iPhone Duo review roundup: what critics love and hate

The first iPhone Duo reviews went live on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, two days before Apple's first foldable iPhone reaches stores on Friday, October 23. After about a week of testing, reviewers broadly agree on the big picture: the hinge and the matte inner screen are excellent, battery life is mostly good, and the phone is heavy, gets warm, gives up Face ID and a zoom camera, and launches before most third-party apps are ready for it.

Where they split is on the verdict. PCMag, CNET and Tom's Guide all handed out Editors' Choice awards. Wired scored it 7 out of 10 and suggested waiting for a second generation. The Verge called it "a messy, expensive, good time" and an "early adopter special." Here is what the reviews say about each part of the phone, with the test numbers that matter, so you can decide whether $1,999 is worth it for you.

iPhone Duo review scores at a glance

PCMag: Editors' Choice, calling the Duo "easily the best folding phone you can buy today." Tom's Guide: Editor's Choice, "the best designed foldable phone I've ever tested." CNET: Editors' Choice, with the reviewer saying they have "no plans of switching back to a slab phone anytime soon," as quoted by iClarified. Wired: 7/10, "an astonishingly good first foldable" that needs iOS and apps to catch up. The Verge (no score in the review text): "incomplete as a product, but complete enough as an idea that you can see where things are going."

A quick reminder of what is being reviewed: iPhone Duo folds from a 5.4-inch outer screen to a 7.6-inch inner screen, runs Apple's A20 Pro chip, and starts at $1,999 for 256GB, rising to $3,199 for 2TB. It comes in star white and night sky.

Hinge and design: the part nobody complains about

Praise for the hinge is close to unanimous. Tom's Guide said it holds "nearly any angle," and PCMag wrote that it "feels utterly fantastic." The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern had a custom robot fold her review unit 17 times a minute for eight hours straight, 32,640 folds in total, according to The Verge. As quoted by MacStories, she found the hinge "a little bit stiffer" afterward but said it "felt pretty much the same as day one."

The Duo is also rated IP68 for dust and water, while Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 is IP48, which means it is not fully protected against dust. Gizmodo's Raymond Wong accidentally dropped his unfolded Duo down wet steps and reported only minor scuffs on the frame.

The catch is weight and thickness. Wired and Tom's Guide list the Duo at 254 grams, heavier than an iPhone 18 Pro Max, against 201 grams for the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Tom's Guide measured it at 11.3mm thick folded and 5.2mm unfolded, versus 9.7mm and 4.5mm for the Fold 8. Marques Brownlee put it simply: "after you use this thing for like a week or two, you would be happy if it was 20% lighter."

The matte inner screen and the crease

For most reviewers the 7.6-inch inner display is the star. It has Apple's nano-texture matte finish, which cuts glare and hides the crease where the screen folds. Wired said the crease is "hardly visible." The Verge said you "mostly can't see the display crease, although you can definitely feel it," and that it shows up more off-axis on a white screen and on camera. 9to5Mac's Chance Miller said anyone calling it invisible, or a real problem, is "misleading you."

The trade-off is picture punch. Tom's Guide's Mark Spoonauer said the matte panel "doesn't offer the perfect blacks or vibrant hues I normally associate with OLED," and preferred the Fold 8 for a movie trailer. In its lab tests it measured 1,986 nits in standard mode and 2,558 nits with HDR content. Stern's complaint was fingerprints, which she found harder to wipe off the matte screen.

The small outer screen, Touch ID and lefties

The 5.4-inch cover screen is the most debated choice. Because both screens share the same wide shape, the outer one is short. The Verge compared it to "having an iPhone 5 in a world of iPhone Pro Maxes," and said you will open the phone for almost anything substantial. CNET disagreed, saying the cover screen "doesn't feel cramped" and has a roomy keyboard.

Every review mentions Face ID. There is none: the Duo unlocks with a Touch ID sensor in the side button. Tom's Guide called it "a downgrade" because it adds a small delay, and several reviewers recommend an Apple Watch for auto-unlock. The Verge said a week was enough to get used to it.

Apple also moved app controls and the dock to a strip on the right edge of the screen, so the Duo is a right-handed phone. Tom's Guide and CNET both note that left-handed users cannot move them to the left. Wired says Apple plans to add Reachability later this year to help people with smaller hands reach the edges of the screen.

