The debate over foldable phone displays just reached a boiling point. It seems everyone has an opinion on Apple’s new nano-texture display for the iPhone Duo and how it stacks up to the ultra-vibrant glossy OLED on Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8.

I posted two videos comparing these displays both indoors and outdoors on TikTok, and the reaction was instantaneous, racking up over 1.2 million views and nearly 5,000 comments.

On one side, the Duo’s nano-texture coating virtually erases glare and makes the creases almost invisible. On the other side, the Fold 8 delivers perfect black levels and punchy saturation you can’t get from a matte treatment.

I want you to be the judge. Watch the tests below, check out the debate and let me know in the comments if you agree with my verdict.

iPhone Duo vs Fold 8 Test 1: Outdoors in the sun (The Glare Test)

I want to give you fair warning that I’m obsessed with Marvel, so I used MCU movies for both comparisons. Starting outside in the shade but on a sunny day, I played the “Avengers Doomsday" trailer on both the iPhone Duo and Galaxy Z Fold 8.

As I pan around, you can tell that the Fold 8 suffers from more glare, and the crease is more visible, but this is more of a stress test. The average person is going to look at their device head-on, but the fact that glare creeps in off-angle is relevant when it comes to sharing content with others.

However, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 offers deeper blacks and more saturated colors, just as you would expect from a glossier OLED panel. So I’d say in this round the Duo has the advantage, but it’s not a rout by any stretch.

Top comments

• “That crease kills it for the top one. (Fold 8)”
• “The colors are def more vibrant on the Samsung but that glare and crease are terrible. I would choose the Apple.”
• “I like the anti glare of the bottom one (iPhone Duo) but the vibrancy of the top one (Fold 8).”
• “Samsung looks better but the crease…”
• I can’t understand why people love matte displays. It just looks so greyish”

iPhone Duo vs Fold 8 Test 2: Indoors (The Color & Contrast Test)

Next, I tested the iPhone Duo and Fold 8 side by side in our video studio, so the lights are fairly bright overhead. In this environment, the crease on the Samsung was less visible and I noticed less glare.

More importantly, the colors on the Fold 8’s display look much richer, as Spider-Man’s red uniform pops a lot more. And once again, the black levels are perfect through the Samsung. There’s just better contrast overall. Even the Marvel Studios graphic looks better on the Fold 8.

The caveat here is that you’ll get better visuals from the iPhone Duo when it’s in your hand versus off- angle, but I did stand directly above these foldable phones when shooting.

Top comments

• “Unbelievable work from Apple — they’ve sacrificed brightness, contrast, sharpness, and HDR+ just to hide the crease, bravo.”
• “Matte made that OLED look like an IPS.”
• “Gloss > matte.”
• “The Duo looks dull.”
• The iPhone, because you can actually see the screen even if there’s light shining on it.”

My take

I honestly don’t believe that one display is objectively better than the other. It depends on what you prioritize. But based on my testing so far, I personally prefer the iPhone Duo’s main screen.

Apple’s panel does a better job of cutting down on glare and minimizing the crease to the point where it’s hard to see. I especially prefer using the iPhone Duo outdoors. I find it easier to do everything from watching videos in tent mode to reading, even in direct sunlight.

However, there’s no denying that the Galaxy Z Fold 8’s main display offers richer colors and the perfect black levels you’d expect from an OLED. And it's also worth keeping in mind that we've been using the Fold 8 for longer, which contributes to the crease.

I wish there was a screen that offered the best of both worlds. But for now, it all comes down to what you want in a foldable.

More from Tom's Guide

• iPhone Duo battery life results: Here's how long it lasts
• Best iPhone Duo deals — save up to $1,200 right now
• I put the iPhone Duo vs Galaxy Z Fold 8 through a 10-round camera face-off — here's the winner

The iPod is long gone now, but it was the product that turned around Apple's fortunes, got PC users to take the Apple brand seriously, established Apple as a player in mobile devices, and went on to revolutionize the music industry and lay the groundwork for the iPhone. And it did all of that in a tiny window of time, from its introduction in the fall of 2001 to the rapid rise of the iPhone beginning in 2007.

Here are 25 things you might not know about how the iPod came to be, and its legacy.

1. Steve Jobs thought he missed his moment

In the year before the iPod began development, Steve Jobs introduced a whole new concept in order to sell Macs: the "Digital Hub." The idea was that a proliferation of new gadgets — most notably digital cameras and digital video camcorders — worked best when connected to a computer, and that meant a Mac. This was the origin of the iMovie app, which exists to this day.

But despite Jobs's personal love of music, he never really noticed the rise of MP3s, Napster, and the new wave of MP3 players (like the Diamond Rio) that were hitting the scene. It was only in late 1999 that Jobs realized that he had been so focused on photos and video that he had missed the digital music revolution.

"I felt like a dope," Jobs told Fortune's Brent Schlender. "I thought we had missed it. We had to work hard to catch up." Apple quickly reached out to the developers of SoundJam, as well as another MP3 app called Audion, and made it clear that it was interested in bringing those developers to Cupertino to work on a crash project that became iTunes.

2. iTunes owes its life to an MP3 player, but not the iPod

Apple couldn't have made the iPod without iTunes, which performed most of the important tasks of organizing and syncing so that the tiny device didn't need as much brainpower or custom software. But iTunes wasn't built with the iPod in mind.

Instead, former Apple engineer Bill Kincaid started building SoundJam, the app that would one day become iTunes, in order to let Macs sync with the Diamond Rio, an early MP3 player that held roughly a dozen songs. To help with the user interface, Kincaid enlisted former Apple intern Jeff Robbin, and the pair went on to create the app that formed the basis of iTunes. Jobs bought SoundJam, moved Robbin and Kincaid into an office a short walk from his own, and began the process of building an MP3 player jukebox app with Jobs's sensibilities in mind.

3. It all started with a hard drive

In 2000, Jobs decided Apple needed to build its own MP3 player. Early the next year, a bunch of Apple executives (including Jobs, marketing director Phil Schiller, and hardware chief Jon Rubinstein) were in Japan for Macworld Tokyo. Rubinstein took the opportunity to make a tour of Apple's suppliers, and at the end of a meeting with Toshiba, execs brought out a new product that they admitted they hadn't found any use for.

It was an incredibly tiny 5GB 1.8-inch hard drive, much smaller than anything found in a laptop in those days. Rubinstein and operations exec Jeff Williams took one look at it and realized that it would be perfect for that MP3 player. Rubinstein called Jobs and said he needed a $10 million check to buy out every single drive Toshiba could make. Jobs was happy to oblige, and the trajectory of the iPod was sealed: it would be built around that little Toshiba drive.

4. Apple hired a contractor to run the iPod team

In 2001, Apple was a much smaller company than it is today, and it was intensely focused on turning around the Mac product line after years of stagnation before Jobs returned to Apple in early 1997. As a result, Rubinstein felt that he couldn't devote any of his senior people to the MP3 player project. Instead, he asked around Silicon Valley and ended up with a referral to a guy who had been trying to build portable devices (including MP3 players) at his own startup for a few years.

Rubinstein reached that guy, Tony Fadell, when Fadell was on a chairlift, skiing at Vail. Fadell was intrigued, as he had worked with numerous early Mac legends earlier in his career at General Magic. But Rubinstein refused to tell him any details about what Apple wanted him to build until he took the job. Fadell signed on for an eight-week contract, and only then was told that he was going to be spinning up a team to build an Apple MP3 player.

5. The iPod's product manager tried to leave

Eight weeks into the project, as the project was hurtling forward, Fadell expressed uncertainty about whether he wanted to keep working on the iPod or if he should go back to his startup. Rubinstein ended up demanding that he sign on as an employee right in front of the entire iPod team. Fadell agreed, but he also never forgave Rubinstein for putting him on the spot. The two executives would clash repeatedly over their tenures at Apple.

6. The iPod's killer feature also made it brutally incompatible

In 2001, most computers used USB 1.0 for peripherals. But transferring MP3s at USB 1.0 rates was excruciatingly slow. Apple estimated you'd need ten minutes to transfer one CD's worth of music via USB. But not so with the iPod, which was built around the newer, much faster FireWire standard that was common on digital camcorders during that era. Most new Macs were shipping with FireWire, as well as a handful of PCs.

FireWire could transfer an entire album in something like 30 seconds. It would have been excruciating to transfer 1,000 songs to the iPod at USB 1.0 speeds. The result was an incredibly fast syncing process with iTunes, and the optional ability to load your personal files on the iPod hard drive – but it meant that even if Apple built or licensed some Windows software to sync to the iPod, almost no PCs could connect to it.

A couple of years later, the much faster USB 2 standard arrived, freeing the iPod from FireWire at last.

7. The iPod ran on someone else's operating system

We're so used to Apple building and owning the whole widget, hardware and software. But Apple of 2001 was still trying to ship the first stable, usable version of Mac OS X while also keeping Mac OS 9 alive. It didn't have the time to build an entirely new operating system for the iPod, and certainly not if it was going to ship by the end of 2001.

So Apple relied on a small Silicon Valley company called PIXO, which had built a tiny embedded operating system atop a processor built by a company called PortalPlayer. PIXO and PortalPlayer were creating products designed for portable devices, including figuring out how to use a spinning hard drive in a music player without skipping or killing the battery. (They came up with a clever system of buffering audio, then spinning down the hard drive until it was needed to fill the buffer again).

The companies also had connections with other links in the digital music supply chain, introducing Apple to the Scottish company that would supply the digital-to-analog audio converter that fed the iPod's headphone jack.

8. The iPod was dumb, and iTunes was smart

With very little time to build an interface on top of the PIXO operating system, Apple made a fateful and smart decision: It offloaded as much of the work that went into building the iPod's music database and file organization as possible onto the connected Mac running iTunes. iTunes did all the heavy lifting and synced the results to the iPod, allowing the iPod software to remain relatively lightweight, and let Apple focus on building a pleasant interface on top of PIXO's software.

The one drawback to this approach is that it meant that only iTunes could sync with the iPod, which meant it couldn't work even with Windows PCs with FireWire ports. Eventually it added support for Windows, first via MusicMatch Jukebox and later iTunes itself.

9. Fadell used a good/better/best approach to impress Steve Jobs

When it came time to unveil potential designs to Jobs, Fadell took the advice of Rubinstein and revealed mock-ups one at a time, from worst to best. Fadell showed off a player with a slot, into which you could plug a spinning hard drive or a flash memory card. It ran on double-A batteries. Jobs thought it was too complicated.

Next was something more like the Diamond Rio, a compact flash-memory based device, but with dynamic memory. If its rechargeable battery ever got too low, the memory would be wiped and you'd need to re-load all your songs. Jobs thought that was no good.

Then Fadell assembled something very much like the iPod from an array of component parts already on the table, a bit like snapping together Lego. Jobs seemed intrigued by the result, at which point Fadell revealed something very much like the final iPod design, which had been hiding under a bowl on the table the entire time. Jobs was sold.

10. Apple's marketing guy came up with the scroll wheel

Jobs hated that the other MP3 players in the category were covered with buttons and hard to navigate. He felt that Apple needed to find a better way, especially if users were expected to load a thousand songs on the device.

The answer was counterintuitive and pretty brilliant — the iPod's interface was driven by a wheel that you spun around, with a button in the middle that you'd click to select an item. The wheel was encircled by four other buttons to take you up a level, forward or reverse, or pause/play. It made driving the iPod's hierarchical interface easy and fast, which is what Jobs insisted on.

What's funny about it is that the scroll wheel didn't come from Apple designer Jonathan Ive, or Fadell, or Rubinstein. It came from Apple marketing executive Phil Schiller, who had been inspired by a Bang & Olufsen land line he had at his house. Jobs loved it, and Fadell quickly agreed that the wheel could be part of his device.

11. To hide the iPod's design, Apple built a "Soviet rocket launcher"

Apple is famously secretive, and it didn't let even most employees working on the iPod actually see what it would look like. Instead, it created impossibly ugly plastic enclosures for its guts, which were mostly air inside. On the outside was a big wheel, a screen, and a bunch of buttons. Employees said it looked brutal and ridiculous, like a vintage Soviet rocket launcher.

12. The iPod is the reason Jony Ive loves the color white

The caricature of Jony Ive as a designer is that he was someone obsessed with minimalism, and usually appeared on Apple product videos inside an entirely white room. But in 2001, he was not that guy. Ive was the guy who had designed the original iMac, a very unusually shaped computer with translucent colored plastic. It was the opposite of minimal — it was meant to draw attention.

