How we really feel about the iPhone Duo | Livestream

“This is some Android shit,” Allison Johnson recalls thinking during her first days with the iPhone Duo. That sentence captures the disorienting experience of reviewing Apple’s first foldable phone — a device that is simultaneously thrilling, frustrating, and unlike anything the company has made before. On this episode of The Vergecast, David Pierce sits down with reviewers Nilay Patel and Allison Johnson to unpack the iPhone Duo, a device that forces everyone to ask the same question: should you buy a $2,000 early-adopter experiment as your main phone?

The size debate: passport shape and the outer screen problem

The most immediate and consequential design decision Apple made with the Duo is its shape. It uses a “passport” form factor — wider than a traditional phone when closed, with a square-ish inner screen when opened. This is the same approach Samsung took with the Z Fold 8, and the reaction has been nearly identical: renders looked goofy, but holding it changes your mind. “I’m on board with the passport shape now,” Johnson says. “You pick it up and you’re like, no, actually this makes a lot of sense.”