All the news about the iPhone Duo

The Delta gaming emulator has been upgraded with a plethora of new goodies and support updates, which include optimizing it for Apple’s iPhone Duo. Delta 2.0 also introduces Sega Genesis games, animated controller skins, custom Pokémon DLC experiences, and a new UI that was built around supporting Liquid Glass.

Adding support for the iPhone Duo is an obvious standout here. If you looked at Apple’s flagship foldable and wondered how well it could emulate Nintendo DS games, this update was made with you in mind. Delta app creator Riley Testut tells The Verge that Delta 2.0 optimizes controller skins for “every pose in both portrait and landscape” and that you can still use split-view multitasking features alongside running other apps. Folding the Duo also puts your emulated DS games into sleep mode, just like closing a real DS would.

Apple is rolling out a new badge in the App Store to indicate whether an app is optimized for its new foldable. The new “Made for iPhone Duo” badge will appear across apps and games that work with the device’s extra screen real estate.

Though Apple doesn’t include an image of what this badge might look like, it highlighted some of the ways apps are taking advantage of the Duo’s inner and outer screens. Netflix, for example, will display shows and movies that take up the whole inner display, while allowing you to watch its feed of short-form clips on the outside. Amazon’s Prime Video will let you watch shows and movies with the Duo partially folded, with the content on top and details about the cast on the bottom.

Apple says it will have “limited” iPhone Duo models for sale in stores, according to a report from Reuters. The iPhone Duo launches on Friday, October 23rd, but online preorders quickly sold out, with some delivery estimates extending into next year.

“On Friday morning, our teams look forward ​to welcoming customers at Apple Stores to experience iPhone Duo ​and the incredible iPhone line-up for themselves,” Apple said in a statement to Reuters. “Apple Stores will ‌have ⁠limited iPhone Duo available for walk-in customers, and we’re working hard to get this revolutionary new product into customers’ hands as quickly as possible.”

I’m The Verge’s senior smartphone reviewer and I’ve been using the iPhone Duo for the past week. I’ve unfolded it, flipped it, and folded it more times than I could count as I’ve been working on the review alongside our editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, and I’m ready to answer your questions about it. The Duo represents the first time the iPhone has gone through a major form factor shift, and in true Apple fashion, it has some very specific ideas about how you should use it. We covered a lot of how the Duo works in our review, but there’s a ton more to talk about and I am here for it.

Verge subscribers can submit questions starting right now in the comments and I’ll start answering later today at 8:30AM PT / 11:30AM ET.

The iPhone Duo is the riskiest Apple product in years. It’s a huge rethink of what an iPhone is and could be, and it contains the seeds of many fascinating ideas that might be great in the future.

But that future is yet to come. The iPhone Duo is also one of Apple’s messiest first-generation products in a long time, and right now it will delight gadget nerds and early adopters and likely frustrate everyone else.

The iPhone Duo has all the messiness of a first-gen product. And while I’m not sure I love all of the decisions Apple made around its design, it got one thing right: the matte finish on the inner screen. I’ve been using it for the past week to watch movies on a plane, peruse my photo gallery, and catch up on a little reading, and I’m convinced. The matte screen is the best thing about the Duo, and I hope every other foldable maker copies it.

When we first got our hands on the Duo, the nano-texture finish on the 7.6-inch inner screen was genuinely a surprise. I’ve used a dozen or so book-style foldables over the past five years, and every one of them came with a glossy inner display. Aside from occasionally noting that they can be hard to see in direct sun, I never really questioned it. That’s just how screens are, I figured. But opening up the Duo for the first time, it clicked. Matte makes sense.

Delivery estimates for the iPhone Duo slipped into next year in less than an hour after Apple opened preorders for it at 8AM ET on Friday.

At the time of writing we are seeing late January delivery dates for every configuration on Apple’s website. The foldable is slated to launch in stores on October 23rd, and Apple typically reserves some units for in-store availability. So while online orders are delayed, you might be able to get one sooner in-person at an Apple Store.

Few phones have been more anticipated than a foldable iPhone, but it’s finally here. The iPhone Duo was unveiled during Apple’s “Surprise and shine” event alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 models.

Apple’s first foldable has a 5.4-inch outer screen, and it unfolds to show off its 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR screen. Apple Pencil support is coming later this year. While it lacks Face ID for facial unlocking, there’s a Touch ID sensor along its edge to identify your fingerprint. The device has an IP68 rating, with Ceramic Shield 2 on its back, with Ceramic Shield covering the front display. It has the same A20 Pro chipset as the iPhone 18 Pro. Notably, the Duo has the same 48-megapixel fusion camera as the 18 Pro, though it doesn’t have variable aperture.