But for the iPod, he took a different approach. Ive believed that the personal nature of the iPod, that it was a small thing you carried in one hand and slipped in a pocket, required an entirely different approach to an iMac. He wanted it to be "restrained, pure, and quiet." And that's what led him to white.

But if it was going to be white, it was going to be really white. Jobs and Ive argued about exactly which shade, but once they settled, they also made sure that the headphones were entirely white — an Apple branding coup to this day.

13. The name is a reference to a classic movie

Nobody seems to remember the moment when "iPod" was picked as the product's name. The iPod's code name was P68, which is far from memorable. A group of execs and people in Apple's marketing department, as well as people from Apple's ad agency, kept meeting and throwing out ideas. Most of them were terrible.

One name thrown out by Apple creative director Vinnie Chieco was, he said later, inspired by the fact that it was the year 2001, and in "2001: A Space Odyssey," the astronaut Dave Bowman famously orders the mad computer HAL to "open the pod bay doors" and let him fly his space pod back in. Pod – that sounded futuristic.

Nobody really liked it. Schiller thought it sounded sinister, like the pod people from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." But Steve Jobs thought it might work... with Apple's telltale lower-case letter "i" (introduced with the iMac) stuck on the front of it.

In the run-up to the product launch, Jobs never seemed to truly embrace the name. But no other name came along that was better, so it stuck.

14. The manufacturer didn't even read the contract

In a show of hardball supply-chain negotiating tactics that would become an Apple hallmark over the next two decades, Apple's potential manufacturer for the iPod was given no time to consider or even read its contract with Apple. Apple's ruthless supply executive, Tony Blevins, went to Taiwanese manufacturer Inventec, put a contract down on the table, and told them to sign it or lose the business.

Blevins was probably a great poker player. Apple didn't have many alternatives to using Inventec. But rather than insisting on showing the deal to its lawyers, Inventec executives just signed the contract — and built the iPod.

15. The whole thing was done in less than a year

Today it seems that we hear about new Apple products a couple of years before they arrive, at the very least. But Apple of 2001 was a much smaller and more nimble company.

Still, the speed of the iPod's development is staggering when you think of it. In February, Rubinstein and Williams saw Toshiba's hard drive and got Jobs to write them a $10 million check. Apple announced the iPod eight months later, and shipped it nine months later.

16. Apple cleaned out Bay Area record stores to buy CDs

When it came time to introduce the iPod, Jobs was concerned that Apple would be accused of furthering Napster-style MP3 piracy. In those days, digital music wasn't for sale online; you had to buy CDs and "rip" them to your hard drive... or just use peer-to-peer file sharing to download them for free.

Apple planned on giving iPods to journalists who attended the event, but they realized that forcing journalists to find a FireWire-equipped Mac, install a prerelease version of iTunes that synced with the iPod, and convert their own music was asking a lot. So instead, every iPod came equipped with a selection of music.

The problem was that Apple didn't have the right to load that music on those iPods. It came across as reinforcing the idea of the iPod as a piracy device.

So instead, Apple dispatched its PR and marketing people to local record stores to buy multiple copies of every CD they were planning on pre-loading onto the iPod. The result: journalists didn't just receive a prerelease iPod when leaving the event, but a gift bag that also included a taped-together cube of CD jewel cases representing the albums that were preloaded on the iPod.

17. The product launch event was lightly attended due to 9/11

If you didn't live through it, you might not realize that the announcement and release of the iPod happened in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. And as a result, Apple's launch event on October 23 was lightly attended, with many international and even East Coast outlets declining to make anyone fly out to California. Apple managed to fill its Town Hall conference center with lots and lots of Bay Area journalists (Macworld magazine brought at least a half-dozen people, myself included) and a lot of Apple employees as well.

The 9/11 attacks also affected the product's launch in November, since it was meant to draw people to Apple's then-new retail stores — but in that era, people were reluctant to go to shopping malls or other high-profile public places.

18. The guy from Smash Mouth played a prominent role in the product video

As was usual for the period, Apple's introduction included a lengthy demo from Steve Jobs, as well as a few pre-produced product videos. One featured Jony Ive extolling the virtues of its design — and yes, the color white — at length. Another, though, was essentially a proto-reaction-video of several professional musicians being amazed by what the iPod represented.

If you know your 2000s music, you may not be surprised by the appearance of electronic artist Moby or pop singer Seal. You may be more surprised to see Steve Harwell, the late singer of the band Smash Mouth. But make no mistake: Harwell was a huge presence in Apple commercials during this period, including one introducing the concept of burning your own audio CDs.

19. 2001 social media hated the iPod

You may think the Internet has gotten worse in the last decade or two, but it was pretty bad even back in 2001. In the wake of the iPod announcement, a reader of the aggregation site Slashdot submitted a link to Macworld's coverage over the event with a summation of the product's features and prices.

Famously, Slashdot editor Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda offered a one-line critique of the product: "No wireless. Less space than a [Creative Labs] Nomad. Lame."

Sorry, Malda's going to have to live that one down forever.

20. It wasn't a hit… At first

Because the original iPod didn't work with Windows, it was a strictly Mac-only product. The second-generation model added limited Windows support (which Steve Jobs allowed only under protest!), but you still had to have a PC with FireWire, which was rare. Only with the third-generation model, which supported USB, did the iPod take off.

21. The iPod halo effect was real and huge for Apple

To put it bluntly, the iPod completely rehabbed Apple's brand image. A company that was viewed as having seen better days, who made a computer that was incompatible with PCs and used by 5% of the computer-using population, was just too weird and sad. But then the iPod happened, and PC users fell in love with it, and once you love an Apple product, you start to wonder whether those computers Apple makes might be worth looking into — and oh, what luck — Apple happens to have a retail store in my local shopping mall.

It was a huge swing in fortunes for Apple. Mac sales began to grow rapidly. And the entire thing laid the groundwork for the iPhone.

22. The iPod really only had five years as Apple’s golden child

It's stunning to think about it, but by the time the first USB iPod arrived, the iPhone was only four years away. The biggest hit iPod model, the iPod Nano, debuted two years before the iPhone was announced. If you lived through that era, it's hard to really conceive of how relatively quickly it came and went. But maybe it's better to burn out than to fade away?

To be clear, iPod sales peaked in 2008 with 55 million sold, but the iPhone would blow past that number with 72 million by 2011.

23. The iPhone music app was originally called iPod

How big was the iPod? When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, one of its three primary features was to be a great iPod. So much so that the music app on the iPhone was, for several years, called iPod. Branding!

24. The iPhone used the iPod connector until iPhone 5

Today's iPhones use USB connections, and for many years (from the iPhone 5 onward) they used the tiny Apple-designed Lightning port. But the first five iPhone models all shipped with Apple's iPod dock connector port on the bottom. It's just one of the many ways that the iPhone owes a lot of its legacy to its mobile-device predecessor.

25. My daughter might be the first "iPod Baby"

Apple handed out those cubes of CDs and demo iPods to the press after the iPod launch event on October 23, but the product didn't ship to the public until November 10. In those intervening two-plus weeks, members of the press were pretty much the only people outside of Apple to have access to the exciting new music player.

Something else happened during that brief window: My wife and I had our first child. (Yes, this means my daughter turns 25 this year, too.) And, yes, we built a playlist to play in the birth room, and brought the iPod along with a portable stereo with a cassette adapter that let us play the iPod out of some speakers into the room. I'm a little dubious if Apple would have let any of its employees out in public with an iPod before it was announced, which may mean that my daughter was the first baby to be born with an iPod in the delivery room. If someone else can beat that story, I don't want to hear about it.

Your Mac might already have a free AI chatbot built right into it, and you probably had no idea it was there. No ChatGPT subscription, no downloading a separate AI app and no internet connection required once the model is ready to go. Just local AI when you need it.

That's what X user Alex Choi discovered this week when he posted about finding a local large language model (LLM) hiding inside his MacBook's Terminal app.

"wtf i just discovered that a macbook comes with a free local LLM in your terminal," he wrote in a post on October 21 that attracted more than 1 million views in the accompanying screenshot.

The discovery caught people's attention for a good reason. We're used to opening ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini in a browser whenever we need AI assistance. But if you're running macOS 27 on a compatible Mac, Apple has already given you another option. And accessing it is surprisingly easy.

Your Mac has its own AI chatbot

The feature is called Apple Foundation Models CLI, or fm for short. Apple introduced it with macOS 27 Golden Gate, which arrived in September.

Unlike ChatGPT or Claude, which typically send requests to cloud servers, Apple's built-in tool can run an AI model directly on your Mac. This means a you can ask questions, brainstorm ideas, rewrite text and get help with everyday tasks without sending your prompts to an external AI service.

Apple demonstrated the feature during WWDC 2026, explaining that the command-line tool comes preinstalled with macOS 27.

It's primarily designed for developers, but there's no reason everyday Mac users can't experiment with it, too. In fact, because it's local AI, it's a great way to learn more about what AI can do while keeping your information out of the cloud.

The catch? You'll need to open Terminal, which might look intimidating if you've never used it. Fortunately, getting started only requires a couple of commands.

How to access your Mac's free AI chatbot

First, make sure you're running macOS 27 and using a Mac with Apple silicon. You'll also need Apple Intelligence enabled and its on-device models downloaded.

Here's how to get started.

1. Open Terminal. Press Command + Space, type "Terminal" and press Return.

2. Check that Apple's AI tool is available. Type fm and press Return. If prompted to accept Apple's Foundation Models CLI terms, you'll need to review and accept them before continuing. You can do this by entering sudo fm license, providing your Mac administrator password and following the prompts.

3. Start chatting. Once the tool is ready, type fm chat and press Return.

4. Ask a question. You should now see an interactive interface where you can enter a prompt and receive a response from Apple's AI model.

That's it. From there, you're chatting with an AI model running locally on your Mac. You can start with something simple, such as "Give me five easy dinner ideas using chicken and rice" or "Explain compound interest like I'm 12."

You can also ask follow-up questions, just as you would with other AI chatbots.

If you don't want an ongoing conversation, there's another useful command. Type fm respond followed by your question in quotation marks to get a single response without opening the chat interface.

What can you actually do with it?

Apple's local AI isn't designed to replace the most advanced versions of ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. It's a smaller model intended for tasks that don't necessarily need a massive cloud-based AI system.

You could ask it to rewrite a long email so it sounds more professional, brainstorm birthday party themes, explain an unfamiliar term or help outline a project.

One of the biggest advantages is privacy. Because the on-device model processes requests locally, your prompts don't need to be sent to an outside server to generate a response. That also makes it useful when you're traveling or working somewhere with unreliable Wi-Fi.

There's even another benefit: cost. You don't need an additional AI subscription, and there are no per-message charges for using the local model through the built-in tool.

Of course, there are limitations. Smaller models can struggle with complicated reasoning, lengthy conversations and questions that require current information. And because the model runs locally, it doesn't automatically have access to the latest news or information from the internet.

There's one catch: Not every Mac supports it. So, before you rush to open Terminal, there are a few requirements worth knowing. Apple's fm command-line tool comes with macOS 27, so it won't be available as a built-in feature on Macs running older versions of macOS.

You'll also need compatible hardware. Apple Intelligence supports Macs with M1 chips or later, along with the Apple silicon-equipped MacBook Neo. Older Intel-based Macs aren't supported.

Apple Intelligence must also be enabled, and the necessary on-device models must finish downloading. You can check your settings under System Settings and Apple Intelligence & Siri.

If you're unsure whether your Mac qualifies, Apple has a full list of Apple Intelligence requirements.

The takeaway

There's something refreshing about discovering that a computer you already own can do something you previously relied on a separate AI service for.

Apple has been building AI into macOS for years, but this little Terminal trick makes that technology feel more accessible, and the best part is that you don't have to pay anything extra to try it.

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• OpenAI unleashed thousands of AI agents to study a Parkinson-like disease — here's what they found in 32 minutes
• 7 ChatGPT plugins that are a must-have for anyone with a side hustle
• Google just cut down 250,000 trees for AI data centers — and now it's facing a major backlash

The iPhone Duo is proving very difficult to come by, and right now, on the official release day, Apple's own delivery estimates stretch into late January of next year. The Duo is, by our metrics, an excellent foldable phone, but it isn't the only option available to you right now. In fact, there are more of the best foldable phones to choose from, none of which have the same availability issues Apple's option is experiencing.

