Excited About the Spiritual Successor to the Surface Duo 2

When I first saw the rumor about the folding iPhone's name a little bit before the announcement, I was annoyed, because the rumored name was "iPhone Duo". I loved my Surface Duo 2 and will be forever mad at Microsoft for abandoning the product line-up before it could take advantage of better dual-screen and multitasking support in newer Android OS versions, and for never making the Surface Neo. That Apple would be taking over the name of "Duo", felt like an additional slight. 

But after seeing the announcement and demos of the iPhone Duo's hardware and software features, it appears to be the spiritual successor to the Surface Duo 2...! 🤔 🤯

The Shape

Of course, the shape is reminiscent of the Duo 2, one of the things I loved about the dual-screened foldable. 

Digression

I was NOT a fan of the tall, skinny "book" foldables from Samsung, starting with the original Galaxy Fold. 

At first it was a novelty that reminded me of candybar dumbphones from the early 2000s, but the lack of front screen usability shut down the honeymoon period quickly (even though I did get a Galaxy Fold 2 and 3 before I stopped going down that road). It was awesome that the Surface Duo 2 and the Google Pixel Fold both had a squat, passport-sized shape. 

It just felt so much more comfortable, with more usable space for viewing media and other content on the inner screen. Pretty annoying that both companies immediately moved away from the form factor, with one shutting down production altogether. 🙄

But now, there is the iPhone Duo.

The outer screen is asymmetrical which is made more noticeable due to the lack of large bezels. I like it. I know people have complained about this, including MKBHD and Shane Craig, but I was disappointed that they didn't at least point out that this is what the Surface Duo 2's outer screen could've looked like, if it had one with no bezels. I think it's a great visual design shakeup in addition to its shorter, wider dimensions. Can you tell I am yearning for something different from a boring slab phone? 😄

Of course, when open, it looks like an iPad mini in landscape orientation, which is awesome, since that's my favorite size of iPad. Even when I was using older tablets, I gravitated more towards the 8-inch tablets as the sweet spot balancing screen size and weight. Tablets 10 inches or larger got too cumbersome to hold for long periods. 

Cute, squat outer screen? Check. Large inner screen that is expansive, yet easy to hold? Check.

The Software Experience

Delightful Details

Firstly, the animations where the screen blurs as if you're looking through glass when opening and closing the phone is so good.

I love this detail. Visual continuity during transition. It's so Apple. Attention to these kinds of tiny details enriches the user experience. It's a shame other companies tend to overlook this all the time, and often don't seem to value such things.

Of course, this transition detail is not something that they cribbed from the Surface Duo 2, given it didn't have an outer screen.

Multitasking

But! One thing I saw that really excited me was how the iPhone Duo handles two apps in split-screen mode. It's totally cribbed from the Surface Duo 2, and I am incredibly here for it! 

Because the Surface Duo 2 had two separate screens, you could always set up and navigate the apps separately. If you swipe to home on one side of the iPhone Duo's screen, it goes home and the other side stays put, as if it were a separate screen, just like the Surface Duo 2! 🎉 Other Android foldables with one inner screen had gestures to put two apps into split-screen mode, but they felt awkward and non-intuitive to me compared to navigating the separate screens on the Duo 2.

The iPhone Duo also does one better by allowing 2 instances of an app to be open, i.e. if you want to comparison shop on a website, or maybe open two documents side-by-side. The Surface Duo 2 didn't natively allow this, though there might've been some hacks to enable it. 

"Dual" Screens

As I've written before, I loved using my Surface Duo 2 as an e-book reader, and often held it slightly bent, as if I were holding a physical book open.

The iPhone Duo will allow you to partially bend the screen, book-style, and even pushes UI elements away from the crease in the middle, creating a visual separation between the screen halves. This is as close as the iPhone Duo can get to the Surface Duo 2's dual screens, emulating two facing pages of a book. 

Optimized UI

Even though I didn't talk about this first, it's still important to note that Apple updated all of their stock apps to move the status bar and dock to the right side of the screen for better reachability and optimized use of screen space, so that content in the primary part of the screen isn't squished or truncated at the bottom by UI. 

Strike a Pose

And finally, I love that the iPhone Duo accommodates different "poses" that users of Android foldables would be familiar with, like tent mode and "mini laptop" mode.

It's cool that you can go into standby mode when propped open in tent mode. And it's clever that there's a way for the camera app to automatically take pictures once people in the frame have posed, obviating the need for someone to set a camera timer and run back into position.

Annoyance About the Cameras, But What's New?

Weirdly, the Surface Duo 2 had one more camera that the iPhone Duo doesn't: a telephoto. But the Surface Duo 2's cameras were pretty terrible. I did not like using them. Sideloading a version of the Google Pixel camera app did help image quality a little bit, but the overall experience was pretty janky. I wish the iPhone Duo had a telephoto camera, because I use that way more than an ultrawide. I am not a frequent group selfie person. 😝 

I'll be watching for reviews on the cameras, but it ultimately doesn't matter too much to me, because I've recently been taking pictures with separate, dedicated cameras. I will be interested to see how well the camera apps that bypass iOS's computational photography (like Halide, Obscura, and Unpro) work on the iPhone Duo. Hopefully the app developers will update to support the iPhone Duo as soon as they can. 

Obviously, I'm Getting One

It's already been said: though the price is expensive at $2k, considering the attention to detail on the hardware and software fronts, and compared to prices for Android foldables, the iPhone Duo could've been priced much higher. Apple wants to move a lot of these. It's not an experimental offering priced out of the hands of most regular users, like the Vision Pro is. 

Some Speculation on Form Factor

I was surprised at first that they didn't start with a smaller folding "flip" phone, as I thought that form factor might be more popular with new foldable buyers:

• Step one: get buyers used to foldables by making "regular phones" more pocketable
• Step two: ease them into liking larger "book" foldables
• Step three: profit!

It's possible that a flip-style foldable might somewhat eat into sales for the regular slab iPhones (because now they're even more boring 😛). And flips might have had a higher overall demand than the "book" foldables, hampering availability, so maybe they wanted to start with the book style to ease into things. I'm guessing a flip model could come later. (Can you imagine all the fashion label cases and accessories that would be made for that model? ✨)

I may not be in the first wave of pre-orders, but hopefully I can get one sooner rather than later. My Surface Duo 2 needs a buddy! 😄