Tech, tested properly. 📱 Honest reviews. Real-world results. No fluff. 🇬🇧 see tech for what it is ↓
England, United Kingdom
Joined January 2023
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A few days with the iPhone Duo, and here are my thoughts so far!
Still early days, but I’ve been using it extensively, and here’s what’s stood out to me.
✅ THE PROS
-Amazing design and solid build quality. Genuinely feels fantastic in the hand.
-Absolutely loving the cover display. Using it far more than I initially expected.
-Inner display is stunning, especially with that nano-texture finish.
-Brilliant glare reduction. Makes using the phone in different lighting conditions a much better experience.
-Media consumption has been fantastic. The larger display genuinely makes a difference.
-Typing is significantly better on the inner display, particularly in portrait orientation.
-Multitasking is incredibly useful and has genuinely improved my productivity.
-Reading books on this thing is amazing. The nano-texture display does a great job of resembling paper.
-Speakers are surprisingly good for a foldable. Not quite iPhone 17 Pro Max level, but still excellent.
-Cameras are absolutely fine for my needs. Great photos, video quality and solid stabilisation.
-Using the cover display as a camera viewfinder is incredibly useful when filming myself and checking framing.
-Don’t miss the telephoto lens. Rarely used anything beyond 2x on my previous iPhone anyway.
-Call quality has been solid. Clear audio and no complaints.
-Battery life has been decent overall. I’m managing to get through a full day.
-Weight hasn’t bothered me whatsoever. I actually quite like the heft, and pocketability hasn’t been an issue.
-The hinge feels really solid, and really satisfying snap when shutting it.
-App transitions between the cover and inner displays have been seamless.
-Performance has been solid, with no noticeable heating during normal use, though I haven’t really pushed it too hard so far.
-Charging speeds have been perfectly adequate for my needs.
❌ THE CONS
-Volume button placement isn’t ideal. Quite awkward to reach when quickly adjusting volume.
-Really missing Face ID. Touch ID is becoming muscle memory now, though, and Apple Watch unlock helps considerably.
-Colours on the inner display appear slightly muted compared to the cover display. Using a colour filter has helped improve this a little.
-Software still needs some polish. A few bugs here and there (alignment issues mainly), although nothing that’s seriously affected my experience.
-App optimisation is still a work in progress. Updates are gradually rolling out, so hopefully things continue improving.
-Battery drain is noticeably higher when using the inner display but still good, was expecting worse. Understandable given its size, and the phone is still indexing, so I’ll reserve judgement for now.
-The display crease has become more evident after repeated folding. That said, I rarely notice it during normal use. It’s mostly visible with darker content when viewed at an angle.
-I’ve noticed the phone getting warm when charging with my 96W MacBook charger, but haven’t really experienced heating elsewhere.
-Charging appears to slow down after a while, possibly due to thermal management, although I haven’t confirmed that’s the cause.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
I’m genuinely enjoying the iPhone Duo.
The larger display isn’t just a novelty. It’s actually changing how I use my phone, particularly for media consumption, reading, typing and multitasking.
Yes, there are compromises, and the software could certainly do with some refinement. But the overall experience has been surprisingly good.
It’s still early days, and my opinions might change with more use, but right now?
The positives comfortably outweigh the negatives.
More thoughts to come!
#iPhoneDuo #Apple
iOS 27.2 is out with Apple Pencil support, Edge Light, bug fixes and a few other bits for iPhone Duo, hoping it sorts out the bugs I’ve been coming across 🤞
Small touch, but love the lock screen control that shows up when you set a focus on iPhone Duo, you can long press to toggle that focus too. It’s the little things 👌
Jeeeez man, yes I know one is a telephoto lens and the other isn’t. The whole point of the original post was to show what taking a picture at 10x would look like and what to expect if you’re coming from an iPhone that HAS a telephoto. Obviously the Duo is going to be less detailed! But even then I’ve seen a lot worse 10x on other phones. Just an observation, nothing more nothing less 👍
Does this qualify as a curved display? Quite trippy but immersive watching content on the iPhone Duo like this 😵💫
Yeah so the folio is BAD when it comes to using the main camera & cover display features, same issue for Duo Preview & Kid Cue🥲 at least it slips off really easily
Comparison of screen sizes between the iPhone Duo, iPhone 17 Pro Max & iPhone 17. Mad how much more you get with 16:9 & 4:3 format videos
Quick little tip, if you want to turn up the saturation of iPhone Duo inner display a little, turn on Colour Filters> Blue/Yellow filter and set it to around 10% or so 👍
I’m reserving judgement of the iPhone Duo until I’ve got in my own hands and used it for more than a week 👍