Obviously these phones have one key difference, in that they run Android rather than Apple's iOS. That is enough to turn off a lot of people, especially if they've been Apple users for a long time. That said, if you're more open to being platform-agnostic, and desperately want to pick up a foldable phone without waiting, you have some options available to you.

Here are the best iPhone Duo alternatives you can buy today

Best iPhone Duo alternatives

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8

If you're looking for another passport-shaped foldable — with a shorter design when closed and widescreen when open — then the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is easily your best bet. The Z Fold 8 offers a 5.5-inch cover display and 7.6-inch foldable display, which is close in size to the Duo.

That larger screen packs Samsung's new Flex Titanium display technology which promises to improve durability and minimize the crease. There's also an anti-reflective coating to prevent glare and help you see what's on screen. The Fold 8 is thinner and lighter than the iPhone Duo, and it lets you three apps at once instead of just two.

Camera-wise you're looking at a pair of 50MP rear lenses, with main and ultrawide shooters. Like the Duo, there's no telephoto lens for zoomed in shots. Selfie cameras are 10MP each, and you'll find one in both screens — though there's no under-display camera in this one. It's also a lot thinner and lighter than the Duo, and features the performance power of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy.

That's as good as you'll get on an Android phone. Oh, and you get some of the best AI features of any phone, with a price tag that's $100 less than the iPhone Duo.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra

If you want a foldable that's a little larger than what the Duo has to offer, then Samsung's Z Fold 8 Ultra is worth considering. It offers all the same features and benefits as the Z Fold 8, albeit without the newly-popular wide design. Instead there's a skinnier 6.5-inch cover display and a 8-inch foldable display on the inside.

The Z Fold 8 Ultra benefits from better camera hardware, including a 200MP main camera lens and a 10MP telephoto shooter with 3x optical zooming capabilities. On top of that you get a larger battery with 14 hours and 30 minutes of battery life (an hour longer than the iPhone Duo.

You also get a lightweight and thin frame, and everything Galaxy AI and Google Gemini have to offer. The downside is that Galaxy foldables don't offer stylus support or dust resistance, and the 8 Ultra is $100 more expensive than the iPhone Duo.

Motorola Razr Fold

Here's another book-shaped foldable, coming in with the same $1,900 price tag as the iPhone Duo. The Motorola Razr Fold puts an emphasis on premium hardware at that base price, with a 6,000 mAh battery (with over 14 hours of life), 80W charging, 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM that works in conjunction with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset.

Screens are a little bigger, measuring 6.6-inches for the cover display and 8.1-inches for the foldable inner screen. You also get a trio of 50MP cameras, which are complemented by a 32MP inner selfie camera and a 20MP cover screen camera. Optional stylus support, a slightly thinner design than the iPhone Duo, and a bunch of Motorola's AI features round out the perks.

Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold

As a whole, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold is not that impressive compared to other foldables. Performance is weak; app scaling is a very real problem; and the battery life is not particularly impressive. But there are a lot of benefits to picking up a Google-made foldable instead of one of its rivals. Particularly the AI support, which is some of the best you'll find on any Android thanks to the fact Google is responsible for Pixel phones and Gemini AI.

The Pixel 11 Pro Fold also features the brightest screen of any foldable, with a 6.5-inch cover display and 8-inch main display, a 5x telephoto lens (with 30x Super Zoom), 16GB of RAM, 25W wireless charging, and the new Rambler dictation system.

On top of that, Google has added a new "app bubbles" system that lets you dock different apps at the bottom of your screen — with the ability to summon them as an extra layer on top of an ordinary split-view mode. There's no stylus support, though.

Other foldable options

The thing about foldable phones is that there are a lot more of them out there than you might realize. In fact, the foldable segment is particularly popular among Chinese brands and some of them actually go on sale outside of the country. Sadly, they can be much harder to find, especially if you live in the U.S.

That's less of an issue in places like the U.K., and any readers from across the Atlantic should be aware of a couple of extra options that are available to you. Plus, while these phones technically run on Android, the software looks very similar to iOS 27 — which means the shock of switching platforms won't be quite as severe.

Honor Magic V6

The Honor Magic V6 is a foldable that aims to be as premium as possible, particularly in the camera department. This thing packs in 50MP main and ultrawide lenses, alongside a 64MP telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom and a pair of 20MP selfie cameras — one on each screen.

The software is very reminiscent of iOS, and it features a bunch of stuff that you'd normally only get from an iPhone. That includes the ability to use the V6 as a secondary Mac screen, the inclusion of an Apple-like interface for AirPods and even Apple Watch notification support. Which is astounding for an Android

As for the screens, you get a 7.95-inch foldable display with anti-reflective coating and a 6.52-inch cover display with anti-scratch coating. Both screens are rated for a respective 5,000 and 6,000 nits. You get stylus support on both displays, and they come wrapped in a shiny gold casing. Add in the swift Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and up to 16GB of RAM and you have a powerful phone that's ready for AI.

Oppo Find N6

Oppo's Find N series has been the gold standard for crease elimination for the past couple of generations, and the Oppo Find N6 is the bar at which the iPhone Duo's lack of crease will be judged by. The 8.12-inch foldable screen also features a "self-healing memory glass" which is said to keep that crease away for good. Both it and the 6.62-inch cover display offer stylus support, as well as Dolby Vision and HDR10+.

As for cameras, you're looking at a 200MP main lens, a 50MP ultrawide and a 50MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom. Selfie cameras are both 20MP, using a hole-punch design on each screen. Performance is handled by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, in conjunction with either 12 or 16GB of RAM. Meanwhile, there's a monster 6,000 mAh battery inside, complete with 80W wired charging speeds.,

More from Tom's Guide

• I put the iPhone Duo vs. Galaxy Fold 8 through a 10-round photo face-off — here’s the winner
• iPhone Duo full benchmarks — the world's fastest foldable, but how does it stack up to iPhone 18 Pro?
• I’ve been testing dozens of iPhone Duo apps — here’s my top 15 picks so far

If you haven't been able to get yourself an iPhone Duo, and you'd rather not wait for different retailers and carriers to get them back in stock, I have some good news — and some bad news. The good news is that Apple has confirmed some walk-in customers will be able to buy an iPhone Duo on launch day (October 23). The bad news is that supply will be limited.

Apple confirmed this to MacRumors, with a spokesperson reiterating that some countries will be able to sell iPhone Duo units to walk-in customers — meaning those people who do not have a valid pre-order or confirmed collection booked.

"On Friday morning, our teams look forward to welcoming customers at Apple Stores to experience iPhone Duo and the incredible iPhone line-up for themselves," the statement reads. "Apple Stores will have limited iPhone Duo available for walk-in customers, and we're working hard to get this revolutionary new product into customers' hands as quickly as possible."

What we know about in-store iPhone Duo stock

Countries confirmed to get walk-in stock include:

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada
• Mexico
• Germany
• Netherlands
• Singapore
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Türkiye

Certain Italian Apple Stores will also have stock, but Apple hasn't specified which ones.

We don't know how limited the supply of in-store iPhone Duos will be, but Apple has said that they'll only be available on launch day. My guess is that, given the sheer amount of demand for the iPhone Duo, Apple is simply assuming that stores will sell out on day one. I'd be surprised if they still had walk-in Duo units available by lunchtime, to be perfectly honest.

If you're planning on picking up an iPhone Duo from the Apple Store, my advice would be to get there early and try to be first in line — or as close as you can be. Obviously your success is going to differ depending on the rules at that specific store, and the mall many of them are located inside.

Apple has previously told customers to check back on October 24 (Saturday) if they want to try and get a pickup reservation, but it's unclear if any will actually be available if units all sell out tomorrow. It's equally unclear as to whether customers will be able to reserve an in-store pickup tomorrow, and secure a Duo without setting up camp outside the front door.

Apple's ordering even more Duo units

Obviously, demand has been extremely high, and Apple has described it as "nothing short of extraordinary." To the point where we've already heard claims Apple could be increasing its iPhone Duo order to 10 million units, or roughly 30% more than it reportedly wanted for the remainder of 2026.

In fact, a report from DigiTimes claims Apple is raising that figure to 14 million units. That order apparently covers the next 12 months, rather than the several weeks left of the calendar year. If things all go according to plan, this should help ease the supply issues Apple is facing over time.

DigiTimes did note that the actual output will depend on the assembly process, and whether Apple can overcome the challenges it's reported to have faced since the Duo entered mass production earlier this year.

Not that this actually helps you pick up an iPhone Duo on launch day. For that, you're going to have to head to the Apple Store ahead of opening time and hope for the best. Or you can check out our ever-updating list of when all the major retailers and carriers are expecting to deliver new iPhone Duo orders.

More from Tom's Guide

• Lefties are out of luck with the iPhone Duo, but Apple plans to add reachability features later this year
• iPhone Duo full benchmarks — the world's fastest foldable, but how does it stack up to iPhone 18 Pro?
• 'Polished but rough': The common flaws in the iPhone Duo found by nine different reviewers

Right now, you are probably paying a monthly subscription to rent a sliver of a server farm in middle America. You ask a cloud chatbot to write an email, it pings a data center and you get an answer.

It’s fast, magical and a massive trap.

We are handing our personal data, our workflows and our wallets over to massive tech conglomerates, and for what? To prop up a cloud AI bubble that looks ripe for bursting, encourage more aggressive build-outs of data centers nobody wants, and feed an ever-learning black box with more and more of our sensitive information.

But there’s a different way. It’s a way I’ve always believed in. The future of AI is local.

After spending the past two weeks stress-testing the new Nvidia RTX Spark laptops — and with Apple’s M6 MacBook Pro rumored to arrive next week with vast AI acceleration — the hardware has finally crossed the threshold.

You no longer need the cloud. It’s time to build your own personal, local moat. But to do so the right way is different to what you’re used to. And I’m going to start from the beginning and break some things down for you.

What is an AI agent?

A standard chatbot waits for you to ask a question. An agentic AI has autonomy.

You give it a goal, a set of tools (like access to your file system or a web browser) and permission to execute tasks on its own using a ReAct (Reason + Act) loop. It thinks, acts, checks its work, and continues until the job is done.

Now, this is all fair and good, and you see cloud options available like Meta Muse. But I’ll be real, the difference in control and privacy between a zippy cloud agent and a local agent makes the time you’ll wait for your on-device one to get things done well worth the wait.

P.S. you can make time for other fun things while it works away, but I’ll get to that.

How to set it up (the Hermes Agent method)

Now I know there’s going to be several enthusiasts out there who may have a debate about which is best between the likes of Hermes Agent, OpenClaw or LM Studio Bionic. Ultimately, this is personal taste and (in my opinion) the easiest to transition to from using a cloud AI like my Gemini Pro subscription.

Your choice here will depend entirely on your laptop’s memory:

• 8-16GB RAM: Stick to smaller 7-8B parameter models like Llama 3.1 8B (as of the time of writing this). They are lightweight and fast for quick tasks, but prone to getting confused if you throw anything complex at it.
• 32-64GB RAM: The sweet spot. You can run 30B-70B parameter models like the Qwen 3.8 27B option I’ve been running on this Asus ProArt P14 I’m testing.
• 128GB+ RAM: The monster tier. Chances are you already know full well what you aim to do with AI with this much memory. But to catch everyone else up, you can run massive, enterprise-grade models like Qwen 3.8 Flash-Next — that can rival GPT-4, completely offline.

Now this is the world of open source, so there’s so many to choose from. A great source of reference is going to be modelfit.io. I used it when I got properly started!

How to shrink a brain (quantization)

Now, there is an extra wrinkle to this that you need to pay attention to. There are some models that sound like massive, multi-billion parameter options that usually require a refrigerator-sized server rack. How does it fit on your laptop?

The secret is a process called quantization.

Think of quantization like shrinking down a massive, uncompressed RAW photograph into a JPEG. The AI engineers take the incredibly precise, memory-hogging mathematical weights of a model and round them down. You lose a microscopic fraction of absolute precision, but the file size shrinks drastically.

For the ProArt P14, I am downloading a model called Qwen3.8-27b-gguf Q3_K_XL. To translate that alphabet soup: it’s a brilliant 27-billion parameter model that has been quantized (that’s the Q3 part) so perfectly that it fits entirely within the 32GB of RAM.

Pro tip: When you go to download your models, look for those “GGUF” and “Q” tags — they are the cheat codes that let massive AI brains run on consumer hardware.

Cloud vs. Local: the coffee break rule

There are two big differences I found between using cloud and local AI. The first is speed.