Apps and multitasking: the biggest problem at launch

The clearest weakness is third-party apps. The Verge describes three tiers: old iPhone apps that sit in the middle of the big screen with black bars, apps updated for iOS 27 that stretch to fit but still look rough, and apps fully rebuilt for the Duo. Wired notes developers need to target the iOS 27.1 software kit for full support. Tom's Guide saw big black bars in Disney Plus and The Weather Channel and said unoptimized games fill only about three quarters of the screen.

It is improving fast. Wired said Instagram, Threads, Slack and the Google app updated during its review week, and analyst Max Weinbach said about half of his apps were updated within roughly six days. Tom's Guide singled out Slack's two-pane layout, Netflix's tabletop mode and Apple's own apps as standouts.

Multitasking is new for an iPhone but tightly limited. You can run two apps side by side in landscape, but Wired says Apple always enforces a 50-50 split and blocks a third floating app, except picture-in-picture video. In portrait you can only pair a video with another app. Wired also had to switch on an accessibility setting, AssistiveTouch, to use a trackpad cursor.

Battery life and performance: mostly good, but it gets warm

Battery results are the biggest surprise. PCMag streamed YouTube over Wi-Fi on the inner screen at full brightness for 18 hours and 15 minutes, ahead of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 (16 hours 30 minutes) and Pixel 11 Pro Fold (14 hours 21 minutes). Tom's Guide's web-browsing test over 5G lasted 13 hours 20 minutes, more than three hours longer than the Fold 8 but well short of the iPhone 18 Pro Max's 17 hours 31 minutes.

Real-world use backs that up for most testers. CNET ended a heavy day at 29% at 11 p.m. Wired usually had around 40% left at bedtime. The Verge was the exception: Nilay Patel needed to recharge at least once in a workday, and the review concluded the Duo "doesn't seem ready to last a full day of heavy use." With Apple's 40W charger, sold separately, Tom's Guide reached 42% in 15 minutes and 66% in 30 minutes.

Speed is not an issue. Tom's Guide's Geekbench 7 scores of 4,007 single-core and 11,363 multi-core are almost identical to the iPhone 18 Pro and far ahead of the Fold 8's 2,978 and 9,811. Heat is the recurring complaint: The Verge, Wired and PetaPixel all saw the right half warm up, and The Verge said long camera sessions with features like Smart Take made it lag.

Cameras: good enough, but no zoom lens

The Duo has a 48MP main camera and a 48MP ultra wide, with no telephoto lens. You get a 2x crop and up to 10x digital zoom. Tom's Guide found zoomed shots fell apart past about 8x next to the iPhone 18 Pro Max. The Verge said the main sensor is smaller than the 18 Pro's, so fine detail looks "a little crunchier." There is no ProRAW or ProRes, which CNET and reviewer David Imel both flagged.

Other reviewers were happier. PCMag said it "takes superb photos in most scenes," and Michael Fisher called it the best camera on a foldable sold in the US. The under-display camera on the inner screen is weak: The Verge puts it at 4 megapixels and Tom's Guide calculated 4.4MP. The upside is that you can open the phone and use the main camera for selfies with a live preview on the outer screen.

Should you buy the iPhone Duo?

Buy it if you want a pocketable tablet for video, reading and two-app work, you are already in Apple's ecosystem, and you are happy to live with a heavier phone, Touch ID and no zoom lens. On price, it is $100 more than the $1,899 Galaxy Z Fold 8, and Tom's Guide and PCMag both think it is the better phone.

Wait if you depend on a telephoto camera, hate extra weight, are left-handed, or rely on apps that have not been updated. Wired's advice was that "it may be prudent to wait for the Duo 2." Waiting may not cost much: Wired and Tom's Guide both say many configurations are already backordered into December or January, and Apple has said Apple Pencil support will arrive later this year. Analyst Max Weinbach says it already shows up in pre-release iOS software, and MacStories reports it is coming with iOS 27.2.

Sources: reviews and roundups published October 21, 2026 by The Verge (Nilay Patel and Allison Johnson), Wired (Julian Chokkattu), Tom's Guide (Mark Spoonauer), PCMag, CNET via iClarified, 9to5Mac (Chance Miller), Macworld and MacStories, plus Apple Newsroom. All checked October 21, 2026 between 21:23 and 21:27 UTC (02:53 to 02:57 IST October 22).