The iPhone Duo should have been an iPad

October 23, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The iPhone Duo is a $2,000 device that Apple calls an iPhone but that both David Pierce and Nilay Patel agree is better understood as something else entirely. As Patel put it, summarizing a take from John Gruber, the Duo is simultaneously "the worst iPhone that has ever been made" and "the best iPad ever made." The central tension of the device—and the reason it has sparked so much debate—is that it fails as a phone while succeeding as a tiny, foldable tablet, and Apple’s decision to brand it as an iPhone forces a comparison it cannot win.

The App Problem and the "Vibe Coding" Fix

The core experience of the Duo depends entirely on which of three tiers an app falls into. The first tier is the worst: unoptimized iPhone apps that appear as tiny, floating rectangles in black space on the inner screen, and are vertically shrunk and nearly useless on the cover display. The second tier is for apps updated to the baseline iOS 27 standard, which widens them slightly but still leaves a black bar on the side. The third tier is the Duo-native iOS 27.1 update, which moves system controls and allows full layout. Over the course of a single review week, Patel watched a flood of apps move from tier one to tier two, and that improvement was enough to nudge his score from a six to a seven. But those tier-two apps are often broken in new ways. Instagram, for example, is "optimized" but fail

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What you'll learn

1 (01:45) **Show Introduction and the "No Sevens in '27" Pledge** - David Pierce and Nilay Patel kick off the episode, joking about the controversy around their review scores and committing to a "no sevens" rule for 2027 to avoid future backlash.
2 (03:05) **The iPhone Duo Review: Score Controversy and the Journey to a Seven** - Nilay explains his personal journey from a six to a seven, citing a rapid improvement in app optimization during the review period as the deciding factor.
3 (08:46) **The Three Phases of Duo App Optimization** - The hosts break down the three states of app compatibility on the Duo, from unoptimized "itty baby" iPhone apps to fully optimized but still broken experiences.
4 (12:32) **The "Miserable Fat Little Thing": Cover Screen and iPad Comparisons** - The conversation pivots to the controversial cover screen, with Nilay and David dissecting John Gruber's and Marques Brownlee's reviews, which frame the Duo as a bad iPhone but a great iPad.
5 (16:25) **The Fundamental Compromise: A Great Tablet or a Great Phone?** - The hosts conclude that the Duo is a great tablet that folds up, but a compromised phone, forcing a choice between a bad outer screen and a good inner screen.
6 (21:28) **Optimism for the Future, but Not the Present** - Despite the criticisms, Nilay expresses optimism about the Duo's future, noting developer excitement and a clear path for improvement, while David remains skeptical.
7 (28:56) **The Duo's Place in Apple's Strategy and a Return to "What If" Mode** - The conversation broadens to Apple's overall strategy, with the hosts agreeing that it's good for Apple to be experimenting again, even if the first product is flawed.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

David Pierce Nilay Patel John Gruber Marques Brownlee

Show Notes

We gave the iPhone Duo a 7 /10. But that wasn’t always the score we planned, and it might not be the right score forever. Such are the challenges of reviewing — and assessing — a big, new idea about the most popular smartphone in history.

On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay debate whether the Duo deserved the score it got, and try to work through how this device might change over time.

After that, the hosts talk about the huge PHP cybersecurity flaw that rocked the web this week, the ongoing increase in AI shopping, an impending reboot inside of Netflix, and some very confusing Gemini news. Also, Brendan Carr is a Dummy.