Cloud AI is instantaneous — throwing vast data center computing power at your prompt to give you a millisecond response. Local AI runs on your laptop’s silicon, so naturally it’s slower.

If I ask my local agent to parse a 50-page PDF and cross-reference it with my calendar, it might take three to four minutes, whereas on cloud that’d happen in 30-60 seconds.

It’s slower for sure, but a trade-off I’d absolutely make for the reasons I spoke about up top: privacy, and the ability to build my own personal brain without spending a penny for the tokens I burn.

And when it gets more complex — like me tasking my team of agents to go through my emails and calendar, take note of the previous meetings I had, understand the context of the wider world of tech news, track any analytical trends in the site’s traffic and craft my day of work, it can take a little bit of time.

The trick is to treat it like a real assistant: give it the task that would’ve normally taken you a while to do yourself, and spend that time doing something else. For me, it’s that calm breakfast in the morning or a walk around the park. And by the time you sit back down at your desk, the work is done.

The 4 rules of “parenting” a local AI

Beyond that speed difference, you have to completely rewire how you talk to your computer. Cloud AIs are designed to be frictionless, constantly updated by engineers behind the scenes. Local AI is like a raw blank slate. It’s only as useful as what you give it, so follow these four rules:

You are the sole provider of its data diet

Cloud AI is constantly scraping the internet and updating its worldview. Your local AI is completely isolated. It only knows what you feed it.

If you want it to understand how you format invoices, or the specific tone you use in emails, you have to explicitly provide those documents. It isn’t going to magically know you from the get-go.

Make your prompts hyper-specific

Since cloud AIs have billions (maybe trillions) of data points of context, they can read between the lines of those vague, half-baked questions you have.

Local AI is intensely literal. If you give it sparse instructions, it will give you a sparse, unhelpful output. Instead of “organize my downloads,” think “organize my downloads by file type and rename them to be more contextual with what they are.”

The carrot, not the stick (reinforcement)

To highlight, I don’t mean the “reinforcement learning” AI engineers are doing across the globe on frontier AI, I mean like I learned from teaching my nephew new skills. Something more human. You have to tell local AI to remember the victory.

If it nails that spreadsheet format exactly as you wanted it, reply with: “This is perfect. Save the way you did this into your memory.” Give it a treat so it repeats the behavior.

BTW, you don't need to give the agents names like I did. It just helps me organize them.

Build its mind map in Obsidian

An AI without a long-term memory is just a calculator. To make it genuinely useful, give it a digital filing cabinet. I use Obsidian, a free markdown note-taking app that saves files locally to your storage.

Just point your Hermes agent at Obsidian with a prompt like “can you take everything you’ve learned about me over our past interactions and put it into an Obsidian vault?” And from there, you’ll see the synapses start to form and connect.

The economics of owning your own brain

Now, before I sign off on part one, let’s address the elephant in the room: hardware is expensive. It’s actually one of the reasons I believe the future of AI is local, because these damn cloud AI infrastructures have jacked up the price of memory!

But you have to look at the math of the cloud tax. Right now, you’re probably paying $20 a month for a mid-premium tier service, and if you try to do anything more adventurous, you’re met with limitations.

That’s hundreds of dollars a year in digital rent just to borrow someone else’s server. When you run local AI, the ongoing cost is zero. That means no limitations on what you can do, no restrictions on the amount of images and videos you can generate in Comfy UI. You buy the hardware once, and the open-source software is free.

It’s the difference between renting a cramped apartment where your landlord reads your mail, versus owning your own house. Over a two-to-three-year laptop upgrade cycle, this machine pays for itself in canceled subscriptions — provided you know how to use it.

Outlook

And that’s what I’m here to do. Over the next few weeks, I’ll give you a look into my local AI workspace, introduce you to my first agent “Jeeves” and the rest of my team, and show you how to extract the most value out of it really easily.

It’s going to be a journey, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with. But any questions whatsoever, throw them in the comments.

More from Tom's Guide

• Would you give up ChatGPT to stop AI data centers? Reddit's answer was brutal
• Chatbots and agents like Muse are getting a face — but does that make us trust them more? Here's what this AI expert had to say
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt warns the real AI threat isn’t killer robots — it’s the companies building them

Apple’s ‘Pro and Tell’ event is just days away, and the tech world is practically vibrating over the rumors of a redesigned OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro.

It sounds like a dream machine. But before you get your wallet out for it, we need to have a very grounded conversation about what that screen is actually going to cost you, and whether OLED is going to be a smokescreen for skyrocketing memory costs.

I’ve been speaking with David Naranjo, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research, who just ran a Bill of Materials (BOM) analysis on what this leap to OLED actually means for the PC industry.

And the data tells a fascinating story: OLED isn’t just making your laptop look prettier. It is fundamentally changing how much you are going to pay, and acting as a very convenient distraction for rising hardware prices.

Brace for a $300 to $500 hike

Let’s cut straight to the math. Right now, if you want a 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and a mini-LED display, the starting price is $2,499. If Apple drops an OLED model next week, Naranjo is expecting that cost to jump.

“Based on a BOM analysis for the current mini LED model and our IT Panel cost report, I would expect a 14" OLED version to start between $2,799 and $2,999,” Naranjo commented.

That’s a sizable $3-500 “Apple Tax” increase overnight, so where is that money going? According to Counterpoint, it covers the advanced tandem OLED technology (the same bright, vivid panel you see in the M5 iPad Pro), the long-rumored touchscreen features, and — crucially — ongoing memory expenses.

With PC demand slowing and buyers pinching pennies, Apple and other manufacturers (more on those in a minute) are betting on the higher end — that you’ll pay more for something premium to get those perfectly inky blacks and a touch interface.

The memory cost distraction

Here is where my BS detector starts blaring. Across the tech world right now, we are quietly living through an era of memory hyper-inflation. A "RAMageddon," if you will.

And over the past year, I’ve seen lots of manufacturers point to new OLED screens as the justification — even when the internal specs haven’t moved an inch.

A great recent example, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 has the same internals as last year’s model, but it’s $300 more and packs an OLED display. Not to say that screen isn’t good, but it got me thinking: is OLED just a shiny smokescreen to soften the blow of massively inflated memory costs?

Naranjo wouldn’t go as far as calling it a smokescreen — OLED does genuinely improve contrast, color accuracy and response times after all. But he does admit it is a very convenient shield.

"It’s becoming a way for PC makers to justify higher prices as memory and component costs go up," he told me. "Manufacturers are using these premium displays to protect their profits and balance the rising costs."

In other words: RAM and SSD storage are getting ridiculously expensive to acquire right now. Instead of just raising the price of the laptop and making you angry, Apple and others may be slapping a gorgeous OLED panel on the front so you feel like you are getting an upgrade for extra cash.

Plot twist: Windows users should thank Apple?

If you use Windows laptops from the likes of Asus, Lenovo HP or Dell, you’re probably rolling your eyes right now. They’ve had stunning OLED screens for years. So why is Apple getting the credit for a “turning point” in the industry?

Put simply, it comes down to supply chain bullying.

Apple isn’t the first to the party (same as they weren’t with the iPhone Duo), but they buy at a scale that bends reality. "Thanks to its influence and buying power, Apple could speed up investment in the display supply chain," Naranjo notes.

Just like they did with smartphones, when Apple adopts OLED for MacBooks, display factories have to massively expand their manufacturing capacity.

That expansion improves production yields and inevitably lowers the cost of the screens for everyone. Counterpoint forecasts OLED notebook panel shipments will jump 50% in 2026, while mini-LED (the current MacBook Pro tech) plummets by 38%.

Apple’s rumored leap next week would subsidize cheaper OLED screens for budget and mainstream Windows laptops over the next four years.

The verdict

If this announcement happens next week, and you’re planning to hit the “buy” button on an OLED MacBook Pro, you need to accept you’re probably paying quite the early-adopter tax to cover rising memory costs.

If your livelihood depends on perfect color accuracy, or you have been desperately waiting to touch your Mac’s screen, that $2,799 starting price might be worth it to you.

But if you just need a reliable, lightning-fast workhorse, this price prediction is your ultimate signal. I mentioned this in other articles before but to summarize: wait for that October 28 event and watch the current mini LED MacBook Pro prices like a hawk.

Outgoing stock plus Black Friday build-up means you can expect some steep discounts.

More from Tom's Guide

• I’ve been living with Nvidia’s RTX Spark for a week — it’s not a MacBook Pro killer but something much weirder and wildly powerful
• I’ve been testing dozens of iPhone Duo apps — here’s my top 15 picks so far
• iPhone Duo full benchmarks — the world's fastest foldable, but how does it stack up to iPhone 18 Pro?

One of the best reasons to get the iPhone Duo over an Android foldable is the app selection. Yes, already. It’s clear that developers have been preparing for this device, as there are lots of apps that have been optimized for Apple’s first foldable.

And I’m not just talking about two-column layouts that look better on the Duo’s big 7.6-inch screen. Apps like Netflix put playback controls on the bottom half of the screen in “seated” mode, and there are some really fun and ingenious examples of what foldable-first apps should look and feel like, from music to games.

Now that I’ve been living with Apple’s $2,000 device for a week, here are my favorite iPhone Duo apps so far.

Slack

I put Slack at the top of my list because it’s the app I use most often. The app uses a handy two-column layout that puts your rooms and contacts on the left and your messages on the right. You’ll find the controls on the right side, including Home, Direct Messages, Notifications and Search. You can also remove the left pane from the menu at any time. The Cover Display view is a bit cluttered and I wish it was easier to hide the keyboard, but overall this is a good app.

TikTok

My famous time waster just got even more addictive. TikTok has an optimized app for iPhone Duo that lets you seamlessly scroll videos on the cover display and have a super immersive viewing experience in portrait mode on the main screen. Want to check out comments? Flip over to landscape and you can read them on the right while doom scrolling on the left. The only thing missing are controls on the right, which I’m assuming is imminent with an update.

UnGodly

If you’re looking for a 3D action game that makes full use of the iPhone Duo’s A20 chip and massive 7.6-inch screen, this is it. UnGodly is a fantasy action RPG that lets you play as multiple characters as you battle. I had a blast swinging swords, launching lightning attacks and hurling fire at my enemies. And the graphics look great on the iPhone Duo, complete with complex lighting effects and reflections.

Instagram

I give Meta credit for being one of the first developers out with fully optimized Duo apps. That includes Instagram, Facebook and Threads. I like Instagram best because it offers an immersive video experience on the front display as you scroll. And on the inside display you can turn the Duo to portrait mode for watching vertical video or go landscape. The comments load on the right side and stay there as you keep scrolling.

Deck-Man

The Deck-Man app proves that developers can have fun with the iPhone Duo’s foldable design. The app transforms your device into a 1980s-style Walkman. With the iPhone Duo open you choose your music via virtual cassette tapes (it syncs with Apple Music), and when you close the phone the front screen shows the cassette spinning along with playback controls. Put the Duo in tent mode and you can flip through thumbnails of your music collection. It’s a very slick design.

YouTube TV

Technically YouTube TV isn’t yet fully optimized for the iPhone Duo, because the controls aren’t on the right side yet, leaving a sliver of blank space on the right side of the screen. I don’t care. Once you start watching your favorite shows — it’s First Take on ESPN for me — they take up the full screen. Even better, you can watch up to four shows and/or movies at once with the Multiview feature. I also like that you can continue watching in tent mode, perfect for when I’m grilling and need to keep my hands free.

Spotify

Spotify is one of my favorite iPhone Duo apps because it takes (nearly) full advantage of the big display. You get an expansive view of your music collection along with recommended stations and a dedicated mini player that pops up on the right side. The menu items have not yet moved to the far right, leaving a blank space. I’d also like to see a tent mode view added once Spotify fully optimizes this app.

Perplexity

Perplexity is an AI app that I generally trust for direct answers to my questions, complete with citations. You can use Deep Research for projects and there’s a built-in assistant for doing things for you like drafting emails and booking reservations. The two-column layout looks snazzy on the iPhone Duo’s main display. I asked for the key differences between the iPhone Duo and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and got a helpful and unbiased guide along with a handy table.

Netflix

There’s a reason Apple showed off Netflix at the iPhone Duo launch event. The app was built from the ground up for this foldable. The cover display is great for scrolling through mobile Clips. And on the main display you can watch movies and shows full screen or use the phone half-folded in tabletop mode with the content up top and controls below. The colors from the top part reflect on the bottom, which is a nice touch.

