I’ve had the iPhone Duo for a couple of weeks already, and it’s pretty awesome. Here’s a short review of the things I like, the things I don’t like, the things I find really irritating, and the things I’m excited about.
Let’s start with the things I like.
If I had to put a single word for it, I’d say the iPhone Duo is flexible, not in the literal sense that it has a flexible screen, but in the sense that I can use it for lots of different things in lots of different ways, and it does all of them fairly competently.
When closed, it’s a decent phone. I like it.
As someone with small hands, the short wide display fits a little better. I can reach the top of the screen, which I couldn’t do with my iPhone 15 Pro. Now I’ve got used to the size, I can type on it just as effectively as my old phone.
I find that it’s quite ADHD-friendly when folded. It sort of encourages me to come in, do a task, and then get back out again. I often use it in folded mode as a sort of warm-up to get me going, and then once I’m ready to do something properly I open it full screen and crack on.
When open, it’s the best iPad I’ve ever used. In fact, it might be the best computer I’ve ever used.
Unfolded it feels really light and easy to hold. I find it easier to hold than my last iPhone and much easier than my iPad mini. It just fits my hands beautifully.
I mostly use the portrait position for typing, and the landscape position for multitasking. The typing experience is pretty great. I think I’m already as fast typing on the Duo as I am on my normal keyboard, which is pretty remarkable really.
When writing longer pieces, the bigger screen gives me a larger canvas to play with. I found myself using speech to text to create a first draft… sitting back to consider it as a whole… then editing it down to what I want to say. It’s the process I’ve used for this very blog post.
The large screen also comes in very useful when using the various tools I need for my work. For example, the AWS management console loads properly, and I can use full-screen versions of apps like Prompt 3 for accessing remote computers. It’s also been brilliant for doing code reviews.
In landscape it can run two iPhone apps side by side. That’s been surprisingly useful. A lot of the things I do involves bouncing between two apps… that stuff is way, way faster.
All in, I can get more done away from my computer than ever before. For all intents and purposes, the iPhone Duo is my computer these days. It’s the default place I do something unless I absolutely have to go and sit at my desk.
My injury makes using my desk very painful. For the last five years I’ve been doing as much as possible lying flat using my phone. It’s required endless fiddly workarounds and adaptations, but with the Duo, most things just work first time.
The Duo has reduced the amount of pain I’m in as I’m spending way less time at my desk. From my perspective, it’s worth every penny for that alone. It has huge accessibility potential.
That said, this is a first-generation product and there’s plenty of things I don’t like too.
Dang this thing is heavy when it’s folded!!
I guess it’s not the overall weight, it’s the density. It’s the heaviest phone I’ve used in years. I need to use both hands when I’m using it lying flat, and it really hurts when I drop it on my face.
There isn’t a comfortable one-handed position to hold it in and that can get really, really tiring. Even with a grippy case, I feel like I’m gonna constantly drop the damn thing.
The lack of properly updated software makes this problem even worse. Software that hasn’t been updated is clunky and kind of annoying to use. It is improving… slowly. That said, I don’t blame app developers for prioritising other things. There aren’t many Duos around and it’s kinda unclear how best to support them anyway.
The screen shape is just bad for some things. It’s so short it’s hard to see content when the keyboard is loaded. Replying to iMessages can be really tricky because I can’t read much of the message I’m replying to.
In many ways, it’s just a very compromised design from the outset. The folded experience suffers, so the open position thrives!
I haven’t found the phone to be fragile. It’s certainly not nearly as robust as my old iPhone. The outer screen is fairly normal and hard, but the inner screen is noticeably soft to the touch. While mine hasn’t broken at all, it feels vulnerable and I could never imagine myself taking this for a bike ride in a pocket. Even using it at home, I tend to put it on top of soft things whenever I put it down.
It’s the first device where I’ve bought the ‘fancy’ AppleCare coverage. My expectation is I’m gonna break this thing at some point, so I wanna make sure it’s not gonna cost me a fortune to fix it.
I don’t like how expensive this thing is. It makes me a bit nervous. I haven’t actually unfolded it in public yet, because I don’t want to draw attention to myself. It makes me feel a bit vulnerable sometimes.
I can’t wait for Apple to work out how to bring the cost down so it’s more affordable to folks who will find it useful. It makes sense for me as it’s a business purchase used to do my work and it’s remarkably effective. For most people, that’s just not gonna be the case and it’s simply not worth it.
Okay, bear with me. I appreciate that many of these are first-world problems. However…
It’s very irritating how few apps use the unfolded screen properly! As I said above, I understand why, but I just want an experience that works. It can be really annoying to open an app and find that it’s just sat in the middle of the screen and not really doing anything useful. I wish apps would default to the iPad layout rather than the iPhone layout when the Duo is unfolded.
I also find the number of bugs quite irritating. Apple’s own apps have lots of little bugs and things that are annoying to use. For example, in the Photos app, the play button for a video disappears underneath the edit button when the phone is folded in landscape. This is somewhat baffling… most people watch landscape videos, right? It’s very, very strange.
Finally, some of the hardware design is really confusing to use. Things like the buttons being in odd places and using Touch ID rather than Face ID.
After two weeks I still can’t find the volume buttons on the first try without feeling around the edge of the device to find them. Then it’s a complete guess which one makes it go louder and which one makes it go quieter.
All that said, I am really excited about the iPhone Duo and foldable devices in general.
For me personally, they’re pretty life-changing. Especially when combined with my custom local agentic setup. When I first had my injury five years ago, I could maybe do 20–30% of my life lying flat. Now it’s easily 80–90%.
Before the Duo, I’d be constantly accruing little tasks to do when I get to the computer. Things like code reviews or creating slides. I’d group it all together and then try to do it in one sitting to minimise pain.
I don’t have to do that anymore. It’s kinda shocking how much easier the logistics of my life are now I can just unfold my phone and do big screen tasks right there and then. It’s utterly seamless to move a task from the small screen to the big screen, and then move it back again when I’m done.
I’m also excited for all of the things to come, for example, I’m super excited to see how AAC apps make use of the dual screen setup. Especially the ability to type on one screen while somebody else sees what I’m typing on the back of the other screen in nice big text. That’s quite exciting to me as people reading over my shoulder as I type makes it harder for me to communicate.
For a first-generation product, the duo is pretty remarkable. It’s far from perfect. It’s expensive. It can be really clunky, but when it shines, it enables me to do things I simply couldn’t do before. I’m curious to see how it evolves in the future.
