iPhone Duo: Hands On with Apple's First Foldable iPhone

In this podcast, Dave Nason goes hands-on with iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable iPhone. Dave gives a physical description of the device, as well as his very first impressions of iPhone Duo and some comparisons of the form factor to other iPhone models.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence (AI). It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Dave Nason:
Hi there, Dave Nason here. I hope you're doing well. I am here with the new iPhone Duo. Mine has just arrived here today, and so I'm going to open it up, take a first look at the physical device itself, give you a description of the hardware, and, yeah, a few maybe first impressions of what I think of it before I dive in later and set it up.

Okay, so let's open up the box.

And, okay, so it's in the box lying flat and open at the moment, and it's just got, uh, paper tabs over it, so I will take that off.

And there we go. That's the front of the box. I'm going to turn it around. And the back of the device here, um, I got the star white, as I said. I can feel the camera bump there going in the, as I look at the back face of it while open, it's obviously on the top. We have the camera bar with two cameras.

So, yeah, it feels actually quite thin and light while it's in its open kind of tablet form. I don't have an iPad Air here anymore to compare it to, but I would say it's a similar thickness to that. Obviously, when it's closed, when it's folded, it is going to be a little bit, or twice as thick to be exact, so that's going to be a different experience, I suppose. But in terms of how, you know, thin it is, it very much feels like a small tablet here, and nice and thin, and, yeah, good weight distribution, and feels very premium, I gotta say. Like, you can feel the—it has the titanium rails on the side of it. It's, um, yeah, but it feels very sturdy. Um, so, yeah, it feels good.

I'm going to fold it over for the first time, so let us see how that feels. Oh, yeah. Very satisfying. Very satisfying and very cool. And this is how it—yeah, even it does feel, like, obviously quite thick now when I've got it in its closed form compared to a normal phone, and quite wide. It feels very wide compared to other phones that I've used. So even compared to, say, the iPhone mini, it's probably a similar enough height to the iPhone mini, so similar size screen, but wider, and that, it is really noticeable. I'm just about getting my thumb across the screen. So, yeah, that will definitely take some getting used to.

And on the inside screen, I really don't think I feel the crease at all there, to be honest. Like, if you really, really look for it, I can feel a tiny bit there, but, like, it's—yeah. At the moment, obviously, we don't know how that will go over time. It's been folded precisely once so far, so we'll see how that goes, um, over time, but it certainly doesn't feel significant at this time.

Okay, let's dive in and give you a more detailed description of the physical device itself. So I have it open now, so unfolded, and I'm looking at the inside screen. The screen size, as you may know, is 7.6 inches from corner to corner. What you do feel here is there are these titanium rails—I believe it's titanium—around the edge. You can actually feel a little lip all the way around, so there's kind of a boundary on the edge of the screen all the way around. But, yeah, so it does feel very premium there, I have to say.

And then around the sides of the device. So on the left side—this is again with the, with the device open—there is nothing, as far as I can tell. It's just a flat rail. Along the top, we have speaker grilles going from left to right. We have some speaker grilles there, and then we have the volume buttons. So they are towards the top-right, so to speak, rail of the device. So along the top rail, over on the right-hand side, we have volume down and volume up. And I believe you can have them reverse the way you want, depending on the orientation that you hold the device and so on. There are options, but I believe by default the left is volume down, the right is volume up.

Then down the right-hand side, near the top, where you would get it normally on a phone, we have the power button, which, of course, in this phone is also your Touch ID button, because there's no Face ID on this device. So that is near the top on the right-hand side. Below that, near the bottom on the right-hand side, we've got the camera control button.

And then on the bottom, we have more speakers on the right-hand side on the bottom. And on the left-hand side, on the bottom rail, we have our USB-C port.

So we have a USB-C port, some speakers, volume buttons, power button, and camera control. You'll notice what's missing there, and maybe where it would have been if they had one, would be in the top left, would have been an action button. There is no action button on this device. It's one of the things I'm a little disappointed about. I'm not sure if I'll like having Touch ID instead of Face ID either. We'll see how that goes. But I would have liked to have the action button. I would have preferred it to a camera control button, if I'm honest, but it is what it is.

And finally, I thought I might take a quick look at it side by side with some other devices, just so we can see how the screen size and things compares. So, lay it flat. I have an iPhone 15 Pro here, and I have an iPhone 12 mini. So when I lay them side by side, I can see that the iPhone Duo is significantly less tall. So the iPhone 15 Pro is significantly taller than the Duo. Obviously, the Duo is a lot wider, even closed, I think it will be. We'll check that in a second.

I also have an iPhone 12 mini here, so let's compare. Let's put that on the right-hand side. And it's a very similar—it's almost exact same height. The 12 mini even is a tiny bit taller than the Duo, but not much in it. So let's close the Duo there. And again, if we lay it on top, yeah, significantly, both the 15 Pro and the 12 mini are significantly narrower than the Duo. But, yeah, let's say the height would be similar to a mini.

And then we also have an iPad Air here. Obviously, this is not an iPad mini, and I think when this is open, it's more comparable to a mini. But I'm going to lay it on top anyway. Let's see. And, okay, yeah. So it's obviously a good bit smaller than an iPad Air, but, yeah, but it is, nonetheless, it does very much look and feel like a tablet when it's open. And when it's closed, as I say, it is similar-ish to an iPhone mini, but definitely a good bit wider, significantly wider.

And, yeah, that is the physical dimensions. When it's closed, then, in terms of the buttons, it means you feel the volume buttons again, still in the top right, your power button's still on the right-hand side, where you would normally be on a phone, and the camera control the same, on the further back of your two folded pieces, I suppose you could say. And then, of course, nothing on the left-hand side, and your USB port on the bottom there. So they are the dimensions and how it feels compared to other devices, and that's it.

So there you have it. That is my first look at the iPhone Duo. I'm really looking forward to seeing how I get on with it over the next few days and weeks, and see if I like it. It's going to be a big change from what I'm used to. So, yeah, genuinely don't know if it's a phone I'm going to want to keep or not. We will see. But it's definitely cool to be trying something different, something new, and, yeah, looking forward to it.

So right now I'm off to go get it set up. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.