Five Days With Apple's $2,000 iPhone Duo: A Reluctant Convert's Verdict

A tech reporter who lugged two iPhones on a five-day vacation — a $2,000 iPhone Duo loaner from Apple and her iPhone 17 Pro Max — says she doesn't want to go back to the old one. "I think I'm going to switch back to my other iPhone," she admits saying multiple times during the trip. By the end, the Duo had won her over.

The frustration list is real. Broken apps. Unfamiliar gestures. A return to Touch ID instead of Face ID. Camera concerns. And yet the device converted her, in part through durability she didn't expect from a first-generation foldable.

How tough is the Duo in practice?

Casually brutal testing, as it turned out. She sat on the phone countless times while carrying it in her back pocket. It survived. She dropped it at least three times by accident — twice from table height, once pushed off a bed — onto concrete, tile and wood floors. The screen didn't crack. Not professional drop tests, she concedes, but a relief for someone self-described as clumsy.

The phone fits in front and back pockets, even with a case on. For a device she initially found "short, squat, and decidedly novel" compared with the iPhone's familiar thin rectangle, that mattered.

The Duo is also rated IP68, meaning it's dust-tight. That stands out against Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 at IP48 — a comparison a former Galaxy Fold owner raised unprompted, asking "What if you get sand in it?" after sand once ruined his older Android foldable's hinge and screen.

What still breaks the experience?

Software. The Google Search app froze repeatedly during the trip, which became her biggest annoyance — particularly galling, she notes, at a time when Google is facing search decline because of AI. The freezes seemed tied to Search's AI Mode, which users are often dropped into without requesting it. The workaround: force-close the app.

Other pain points:

• Unoptimized apps display a telltale black bar, cramping the small folded screen.
• Key features hide in "more" three-dot menus, forcing hunts for options.
• Text threads require more scrolling on the smaller outer display.

Her verdict on the black bars: an aesthetic issue, not a functional one. Google Maps wasn't Duo-optimized during the trip, yet handled driving directions, local search, discovery and route planning without problems. Developers are pushing Duo-optimized updates quickly, she reports, and holdouts remain usable — just "kind of … ugly." Apps never updated are probably worth abandoning anyway, she argues, given AI-enabled hacking tools exploiting older software.

Is Touch ID the dealbreaker?

Yes — the biggest drawback, she writes. Not the screen, not the camera, not the missing Action button. The Touch ID return hurts most at checkout, when you're holding shopping bags, a purse and, in her case, a dog leash. "I miss Face ID!", she complained multiple times at checkout. She kept lifting her thumb off the sensor too early. An Apple Watch can bypass Touch ID for unlocking, but apps and Apple Pay still stumble. A future version is said to support Face ID, and she calls Touch ID among the top reasons not to buy the Duo now.

How bad is the camera?

The Duo carries two rear cameras against the Pro Max's three. No telephoto lens. A 10x digital zoom versus the Pro's 40x. Weaker low-light hardware, no ProRAW or ProRes. Her bottom line: photographers and content creators shouldn't make the Duo their primary device. For everyone else, the camera is "okay. Not great, but fine" — enough for Instagram Stories, texts and photo widgets. Her sample complaints: image processing can overprocess fine details like tree leaves, and distant landscapes can look flattened, though she concedes the naturally hazy Blue Ridge Mountains and fading light complicate the comparison.

Why buy one at all?

Two reasons, she says. Foldables are "toys for grown-ups," with developers clearly enjoying the new format and a Duo Folio kickstand case that's great for movies. And it's a foldable inside Apple's ecosystem — with a barely visible crease and consistent aspect ratios between screens, evidence Apple took its time.

She expected to unfold it constantly. She didn't. Partly because unfolding in public invites conversation — she had roughly half a dozen stranger conversations on vacation, letting people fold the device themselves. One wanted to see Kid Cue, which shows playful Snoopy animations on the outer display to draw children's eyes toward the camera. Reactions to the hinge-free unfolded screen: "You can't see the hinge!" The matte, glare-reducing nano-texture inner screen drew a "pretty cool."

The deeper reason she unfolded it less: unfolding feels intentional. She uses split-screen for multitasking — reading Inoreader with X open alongside — via a swipe-up-and-drag gesture with helpful target boxes. Closed, the mini screen dims the pull of TikTok, Instagram and casual games. The design, she argues, interrupts the smartphone's reflexive scroll-loop, aligning with a broader retro-tech turn toward deliberate, tactile engagement.

Apple making a foldable, she writes, means the form factor "will no longer be niche; it will be known to the mainstream" — a phone she enjoyed picking up, and found easier to put down.