OpenTable

OpenTable is a beautifully designed iPhone Duo app that’s guaranteed to make you hungry. When clicking on restaurants you’ll see wide photos that stretch across the big screen, and the available times up top. The Notify Me feature sends an alert when a last-minute table opens up at a popular spot. The controls on the right side look just as good on the main display as on the cover display.

Carrot Weather

If you like your weather apps with a bit of personality, Carrot Weather will not disappoint. You can choose from Professional, Friendly, Snarky and more. But it’s the slick layout that keeps me coming back for more. There’s multiple widgets to help you keep tabs on the weather at a glance, including hourly and 7-day forecasts, UV index, Sunset and more. And you can even customize the layout.

Gemini

I think Gemini looks pretty good on the iPhone Duo, though it’s not fully optimized yet and has a weird bug. But first the good news. You get a two-column layout that shows the main menu on the left (Library, Images, Gems, etc), as well as your recent history, and the main chat window on the right. My only issue is that the button for going live with your camera gets covered up on the large screen due to overlapping menus. It’s better to access that option from the front screen for now.

PianoFold

PianoFold is what happens when developers take full advantage of the iPhone Duo’s foldable nature. You can play with the screen fully open in flat mode, but the game feels more immersive in laptop (folded) mode. The goal is to hit the bars on the bottom display just as the colorful notes fall from the top portion. And, yes, you can choose a realistic keyboard instead. I found the game quite challenging, and it helps that the Duo has great speakers.

Airmail

Airmail is a great alternative to Gmail, and right now it’s a better looking email app for the iPhone Duo. This Apple Design Award winner lets you sync Gmail, Outlook, Exchange and more into a single inbox. The two-column layout is easy to navigate, and it’s a cinch to clean out your inbox with customize swipes.

Battlefleet Duo

You sunk my Battleship! Get ready for the nostalgic feels to come flooding back with Battlefleet Duo, an app that mirrors the classic board game. In tabletop mode you position your ships on the bottom part of the display and launch your attacks on the top, watching as your missiles fire across the water. When you miss, you’ll just hear a splash, but when you get a direct hit you’ll see and feel an explosion. It’s simple and it’s a blast.

More from Tom's Guide

• Apple just bumped up some iPhone Duo delivery dates — here is how to check yours
• 'Polished but rough': The common flaws in the iPhone Duo found by nine different reviewers
• My iPhone 18 Pro Max just got delivered and I immediately regret the purchase and I think iPhone Duo is to blame

The iPhone Duo has been in reviewers' hands for at least a week, and early reviews are starting to trickle out. I read and watched reviews from multiple sites, including the Tom's Guide iPhone Duo review, to find out what consistent flaws critics found in Apple's first foldable.

Overall, the reviews are quite positive, with a common refrain being that the iPhone Duo is an early adopter device. This means that there are some initial growing pains but with plenty of room for Apple to grow.

Most of the complaints come down to hardware issues, both what's missing (Face ID) and how it feels to use the Duo. One consistent flaw is software-based, but that might be fixed before most people get their foldable iPhones in a couple of months.

Let's dig into the seven most common flaws in the iPhone Duo.

The price

Bringing it back to the early adopter tone, price is mentioned in every review I looked at, but it's not listed as a major concern. Most reviewers acknowledge that the $2,000+ price tag is high (higher than the Galaxy Z Fold 8 by $100).

However, compared to other foldables, the iPhone Duo appears right in line pricewise and is a good phone.

"If anything, the Duo’s high cost and limited availability only reinforce that Apple’s foldable isn’t for everyone," CNET's Abrar Al-Heetl wrote. "But if you’re looking for something compact that unfurls into a tablet-like experience – and you want to stick with iOS – the iPhone Duo could be the right fit."

For people who aren't early adopters or need to be more mindful of their budget , that high price can be an impediment, and it's unlikely to get cheaper any time soon thanks to the ongoing AI-fueled memory shortage.

Missing camera

Outside of price, the lack of a telephoto lens was remarked on by nearly every review. The cameras are a downgrade compared to the iPhone 18 Pro models.

PetaPixel has more of a camera focus in general, and truly breaks down the cameras in their review, but it can be summarized in one line: "This camera is the epitome of 'fine,' Jaron Schneider said.

He also noted that shooting with the Duo is awkward, lacking a firm grip when closed and feeling like a grandmother with an iPad when unfolded.

Notably, the iPhone Duo's Smart Take feature was praised since it waited for people to enter and pose in frame before taking photos and hopefully that's a feature that comes to other iPhones.

A dim display

For foldable phones, one of the concerns is the crease that becomes more prominent over time as the display is opened and closed hundreds, nay, thousands, of times.

Apple's attempt to obscure the crease mostly works thanks to the nanotexture layer on the display that hides it a bit. This is both a boon, with many describing it as reducing glare and feeling nice to the touch.

Though, as Wired's Julian Chokkattu noted, videos aren't as crisp compared to the iPhone 18 Pro, even if people are watching more content on the larger 7.6-inch inner display. "You don’t get the crisp video quality, deep blacks, and sharp contrast of the iPhone 18 Pro when watching movies and shows on apps like Netflix on the nanotexture panel."

Apple already features the nanotexture display as an option on the MacBook Pro and Studio Display XDR but If you don't like it there, you likely won't enjoy it on the Duo.

Missing Face ID

We called the lack of Face ID in favor of Touch ID a downgrade in our review. This was a quite common complaint regarding the Duo, with most reviewers finding it quite annoying.

"Touch ID introduces lag versus Face ID when unlocking your phone. Not a lot, just enough to be annoying," Tom's Guide editor-in-chief Mark Spoonauer said. "If you own an Apple Watch, you can unlock your iPhone Duo just by swiping up, but even that’s slower than Face ID."

Heat and weight

I've combined these two because it relates to how it feels to use the iPhone Duo.

"The Duo feels significant and solid," Marques Brownlee said in his review, but compared it to the Z Fold 8, which is 20% lighter. "Making everything metal, glass and heavy doesn't necessarily make it better to use. It's the permanent Apple-design default."

The iPhone Duo weighs 8.96 oz (254 grams) compared to the Z Fold 8's 7.09 oz (201 g). It's not the end of the world, but over time that weight is noticeable, especially if you pick up another company's phone.

As for heat, we noted that the iPhone Duo was a few degrees hotter than the Z Fold 8 in our testing, though it appeared that Apple's phone spread the heat out more.

Joanna Stern found that the back of the phone kept getting "really warm."

"I've consistently noticed the back of the Duo getting surprisingly warm when taking photos, FaceTiming, and using certain apps," she said. In one clip, as she FaceTimed with Casey Nystat, she ended a call because the phone felt too hot.

Software Optimization

The iPhone Duo utilizes a customized version of iOS 27, but it has some flaws, like the fact that lefties are out of luck thanks to the locked dock on the right side of the display.

When it comes to Apple's own apps, the iPhone Duo and iOS 27 are great, with the apps designed to fill the inner display. However, third-party apps aren't yet optimized for the Duo, including apps like Telegram and Disney Plus.

It can make non-optimized apps look terrible, from huge black sidebars to as simple as a sense that the app is a bit askew.

"The difference between optimized and unoptimized apps is the biggest growing pain you'll face on Apple's first foldable," Engadget's Sam Rutherford wrote.

Fortunately, unlike any hardware complaints, this one is more easily rectified since developers can update their apps for the Duo. Or in the case of things like the docked controls, Apple has already promised an update in the coming months.

Anything I missed that you think is a concern? Let me know in the comments below.

More from Tom's Guide

• I disabled these iOS 27 features and my iPhone finally feels responsive again
• iPhone Duo Live Q&A: I spent a week with Apple's foldable and can answer ALL your questions
• I've waited 5 years for the iPhone Duo — here are 7 reasons I decided not to pre-order

As a leftie, one of the iPhone Duo's biggest drawbacks is the controls. The current setup isn't great for those of us who want to use the phone with our left hand.

Fortunately, a fix is on the way, and since most people won't get their Duo until December or January anyway, it might not be a problem by the time you get one.

Apple told Tom's Guide in a briefing that reachability features will come later this year. It's unclear exactly when the setting will arrive.

As you can see in our video above, the iPhone Duo is not quite left-handed-friendly. For a better example of the stretch your thumb will need, check out this Instagram reel from Bytereview.

For those of us with shorter thumbs or smaller hands, getting across the display to tap apps or controls will be quite the stretch.

For the unfamiliar, Reachability is an accessibility setting that is available for standard iPhone models. It allows you to swipe down on the bottom edge of the screen to bring the top half of the UI down so that controls are easier to reach with one hand.

It's not quite the ability to customize where the control dock is actually located, but it's helpful.

That's not all

Reachability isn't the only potential misstep on the iPhone Duo. As my colleague Dave LeClair points out, the Duo is heavy, expensive and not quite optimized outside of Apple's in-house apps.

The iPhone Duo is an interesting foldable. In our lab testing, the battery results and full performance benchmarks showcase a foldable that is powerful and efficient, with battery life that will last you most of the day.

In a recent Live Q&A, we covered many questions that Tom's Guide readers had about the Duo. Including answers about the crease, the drawbacks to the camera system, and Touch ID versus Face ID.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments if the locked dock on the iPhone Duo is a major flaw or a mere nuisance.

More from Tom's Guide

• Apple 'Pro and Tell' event rumors: OLED MacBooks, M6 chips, and why you shouldn't buy anything today
• iPhone Duo Live Q&A: I spent a week with Apple's foldable and can answer ALL your questions
• I disabled these iOS 27 features and my iPhone finally feels responsive again

​Apple has a lot to prove to critics — including myself — if it wants to show that the iPhone Duo is, without question, the best foldable phone on the market. That’s because book-style foldables demand far more system resources, especially when driving larger canvases than traditional slab phones.

​One area where the iPhone Duo could solidify its position as the foldable to beat is performance. Armed with the A20 Pro chip, early signs suggest it is no slouch, especially given the outstanding performance we’ve seen from the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max. But where does it land against key rivals, as well as its slab siblings?

After running various synthetic benchmark tests, I can tell you that the iPhone Duo is easily one of the most powerful phones around. Here’s why.

iPhone Duo CPU performance: Geekbench

​First off, I want to show how the iPhone Duo operates on a baseline level when its CPU is put to the test — which is where Geekbench scores come in. This synthetic benchmark tests a device’s single- and multi-core performance, and the A20 Pro proves once again that it is just as formidable inside the iPhone Duo.

Apple’s first foldable phone pulls in impressive Geekbench 6 single- and multi-core scores of 4,722 and 12,708, respectively. While those figures trail its Pro siblings slightly, the difference is practically negligible given that the single-core scores are separated by fewer than 20 points, and multi-core by less than 100.

If you’re curious, the iPhone 18 Pro Max edges out the iPhone Duo across the board in Geekbench 6 and 7, but it holds less than a 1.5% performance advantage overall — effectively proving that the Duo is just as capable as Apple’s traditional flagship slabs.

​Compared to foldable rivals like the Galaxy Z Fold 8, the iPhone Duo easily outmuscles the field. Neither the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra nor the Motorola Razr Fold eclipses the 4,000-point mark in Geekbench 6 single-core, while the Pixel 11 Pro Fold sits far behind the pack with noticeably subpar scores.

iPhone Duo graphics performance: 3DMark

​Nowadays, you could argue that most flagship phones feel perfectly responsive during basic tasks — like sending emails, browsing the web, or streaming the occasional video. Where I tend to notice the biggest differences, however, is how they handle the demanding load of running today’s graphically intensive games. While the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max have already proven that Apple's silicon can outpace Qualcomm's (for now) the iPhone Duo simply cements that lead.

​Running 3DMark’s Solar Bay Unlimited test, the iPhone Duo achieves the same fluid frame rates as its siblings. Averaging 62.3 fps, it slots directly between the two Pro flagships. And while it doesn't cross the 17,000 threshold like the iPhone 18 Pro Max, the iPhone Duo’s score of 16,496 is still remarkably strong.

That advantage becomes even more pronounced when comparing its graphics processing scores against rival foldables. In fact, none of its key competitors come close to cracking the 50-fps mark. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Fold 8 hover just beneath it at 49.24 fps and 47.35 fps, respectively, but the iPhone Duo’s 62.3-fps average puts it in an entirely different league. That translates to a roughly 32% GPU performance advantage over the Z Fold 8 — a massive gap in mobile gaming.

