accept that compromise is the name of the game with foldables should you choose to take the plunge.