Apple’s iPhone Duo foldable phone opens for preorder tomorrow, October 16th, at 8am ET / 5am PT, but you don’t have to wait until then to get your order mostly sorted. The company’s product page for the phone now lets you select the color you want, along with storage capacity, carrier preference, and whether you want to set up a trade to make the $1,999 foldable a little cheaper.

Once you enter all of the details, all you’ll need to do tomorrow morning, once preorders open, is to confirm your order. It’ll be sitting in your cart ready for checkout. This will save you some time, and you’ll jump ahead of people who are still customizing their iPhone Duo details.

If you don’t get AppleCare Plus for the iPhone Duo, any repairs are going to be pretty expensive. Apple published the estimated repair costs for the iPhone Duo without AppleCare Plus today, as reported by MacRumors, and they can be high: Battery service, for example, will cost $229, inner display damage will cost $999, and “other damage” costs $1,499.

Here’s Apple’s estimated costs for various repairs if you don’t have AppleCare Plus:

I’ve spent most of the last couple weeks using an otherwise unexceptional midrange Android phone with one amazing feature: a matte OLED display. That screen is by far the best thing about the TCL P80 Ultra, and weirdly, it’s made me more excited for the iPhone Duo and its matte inner display.

2023’s TCL Nxtpaper 40 first brought matte displays to the company’s phones after they appeared on tablets in 2021. Nxtpaper is more than a simple matte finish on a panel; it also includes a paperlike feel and low-power, monochrome modes that create a reasonable facsimile of an E Ink screen. But the matte effect has always been the biggest draw for me.

You only get one chance at a first impression, and getting to introduce Apple’s first folding phone is certainly a strong way to start things off as Apple’s CEO. On The Vergecast today, we’re talking all about Apple’s launch event: how John Ternus did in his first appearance as CEO, what we make of the new iPhones, and whether Apple is stepping into dangerous territory with its new AI features on the Apple Watch.

First up, Allison Johnson joins me to discuss the new iPhones, which she had a chance to test in Cupertino. Both of us have some questions about the new variable aperture camera on the iPhone 18 Pro — and whether the real upgrade simply lies in the wider aperture, not the ability to stop it down. Then we dig into the iPhone Duo and how Apple decided to pick and choose the best parts of Android foldables.

Apple was far from the first company to announce a passport-shaped folding phone this year, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t copied. As my colleague Dom Preston already explained, it’s almost impossible to keep product development secret when Apple and its competitors all share the same global suppliers.

Apple’s new CEO John Ternus and head of marketing Greg ‘Joz’ Joswiak addressed the topic during an interview with TechRadar’s Lance Ulanoff and Mark Spoonauer of Tom’s Guide.

With the iPhone Duo, Apple has pulled off a familiar trick. It arrives into a mature Android foldable market with a handful of hardware features we’ve mostly already seen elsewhere, but paired with a level of software polish that makes a lot of them feel new again. It’s those software flourishes that have me excited to try the iPhone Duo when it launches next month, but I’m less convinced that its hardware will be anything special.

If Apple had gotten there first, the Duo’s biggest surprise would have been its squat, wide, passport-inspired shape. But its slow-moving supply chain meant that Huawei, Samsung, and Xiaomi all managed to beat Apple to market with similarly sized rivals, so the unusual design already feels fairly familiar — helped by Samsung’s aggressive efforts to market its new design.

Apple’s foldable phone is finally here — well, almost. The iPhone Duo, coming October 23rd, follows in the footsteps of past folding devices from Android phone makers like Samsung, OnePlus, and Google, with a $1,999 price tag that sits just above the Pixel 11 Pro Fold and Galaxy Z Fold 8.

While its hardware bears similarities to its competitors, the iPhone Duo is one of a few models that takes a passport-like approach. The aspect ratio is the same on the inside and outside screens, and it’s even usable with some apps while partially folded. The interior screen has a special outer layer, which along with its hinge design, makes the interior crease almost impossible to spot (something that many competitors struggle to do, though Samsung and Oppo are making fantastic progress).

Apple has just announced its first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo. The new phone has a 5.4-inch outer screen and a 7.6-inch inner screen, two back cameras, Touch ID for authentication, an IP68 rating, and all sorts of slick software tricks to make iOS feel more at home on the new device. Preorders start on October 16th ahead of availability on October 23rd, and it starts at $1,999 for 256GB of storage.

It’s a huge announcement for Apple, and we have many feelings about it. Here’s our gut reactions to the phone. And let us know in the comments what you think!

The first foldable iPhone is finally here, and following its announcement, we got the chance to try the phone for ourselves. We’ve long been told that Apple would make a foldable iPhone once the tech was good enough — has it been worth the wait?

It definitely feels like something different. The inner screen has a decidedly matte finish that handled even some glare from the windows above the hands-on area well. The folding mechanism is smooth, and even IP68 rated, and the crease is almost impossible to find with my finger. The 5.4-inch outer screen looks petite by modern slab phone standards.