Apple might be late to the foldable party, but the iPhone Duo still brings plenty of fresh ideas to the table.
From its passport-style design to its matte folding screen and clever software, it feels more polished than many first-generation foldables. And if history has taught us anything, Android manufacturers won’t be shy about borrowing Apple’s best ideas either.
In fact, I’d bet these iPhone Duo features will appear on rival foldables sooner rather than later.
Passport-style form factor
Apple might not’ve been the first manufacturer to produce a passport-style foldable – but let’s be honest, it started the trend.
Sure, Samsung got there a month early with its similarly shaped Galaxy Z Fold 8, and the almost comically identical Xiaomi 18 Fold launched in China two days before Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo. But Apple’s foldable plans have been, much to then-CEO Tim Cook’s chagrin, pretty widely known for a few years now.
Specs, renders and the like had been doing the rounds in the tech sphere for a good while ahead of the big reveal, giving the competition a good idea of what Apple was planning and to essentially try and beat it to the punch.
So, yes, we’ll probably see more Android foldables with a similar form factor in 2027 – Motorola has already teased one, rumours suggest Oppo is working on one, and I’d bet good money that Honor will do one too – though I’m not particularly mad about it.
As I found with the Z Fold 8, the passport form factor feels right, with both apps and videos playing nicely on both the inner and outer screens, certainly more so than the boxy alternatives we’ve seen until now. I imagine it’ll pretty much be the de facto design going forward, even if manufacturers (ahem, Samsung) insist that the boxy aspect ratio still has its place.
Matte foldable screens
The iPhone Duo’s matte foldable screen makes so much sense that, honestly, I’m surprised we’ve not seen it on the Android side of things so far.
The matte finish on the iPhone Duo looks to essentially address two of the biggest issues with foldable screens at the moment. The first is just how damn reflective they are; due to their foldable nature, the screens are plastic instead of glass, and reflections are apparent, especially in brighter environments. The matte finish looks to do away with the worst of these reflections, which immediately makes it look more pleasing to the eye than any Android foldable.
The second, and just as important, is that it helps hide the effect of the crease that runs centrally down book-style foldable screens – maybe not when brand new and nearly invisible, but over time as the panels are constantly folded and unfolded.
If there’s any feature on this list that’ll definitely make it to Android foldables in 2027, it’s this one.
The (dreaded) return of under-display cameras
Under-display cameras – also known as UDCs – aren’t a new thing in the Android world. They’re quite the opposite, actually, making an appearance on multiple devices from the likes of Samsung, RedMagic and ZTE from 2020 until 2024, before quietly going the way of the Dodo in favour of regular pin-hole cameras.
Why? Because, simply put, they weren’t very good – for the most part, anyway. Samsung famously used UDC tech on earlier models of its Galaxy Z Fold, but the area housing the camera was always noticeable, so it kinda defeated the purpose. It also meant the camera itself took a massive hit to overall quality, because it’s literally trying to look past a layer of pixels.
That’s not to say that they were all terrible; I distinctly remember the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra nailing the UDC tech compared to most of the competition. The camera quality still wasn’t the best, but at least you couldn’t see a weirdly off-looking patch of screen where the camera was hiding.
With Apple trying – and by early impressions online, failing – to hide its camera beneath the Duo’s foldable inner screen, it’s possible that we’ll once again see a resurgence of UDCs on Android foldables to try and match the all-screen look. Let’s just hope they’re closer in quality to ZTE’s than Samsung’s, at least.
Standby mode and iOS-like UI tweaks
Apple is famous for how it marries its software and hardware, and it’s no different with the iPhone Duo. It offers software features we’ve not yet seen on Android foldables – though, again, I imagine that won’t be the case for much longer.
That’s particularly true when the phone is in its tented form. Elements like Apple’s Standby mode, which uses the Duo’s outer screen when in a tented form factor to display the time, notifications, weather and the like, makes a lot of sense here, as does using the inner display as a light when your morning alarm goes off.
Then there are more fundamental tweaks to the UI to better suit the foldable form factor, like Apple moving the dock from the bottom – where it has lived since the inception of the first iPhone – to the right-hand side for better reachability, and the combined battery, Wi-Fi and cellular signal icon that saves precious space on the screen.
Again, these seem like no-brainers when you really think about it, and it’s surprising that we hadn’t seen anything like it in the years of Android foldables that came before.
Well, for now, anyway – I swear, I can hear Honor’s MagicOS software team salivating from here.
Am I surprised about any of this? Not really. Apple tends to set trends in the smartphone world, especially when it comes to the design side of things, and it’ll be no different now that the iPhone Duo is here.