​All of this points to an obvious takeaway: the iPhone Duo is a legitimate gamer’s phone. Beyond its sprawling 7.8-inch main canvas that beautifully renders complex landscapes with realistic lighting effects, it delivers smooth, fluid gameplay without noticeable stutter or frame drops when on-screen action heats up.

iPhone Duo performance: GeekBench AI

With more and more people leaning on AI tools, it’s always telling to see how phones handle on-device tasks — because let’s face it, waiting for an AI assitant to come back with a request can quickly derail my productivity. Running Geekbench AI 1.7, the A20 Pro’s dual 16-core Neural Engine handles machine learning models with impressive speed.

​Its average score of 69,438 in Geekbench AI 1.7 is strong enough to once again slot right between the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max. However, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and standard Z Fold 8 hold a narrow lead here with scores of 71,715 and 72,242, respectively. Even though Qualcomm's silicon notches a win over the A20 Pro in this specific test, the gap is so slim (roughly 3% to 4%) that it won't matter in day-to-day use.

iPhone Duo performance: Bottom line

Apple’s switch to a 2-nanometer manufacturing process with the A20 Pro is clearly paying off in the iPhone Duo. While benchmark scores prove it is easily one of the most powerful iPhones to date, that strength translates directly into daily use, where it handles complex tasks with the same finesse as basic navigation. Considering its sprawling main display is designed specifically to run two apps side by side, these benchmark results show that the Duo can more than deliver on that multitasking promise.

​At the same time, this serves as a wake-up call for Samsung, Google, and Motorola. With their next-generation foldables already deep in development, the iPhone Duo’s performance proves that rivals can no longer afford to compromise on raw power or thermal execution.

More from Tom's Guide

• My iPhone 18 Pro Max just got delivered and I immediately regret the purchase — and I think iPhone Duo is to blame
• 7 ways the iPhone Duo could change foldables for the better
• iPhone Duo modes explained — 6 ways you can use Apple's new foldable

The best foldable phones come with some compromises, and the iPhone Duo is no exception to that. You only have two main cameras, the screen is shorter than you'd find on other iPhones and the battery is noticeably smaller than the one in the iPhone 18 Pro Max — just to name a few.

But when it comes to battery, size only matters so much. There are a bunch of different factors that impact how long a device can last on a single charge, which is why testing is so important.

We have done our testing with the iPhone Duo, using a custom battery life test designed to mimic ordinary daily use. And the results are fairly impressive, even if they aren't as impressive as they were on iPhone 18 Pro Max.

iPhone Duo Battery Life Results

We tested the battery life of the iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 simultaneously, with all three phones situated side-by-side. The results of this test found that the iPhone Duo lasted 13 hours and 20 minutes, and unsurprisingly the iPhone 18 Pro Max lasted 17 hours and 31 minutes. The difference isn't that surprising, since the 18 Pro Max has an extra 684 mAh of battery capacity.

How the Duo compares to the Z Fold 8 is rather interesting, considering the difference in battery size is a mere 83 mAh. According to this test the Duo lasted more than three hours longer than the Z Fold 8, which just goes to show how much of a difference energy efficiency and reduced power consumption can make.

I should also caveat this by pointing out that our original battery life test for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 review saw the phone last 12 hours and 19 minutes. The discrepancy is down to the fact that the Fold is now a little older, and the variables of the test environment may be having an impact. However, it's worth noting that the original battery life result is still almost an hour less battery life than the Duo.

As for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, the extra 117 mAh of capacity pushes the battery life a little bit further with an extra hour and 13 minutes of battery life. Though this is the original result, and that figure did not come from a brand new battery life test.

The iPhone Duo also exceeds the battery life of the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, which died 49 minutes faster than Apple's foldable. Considering the minor difference between the two battery sizes, and Pixel phones' reputation for less-then-stellar battery life, that's not a huge surprise. Likewise it's not shocking that the 6,000 mAh Motorola Razr Fold lasted 14 hours and 44 minutes, considering how much more battery capacity it has.

iPhone Duo charging speed

The iPhone Duo is meant to offer 60W charging, the same as the iPhone 18 Pro Max, but that doesn't mean it charges at the same rate. In fact, despite having a larger battery, the 18 Pro Max draws in power much more quickly. After 15 minutes it was at 44%, compared to the Duo's 42%, and after half an hour of charging the foldable had 11% less power than its non-folding sibling.

It's a similar situation with the iPhone Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra, both of which are limited to 45W charging speeds. The Ultra hit 49% after 15 minutes, while the smaller battery in the Fold 8 reached 43%. After half an hour the two phones held a respective 76% and 70% charge. Meanwhile the Razr Fold, which supports up to 80W wired charging, had 75% of its power restored after a 30 minute recharge.

Unsurprisingly the Pixel 11 Pro Fold comes out much worse for wear in this test as well. It only managed to recoup 29% charge in 15 minutes and 56% after half an hour — a problem exacerbated by its limited 30W charging speeds.

How we test phone battery life

The key thing we should mention about battery testing the iPhone Duo was that our typical test had to be redesigned to fill the entire screen. Otherwise it wouldn't have been a very fair test. The test itself involved continually surfing the web over a 5G connection, with the screen brightness set to a consistent 150 nits.

In the case of foldable phones, this test is always performed on the larger folding screen.

All phones we test go through this process, though so far only three have gone through this newly optimized testing regiment. They are the iPhone Duo, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the iPhone 18 Pro Max. In this instance all three phones were tested in the same room, with the tests running simultaneously.

Bottom line

Overall the iPhone Duo's battery life is rather middling compared to its rivals, but that's not to say that it's bad. The battery isn't good enough to land a place on our best phone battery life list, but it should be enough to get through a typical day without having to carry a charger with you.

Those hoping to prioritize strong battery life above all else will want to stick with the non-folding iPhone 18 Pro Max. It's a sad fact that foldables are just a little too power hungry to outpace their single-screen counterparts in the battery department. But as far as foldables go you could do a lot worse than the iPhone Duo.

Though, admittedly, two Android rivals offer over an hour extra battery life as well. Likewise many of them charge faster than Apple's phone, even if regaining 42% in 15 minutes isn't a particularly slow recharge speed. That should, at the very least, get you through a good part of your day before the usual low battery anxieties start knocking at your door.

More from Tom's Guide

• I've waited 5 years for the iPhone Duo — here are 7 reasons I decided not to pre-order
• Forget iPhone Duo, Samsung could release six different foldable phones next year — including the mysterious 'Galaxy Z Slide'
• iPhone Duo wait times — latest updates and how to beat Apple's January delay

I honestly haven’t been this excited about a new iPhone since the iPhone X nearly a decade ago. The iPhone Duo finally gives Apple fans a foldable phone, and there’s something really cool about having a 5.4-inch iPhone that transforms into a 7.6-inch mini tablet in your pocket, complete with dual-app multitasking. Finally!

Apple’s first foldable phone doesn’t look or feel like a first attempt, either, because of the sheer attention to detail. The way the friction hinge holds nearly any angle. The seamless switching between the cover and main display with the same aspect ratio. And the nano-texture coating, which minimizes glare and the dreaded crease. I also like how the hardware and software play together, giving you several different modes. It feels like I’m playing with a $2,000 Transformer.

On the other hand, the Duo name is apt because I’m of two minds about it. While the first wave of iPhone Duo apps look great, many third-party apps aren’t optimized for this form factor (yet).

And then there’s the trade-offs versus the iPhone 18 Pro Max, such as the lack of a telephoto zoom and Face ID. I’ve spent the past week living with this $2,000 device as my daily driver. From the nano-texture display and battery life to real-world performance and software quirks, I’m going to answer all your most pressing questions in my full iPhone Duo review. And I'll keep adding questions and answers to my Duo review based on your feedback, so feel free to drop into the comments!

Who is the iPhone Duo for?

The iPhone Duo is for people who want a big screen on the go for watching videos and playing games, as well as for heavy multitaskers who want to run two apps at once. It’s for people who want a compact phone and tablet in a single device — and are willing to pay a hefty premium to get it.

For example, I used the iPhone Duo a lot during my commute to get caught up on Slack while watching “First Take” on YouTube TV in another window. And I could open spreadsheets without having to endlessly scroll. I think business travelers in particular are going to love this foldable.

Design

How does it feel and how is the weight?

My colleague Tony Polanco may have said it best when he picked up the iPhone Duo for the first time. He said “It feels like an iPhone.” And that’s a good way to sum up the build quality of this foldable.

The passport design has already been done by Samsung with the Galaxy Z Fold 8, but to me, Apple’s Duo feels a notch above. The asymmetrical design looks a bit weird at first, with the flat left side and rounded corners on the right, but it allowed Apple to offer identical 1.4:1 aspect ratios on both the cover and main display. And I think this makes the Duo feel more polished.

Speaking of which, the iPhone Duo’s polished titanium frame looks premium while being tougher than aluminum. This might sound minor but I also like that the Duo doesn’t wobble as much when placed on a table.

And I really dig the reassuring and satisfying clasping sound the Duo makes when you close it, thanks to the help of magnets.

On the other hand, the Duo is pretty chunky compared to the Fold 8. The iPhone Duo is the world’s thinnest iPhone when opened at 5.2mm thin, but it’s thicker than Samsung’s 4.5mm. And when closed the Duo is 16.5% thicker than the Fold 8.

I also felt the additional heft of the Duo when picking up both foldables. Still, the Duo slipped easily into my front jeans pocket without weighing me down.

What can you do with the hinge? What are all the modes?

The iPhone Duo’s hinge is super flexible yet rigid, thanks to a variable torque profile. There’s just the right amount of friction. And you can position the hinge at almost any angle you like for optimal viewing.

Even better, the iPhone Duo is smart enough to know how you’ve positioned the device and the software adapts (if the app is optimized). For example, when watching “Man of Steel” for the hundredth time on the Apple TV app, I could put the Duo in tabletop mode like a laptop, and it showed the video up top and the playback controls down below.

And when watching Ohio State vs Indiana on YouTube TV while writing this review, I put the Duo in tent mode on my desk so I could keep one eye on the action.

Apple also gives you a couple of Standby modes with the Duo. I turned this phone into an alarm clock at night in tent mode. And while I was working I half folded the phone in portrait mode to transform the Duo into a clock and digital photo frame.

You can even literally use the iPhone Duo as a mini laptop in apps like Notes where the keyboard takes up the bottom half of the display. And if you’re in Safari and half fold the screen in landscape mode the keyboard will automatically split, though I don’t find typing this way comfy.

How durable is it?

The iPhone Duo makes up for some of its girth with the fact that it has an IP68 rating. That means it's resistant to both dust and water. That’s better than the Fold 8’s water-only IP48 rating.

In addition to the Grade 5 Titanium frame, you also get a titanium hinge cover. And Ceramic Shield 2 protects the outer display while regular Ceramic Shield protects the back on the phone.

Apple employed a nano-texture cover layer on the main display using an advanced polymer that’s up to 40% stiffer than what competing foldables use, which is designed to prevent scratches and dents. This will come in handy for the Apple Pencil, whose support is coming with a software update.

Display

How good is the matte nano-texture display? And does it mute the colors?

I’m going to be honest. I’m torn about the iPhone Duo’s nano-texture display. Yes, I like this matte panel seriously reduces glare. And the paper-like texture feels especially nice when you’re reading ebooks. It almost feels like you’re flipping a real page.

But while the iPhone Duo’s main display gets plenty bright, it doesn’t offer the perfect blacks or vibrant hues I normally associate with OLED. When I played the “Avengers: Doomsday” trailer on the Duo and Fold 8, I preferred Samsung’s screen because of those inky blacks and richer colors, even though I could make out more details in the shadows on the Duo. Sometimes, glossy is better.

However, when I watched the same trailer outside, the Duo exhibited much less glare and the crease was a lot less prominent. Check it out in this video.

The front 5.4-inch display on the Duo is a more traditional glossy OLED panel, and I prefer the color saturation there. But it’s too small for me to watch a movie.

I do have to give a shout-out to the iPhone Duo’s designers for the under-display camera. They did a fantastic job hiding it when not in use. That’s thanks in part to the A20 Pro’s new display engine that blends the pixels around the area.

The iPhone Duo’s display fared well in our lab testing, reaching nearly 2,600 nits of brightness with HDR content. That’s slightly behind the Fold 8. The Fold 8’s panel offered comparable color reproduction and color accuracy.

Is there a visible crease?

This is where the nano-texture finish shines. I had a hard time making out the crease on the iPhone Duo while viewing content even when outside. It’s there, but you have to angle the display just right to see it.

