iPhone Duo Initial Impressions

Dumping quick impressions after about 24 hours with iPhone Duo. I preordered and submitted my order three minutes after the window opened, which apparently meant I was not going to get it shipped to me until three weeks after launch? Alas.

Lots of good reviews on YouTube/etc already for the phone, Marques Brownlee’s review on YouTube is solid, as are most on his channel.

I am coming from an iPhone 17 Pro Max, for reference. I have a vision disability and one of the draws of this phone, for me, is having a bigger screen on a phone. Also it’s just new (for iPhone) tech and that’s exciting!

Durability Concerns

True durability to me feels unknown. It came out of the box fine and feels solid. Apparently a hinge manufacturer had some supply-chain issue and some hinges are breaking. If mine is in the bad batch, I’ll find out … eventually? My biggest worry is that it breaks before replacements are easy to source and I have to do a bunch of annoying migrations and self-source a temporary phone for a month+.

For now, it feels very solid. It reminds of the iPhone Air when open, surprisingly thin and yet durable-feeling. Overall, it’s Apple, I am just not that worried about this.

Folded Experience

The screen when folded is … quite small. The form factor is interesting. As a “grab your phone to do something really quickly” device it feels very good, actually. A little chunky in the hand, but having a smaller phone that I can reach every corner of with one hand is an experience I haven’t had for years, even prior to the Pro Max gigantic screens. I appreciate that.

The aspect ratio is still odd and I cannot imagine reading a long text thread, article, or anything else. The phone feels meant to be opened.

Unfolded Experience

Just fantastic. First off, while I imagine the matte screen was used to make the crease/fold less visible (and it does) it made me pine for matte screens on everything all the time. Less glare, the colors still look excellent, vibrancy is there. Less glare. Did I mention less glare?

The camera cutout is so much more visible than the crease, which is hard to notice except under bright, direct light. Even the camera cutout you stop noticing after a while.

As a larger screen it is just great for that. Apps that have updated do well with the extra space, and even for apps that have not, being able to expand them out in portrait mode gives you a bigger phone screen than the Pro Max did which is the primary reason I bought the phone to begin with. Apple nailed this here.

Many apps are already updated and work well, standouts here for me are Discord, Outlook, and YouTube. Other apps have not updated, like Teams, and look … embarassingly bad, to be blunt. Obsidian is not yet Duo-enabled, but scales well enough that this isn’t a problem.

The folding/unfolding experience itself feels excellent and looks nifty. The parallax behavior demos well but also just looks crisp and cool. I’m sure I’ll stop noticing it eventually, but it’s the usual Apple UI polish.

Odds and Ends

Other quick impressions/thoughts, again after only 24 hours:

  • I already miss FaceID. TouchID on the phone is fine, I actually think the button is in the smartest possible place. It’s the best possible implementation of TouchID but I’d still rather have FaceID.
  • I don’t know enough about battery life yet to have feelings. It seems … fine so far?
  • MagSafe PopSocket with this phone gives you a shockingly comfortable mini-tablet experience, although I now yearn for a PopSocket that does not freely spin.
  • I’m pretty sure this isn’t going to work with any of my existing controller grips. It’s a shame, but I guess this is why I have a Switch 2.