On the Fold 8, Samsung Flex Titanium tech also does a great job minimizing the crease, but it’s more prominent. Though, to be fair, we’ve been opening and closing this foldable for over three months while the Duo is still fresh.

Is the front screen big enough for running apps? And how about typing?

The 5.4-inch cover display on the iPhone Duo is plenty bright, colorful and sharp, but its squatter dimensions means I could see less info at once in Gmail and Safari.

Still, the aspect ratio is great for scrolling through TikTok and Instagram. I easily got lost when watching a student in a Spider-Man outfit kick a $3 million field goal before the Notre Dame game.

And when it comes to cranking out quick replies to Slack messages or emails, the cover display is plenty wide for typing with two thumbs.

However, reaching the left side of the front screen can be a challenge. I had to stretch my thumb to reach those app icons.

Audio

How good are the speakers?

Surprisingly good! Apple positioned the speakers on the iPhone Duo so that when open they’re on the top left and bottom right. That means you get more balanced sound versus the Galaxy Fold 8, whose speakers are on the top and bottom left when open.

I played Batille’s “Save My Soul” on the iPhone Duo via Spotify and then switched to the Fold 8, and Apple’s foldable provided better bass and more well-round audio. Samsung’s sound was loud but tinny by comparison.

Touch ID

Is it a big deal that Face ID is gone?

I’ve already engaged some commenters in a debate on this and I haven’t changed my mind. Replacing Face ID with Touch ID on the iPhone Duo is a downgrade. The Touch ID sensor works perfectly fine, which is embedded in the oversized side button.

However, Touch ID introduces lag versus Face ID when unlocking your phone. Not a lot, just enough to be annoying. If you own an Apple Watch, you can unlock your iPhone Duo just by swiping up, but even that’s slower than Face ID. Come at me, bruh.

Software and Multitasking

Did Apple make the right call with redesigning iOS 27, and are lefties screwed?

The iPhone Duo runs a custom version of iOS 27 as opposed to iPadOS. This includes combining key status bar elements like battery life and signal strength into a circle in the top right corner. And the Dynamic Island pops out of the top right corner on both the cover display and big screen.

It took me time getting used to the dock on the right side of the display. The controls and menu items in your apps move to the right, too.

The bad news is that you can’t move the dock or app controls to the left side, which is a bummer if you’re lefty. And it’s clear Apple could do this if they wanted to. When you’re multitasking I noticed that the dock moves to the left on the left home screen view.

Apple is going to be rolling out a software update that improves reachability overall, but southpaws are generally still out of luck.

What is Split View multitasking like? Any downsides?

The iPhone Duo introduces dual-app multitasking for the first time on an iPhone, and it’s super intuitive. I just swiped up on an app I was using, like Messages, and then you see that you can dock it to the left or right side of the display.

From there, the iPhone home screen automatically appears on the other side of the screen. It’s like having two distinct desktops. As you’d expect, dragging and dropping items like photos works seamlessly.

I also like how easy Apple makes it to create app pairs. Simply tap the center of the bar in the middle of the main display. When you go back to the app switcher it will automatically show up.

However, I was annoyed to discover that turning the iPhone Duo to portrait mode temporarily breaks the Split View, leaving you with just a single app. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 gives you two skinny versions of the same app, which is better than nothing. At least when you turn the Duo back to landscape the app pair returns.

You can do a form of multitasking on the iPhone Duo in portrait mode. You can park a video player up top while running another app down below. But entering this mode requires hitting a tiny button rather than dragging and dropping the window. It’s a weird UI inconsistency.

Apps

What are the best iPhone Duo apps so far?

As you might expect, Apple’s own apps look fantastic on the Duo. For example, I love being able to quickly move between multiple tabs in Safari, and Notes and Messages have handy two-column layouts. Apple Music looks slick, too, with Liquid Glass menu items that persist on the right as you scroll.

But I was more intrigued to try third-party apps optimized for the iPhone Duo, and there are plenty of standouts so far. For example, the new Slack app gives you a dual-pane layout on the 7.6-inch display with your contacts and rooms on the left and messages on the right. The Fold 8’s version is a stretched out phone app with wasted space.

Netflix lets you scroll through mobile clips on the cover display. But the cooler effect is in the tabletop mode. The content in the top screen reflects on the bottom portion, complete with touch controls.

Instagram and TikTok have also been updated for the iPhone Duo. Scrolling videos in portrait mode on the main display is supper immersive, and if you flip the phone sideways you can load comments on the right.

Other iPhone Duo apps that take full advantage of the 7.6-inch display include Carrot Weather, Sonos, Gemini and OpenTable.

Another standout is Battlefleet. It’s just like playing Battleship, where you put the Duo in tabletop mode and launch missiles at the enemy on the top part of the display and position your own ships on the bottom half.

The Deck-Man app is nostalgic fun. It turns the Duo into a 80's-style Walkman, complete with all the buttons on the cover display. For more, check out my roundup of the best iPhone Duo apps so far.

How bad do non-optimized apps look?

Non-optimized apps for the iPhone Duo can range from looking a bit off to horrible.

Keeping in mind that many top apps will be updated by the Duo’s release date, I noticed that certain apps had huge black bars on the left and right side of the display, like Disney Plus and The Weather Channel.

Unoptimized games look pretty terrible, too, filling up only three quarters of the screen.

Other apps have been updated for iOS 27 but not for the Duo. So they will go close to full screen but still have a narrow black bar on the right side. This includes YouTube, though I appreciate that comments pop up on the right side during playback.

Gemini has a sleek dual-pane layout, as does Spotify, so you can see the player on the right and your stations on the left.

I just hope developers update their wares. Quickly. And I expect they will out of fear of sheer embarrassment.

Cameras

Do you really miss not having a telephoto zoom?

I think it’s a big deal that the iPhone Duo doesn’t have a telephoto lens. You get just a 48MP main and 48MP Ultrawide, which take great shots. But if you’re zooming in you’re going to miss the level of detail a dedicated optical can provide.

Check out this photo of a hot dog stand. The Sabrett sign is much sharper through the iPhone 18 Pro Max at 10x zoom, while the iPhone Duo’s image looks like a blurry water color. Same thing goes for this No Smoking sign at the same 10x. You can’t even make out smaller text on the Duo.

I also took a series of photos between the iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro Max of this dock at 2x, 4x, 8x and 10x. The Duo holds its own up until 8x and then things start to get fuzzy, like the text on the boat and engine.

Is the image quality good enough from the dual 48MP cameras?

The iPhone Duo’s main camera is quite capable, capturing bright and vibrant flowers in this shot. The Galaxy Fold 8’s image is brighter but looks a bit washed out and less crisp when I zoom in.

The Duo also does a good job with this shot of fruit inside Whole Foods. The oranges pop more on the iPhone versus the Fold 8’s image, but Samsung’s image has better focus on the lemons to the left.

I’m kind of torn on this portrait, as my face is brighter through the Fold 8. But I prefer the bokeh effect through the Duo, and my shirt and jacket have a lot more detail. It gets pretty fuzzy on Samsung zoomed in.

The 48MP ultrawide on the iPhone Duo impressed in my testing, too. It struggles a bit with the darkness of the fountain in the foreground, but the Fold 8 pumps up the brightness so much it blows out the buildings, and the trees look more natural through the iPhone.

I give the edge to the Fold 8 in this macro shot of a bright orange Zinnia. There’s more contrast and the Duo looks a bit flat.

In low light, the iPhone Duo wins hands-down. Check out this shot of Halloween decorations. The mystical hand and the fuzzy eyes and plant all look sharper versus the Fold 8.

How is the under-display FaceTime camera for selfies and video calls?

Lots of people have been asking me if the under-display FaceTime camera on the iPhone Duo is trash. And I’m happy to report that it’s not. It wouldn’t be my first pick for selfies, but it captures reasonably sharp images as you can see in this comparison with the Fold 8.

I calculated the resolution, since Apple doesn’t tell you the megapixels, and it’s 4.4MP. The Fold 8’s shot was 5.7MP.

I also used the FaceTime camera to have a call with my daughter. She said I looked fine but a bit grainy. I did like that I could prop up the Duo like a laptop so I didn’t have to hold the phone.

Just as with portraits, I found the iPhone Duo produced more detailed selfies with its 12MP Center Stage camera. But when taking selfies with the main 48MP camera I thought the Duo was neck and neck with Samsung.

However, it’s more intuitive to take selfies with the main camera on the Duo. You just flip the phone around with the camera on and swipe on the cover display. With the Fold 8 you have to press a button on the main screen first.

Is Smart Take worth it and what about the other camera modes?

I had the most fun testing the Smart Take feature on the iPhone Duo. I propped the foldable up, activated the Smart Take mode and then the Duo was smart enough to snap photos automatically as I struck different poses. It’s ideal for group shots where you want everyone in the frame — and don’t want to have to deal with a timer.

There’s also Duo Preview, which lets subjects see themselves on the cover display as you snap pics, and Kid Cue, which takes a page from Google’s Pixel Fold by displaying a cute Snoopy animation on the outer display, giving you a better chance of a smile.

Performance

Is there a foldable power penalty for the Duo?

The best thing I can say about the iPhone Duo is that it’s just about as fast as the iPhone 18 Pro Max, even though it has a larger screen to power and less thermal headroom.

When playing the UnGodly game on the Duo’s 7.6-inch display, the action was immersive and the graphics top-notch, complete with reflections and captivating special attacks like lightning strikes. I noticed a hint of slowdown at times, but not enough to ruin the fun.

The iPhone Duo also didn’t lag when running two apps side by side. I loaded several stories on ESPN.com on the left while playing Spotify on the right and pages still loaded quickly.

How much does the vapor chamber help with sustained performance?

Apple has made a big deal about offering vapor chamber cooling in the iPhone Duo, something the Galaxy Z Fold 8 lacks. But how does that translate to sustained performance?

To find out, we ran the 3D Mark Wild Life Extreme tests, which loops the same graphics benchmark 20 times before returning a stability score. The iPhone Duo hit 75.9%, compared to 72% for the Fold 8. The iPhone 18 Pro Max notched 79%, which makes sense because it has a thicker design and more room to dissipate heat.

We then geeked out with a thermal camera to see how well each foldable performed, and the iPhone Duo did a better job spreading out the heat evenly across the design. The Fold 8 had a hot spot to the right of the camera.

To be fair, though, the iPhone Duo hit a few degrees higher when measured with our laser thermometer on the back than the Fold 8.

Battery life and charging

Full disclosure: We had to redesign our battery test so that it filled the whole screen on the iPhone Duo. The Tom’s Guide Battery test surfs the web at 150 nits of brightness over 5G until the battery dies.

The iPhone Duo turned in a solid result, lasting 13 hours and 20 minutes. That’s over 3 hours longer than the Galaxy Fold 8, which we tested in the same room at the same time. But keep in mind that the iPhone 18 Pro Max lasted 17.5 hours under the same conditions.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 did last over 12 hours when we first received the device, so I’d say fresh out of the box the iPhone Duo is at worst an hour better. But since our test uses the live web, that’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Note that we ran this test with the iPhone Duo’s larger display.

In my anecdotal testing, which involved using the iPhone Duo for most of the day in mixed usage — including taking photos, gaming, downloading apps, playing music and checking Slack — the phone was down to 40% at the end of my day. That’s pretty solid endurance.

The iPhone Duo charges fairly quickly with Apple’s 40W charger (sold separately). It got to 42% in 15 minutes and 66% in 30 minutes. That’s good but not quite as good as the Fold 8’s 70% in half an hour.

Verdict

Is the iPhone Duo worth $2,000?

Do I think the iPhone Duo is worth two grand? Yes, as it’s only $100 more than the Galaxy Z Fold 8. And you get a more durable design, faster performance, longer battery life and smarter software. However, the Fold 8 is thinner and lighter, and it lets you run three or more apps compared to just two for the Duo.

I like the iPhone Duo’s nano texture display in that it greatly reduces glare outdoors and minimizes the crease better than any foldable I’ve tested. But you give up perfect blacks with this matte panel and more saturated colors versus the iPhone 18 Pro Max. You also sacrifice a telephoto lens and Face ID. I can live with those trade-offs, but that doesn’t mean I like them.

In a way it’s a good thing that the iPhone Duo is backordered for many until December or January. That will give developers plenty of time to update their offerings for this foldable. I don’t think it will take that long, though, based on the high demand.

Overall, though, I think the iPhone Duo is the best designed foldable yet with the most polished, intuitive and fun software experience.

Apple is holding a “Pro and Tell” event on October 28 that, not-so-subtly, signals a new MacBook Pro. That’s not too surprising, given that the company tends to release updated versions of its flagship laptop in late October or early November. However, this time it’s different: rumors suggest we’ll see the first ever touchscreen MacBook Pro unveiled, complete with an OLED display.

According to Bloomberg reporter and Apple tipster Mark Gurman, this MacBook Pro—or MacBook Ultra, as it has also been known — will also be slimmer and lighter than the existing models. It’s expected to come in 14- and 16-inch variants, and, interestingly enough, the laptops are rumored to have M5 Pro and M5 Max chips instead of an M6 chip.

If these rumors are true, this would be the biggest upgrade to the MacBook line since its redesign in October 2021. Of course, these upgrades will likely come with a steep price. That said, and understanding that none of these reports are official, here’s everything we’ve heard and expect from the MacBook Pro OLED.

MacBook Pro OLED: Rumored price and availability

There is no official release date for the MacBook Pro OLED, but we can make a reasonable guess about when we can expect it. Apple usually releases devices a week after they’re officially announced. To that end, we could see the MacBook Pro OLED sometime during the week of November 2.

Price-wise, previous estimates from MacWorld suggested that the MacBook Pro OLED could cost roughly 20% more than the current MacBook Pros, thanks to the OLED touchscreen and high-end chips. That would translate to a starting price of around $2,399 for the 14-inch model and $3,599 for the 16-inch variant — up from the $1,999 and $2,999 baselines of today’s M5 Pro models.

MacBook Pro OLED: Design and display

Instead of the existing mini-LED LCDs (or Liquid Retina displays), this rumored MacBook Pro will feature an OLED panel — which would be a first for MacBooks. This will deliver higher contrast between light and dark elements, more vivid colors, and stronger HDR. In addition, this MacBook Pro is expected to include a touchscreen, another first for MacBooks.

One interesting thing is that Apple is apparently ditching the display’s notch in favor of an iPhone-style Dynamic Island. Some folks have never liked the notch, so they’ll likely celebrate this rumored design change.

OLED panels are thinner and lighter than LCDs. This is why the iPad Pro M5 is slimmer and weighs less than an iPad Air M4. As a result, rumors suggest the OLED MacBook Pro should be noticeably more portable. We can’t say whether these laptops will be as featherweight as MacBook Airs, but it will be interesting to see the size and weight differences.

Besides being thinner and lighter, the rest of the OLED MacBook Pro’s design should remain the same. That means a similar keyboard, touchpad, and port selection.

MacBook Pro LED: Performance

Reports originally said the OLED MacBook Pro would pack the then-unannounced Apple M6 chip. That processor is now real and powers the new Mac mini M6. However, despite being the most recent M-series chip, it appears the OLED MacBook Pro will use a different processor.

According to Mark Gurman, the 14- and 16-inch OLED MacBooks will run on M5 Pro and M5 Max chips from the existing MacBook Pros. Though these are last-gen chips, they are more powerful than the M6 chip.

Why won’t this laptop have higher-end versions of the M6 chip? Gurman claims that Apple isn’t developing M6 Pro, M6 Max, or even M6 Ultra processors. The reason is that the company wants to focus more on AI and better graphics performance. As a result, Apple plans to focus its resources on developing M7 chips sooner — which means skipping higher-end M6 processors.

MacBook Pro OLED: Outlook

With the Apple “Pro and Tell” event on October 28, it won’t be long before we find out whether the rumored MacBook Pro OLED is real. Given the event’s title, we’ll undoubtedly see something MacBook Pro-related. Regardless, stay tuned for updates as we hear them!

More from Tom's Guide

• iPhone Duo wait times — the latest updates
• I’ve been living with Nvidia’s RTX Spark for a week
• At $1,000, Apple's rumored HomeView Max better do the dishes, too

The iPad mini 8 could be here soon. Invitations for Apple’s "Pro and Tell" event started going out, and it will likely unveil the long-rumored OLED MacBook Pro. But if Bloomberg reporter and Apple tipster Mark Gurman is correct, we’ll also see a brand-new iPad mini, or the iPad mini 8.

Like the iPad Pro M5, the iPad mini 8 will reportedly get an OLED panel, making it the second iPad with that display technology. In addition, the diminutive tablet will also get a repositioned front-facing camera and redesigned speaker system.

The iPad mini 7 is currently among the best iPads. If what we’ve heard about its successor is true, that tablet could make that list, too. Here are all the rumored upgrades for the iPad mini 8.

iPad mini 8: Rumored launch date & potential price

Reports haven’t provided a definitive launch date or price for the iPad mini 8, but we can indulge in a few educated guesses.

Based on my experience, Apple typically launches devices around a week after they’re unveiled at events. If that holds here, the iPad mini 8 could arrive the week of November 2. Previous iPads have arrived in that timeframe, so this is a relatively safe bet.

Price is where things get nebulous. The iPad mini 7 originally started at $499 for a 128GB Wi-Fi model. However, thanks to Apple price hikes, this small tablet now starts at $599. Given the rumored upgrades, I'd be surprised if Apple keeps the $599 price, so I think this tablet will likely cost $50 to $100 more.

And on the subject of upgrades…

iPad mini 8: Design & display

If rumors hold, the iPad mini 8 won’t be just a simple spec bump over the 2024 model.

Rumors claim the iPad mini 8 will have an OLED panel. Now, whether this is an optional upgrade or built-in is anyone’s guess. We also haven’t heard whether Apple will use the same tandem OLED tech as the iPad Pro, or opt for a different kind of OLED.

There is also no concrete reporting about the iPad mini’s refresh rate. The iPad mini 7 tops out at 60Hz, but some believe the new model will bump that up to 120Hz. While Mark Gurman says Apple has tested 60Hz and 120Hz versions, the company hasn’t decided which to go with.

The latest iPad Air and iPad Pro tablets all have landscape-oriented front-facing cameras, and the iPad mini 8 is expected to finally get its own. That’s a smart upgrade, as it makes video calls and selfies feel more natural in landscape.

If the OLED rumors are true, then the iPad mini 8 should be thinner and lighter than the last model. After all, that’s why the iPad Pro is even slimmer and lighter than an iPad Air, which lacks an OLED. That, along with rumored thinner bezels, could make for a more pleasing experience.

iPad mini 8: Performance

MacRumors reports that the iPad mini 8 will use an A20 Pro chip, the same processor powering the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. Built on TSMC’s 2mn process, the chip can deliver up to 1.5x faster CPU performance and 2.5x faster GPU performance than the A17 Pro chip in the iPad mini 7.

Memory-wise, the iPad mini 8 will allegedly have 12GB of RAM, a big bump from the iPad mini 7's 8 GB. This, along with the A20 Pro chip, should deliver noticeably better performance in games and with AI features.

iPad mini 8: Outlook

Apple hasn’t officially announced the iPad mini 8, so take all the reports I’ve detailed above with a healthy dose of skepticism. If these reports and rumors are true, we could be looking at a pretty significant upgrade for Apple’s small wonder tablet.

Of course, these upgrades likely won’t come cheap, so brace yourself for a steeper-priced iPad mini 8 when Apple eventually announces it. In the meantime, stay tuned for more!

More from Tom's Guide

• At $1,000, Apple's rumored HomeView Max better do the dishes, too
• My iPhone 18 Pro Max just arrived and I immediately regret the purchase
• 20 smart iOS 27 features that will make your life easier

Apple cannot wait to “pro and tell” all next week, which if you’ve been following the rumor mill, is marketing speak for we’re announcing new Macs and we’re going to enjoy the pun.

A deluge of leaks point to an OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro, a new entry-level M6 MacBook Pro, M6 iMac and an OLED iPad mini 8 — with announcements expected at an in-person media “experience” on Wednesday, October 28, and sales starting as soon as Friday, November 6.

Translation for anyone with a shopping cart open right now: close the tab.

First, the thing you actually came here to do

If you are considering buying a MacBook Pro, iMac or iPad mini in the next 30 days, stop.

You are standing in the exact spot where people have handed Apple full price for hardware that becomes last year’s model in literal days. Three separate outcomes favor you being patient:

• You want the latest? Wait two weeks — the new machines are about to exist, and the OLED MacBook Pro is the biggest notebook upgrade Apple’s shipped in years.
• You want a bargain? Wait slightly longer — when Apple refreshes, the outgoing machines don’t vanish. They get discounted, and retailers will start clearing stock at genuine discounts within weeks.
• You need a laptop today? That’s fine, this advice has an escape hatch, and it’s at the bottom of this piece.

Now, the fun part — what have you been waiting for.

What October 28 is (probably) going to bring

Let’s start with the big one: the OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro. This redesigned prosumer notebook has been rumored for years, and it’s going to be the biggest change to Apple’s notebook lineup in years.

Outside of all that vivid OLED goodness, gorgeous contrast and easy-on-the-eyes HDR, this is a tectonic shift in the way you can actually interact with your Mac — taking notes from the iPad to bring touch to the conversation. If you’ve faithfully owned an M1 MacBook Pro, this is the upgrade you’ve been waiting for.

Then, there’s the new entry-level M6 MacBook Pro. The rumors seem to be aligning around this sharing the exact same 14-inch shell of the MacBook Pros you’ve seen over the past few years, but with that all-important silicon upgrade.

As we’ve found out from testing this base model over the past few years, it’s become clear that the “cheapest MacBook Pro” has always been the best-value Mac nobody noticed.

Next, the all-in-one looks set to get the silicon bump. The M6 iMac is less revolution, more the annual injection of “newer is faster,” to keep the all-in-one up-to-date for folks who would rather not think about towers, monitors or cable management.

And finally, there’s the OLED iPad mini — which is, low key, the one I’m most excited for. I’ve loved the iPad mini for a while now, but that LCD display has always been the thorn in its side. Clearly, the mini’s been on borrowed time for two years; this is Apple saying it isn’t dead, it’s just been saving its energy.

Who’s actually safe to buy now?

Playing both sides of the wallet is my job, so here’s the honest carve-out. If your laptop just died, your classes start this month, or you’re about to spend your rent money — buy what you need, today.

Any Mac on Apple’s current shelves is absurdly fast; your productivity is worth more than a speculative OLED panel, and the M4 MacBook Pro is still a monster.

What you should not do in a panic: buy the current MacBook Pro at full price as a “just in case” machine while your old one still works, which is how a lot of folks look when refresh cycles hit.

And if you’re holding a trade-in-eligible Mac: lock in your trade-in quote now or wait for the dust to settle, because trade-in allowances on older generations typically drop once new silicon is officially on the table.

What to do while we wait

Stay locked in on Tom’s Guide — we’ll update the moment Apple confirms or changes anything. We've received our invite to the October 28 event, and we can’t wait to see everything the Cupertino crew’s been working on!

On top of that, we’ll keep an eye on the prices of outgoing models the day they’re discounted, so you’ll know exactly when the discount is real. If the November 6 sale date is true, Black Friday collides with fresh discontinuations, and that is going to be the single best fortnight of the year for buying Macs.

The “Pro and Tell” pun may be a bit cringe, but the buying window is not.

More from Tom's Guide

• iPhone Duo wait times — latest updates and how to beat Apple's January delay
• I’ve been living with Nvidia’s RTX Spark for a week — it’s not a MacBook Pro killer but something much weirder and wildly powerful
• At $1,000, Apple's rumored HomeView Max better do the dishes, too

You do it without thinking: swipe up, then flick, flick, flick until every app card is gone. It feels productive, like wiping down a counter, and you’re sure your battery will thank you.

It won’t. Force-closing your apps doesn’t save power. Done constantly, it makes your iPhone work harder and can drain your battery faster. I’ll admit I did this for years. But the habit millions of us swear by is based on a misunderstanding of how iOS actually works.

Here’s what’s really happening when you swipe an app away, and what to do instead if you want your battery to last.

What really happens when you leave an app

It’s easy to picture your open apps like programs on a laptop: all running at once, all eating power. That’s not how an iPhone works.

When you go home or switch to another app, iOS gives the app a few seconds to finish what it was doing, then suspends it. The app stays in memory, paused where you left it, but it isn’t using the processor. That’s why it reopens instantly.

You don’t need to clear any of this yourself. When your phone needs more memory, iOS closes suspended apps on its own. The App Switcher is really just a list of apps you’ve used recently.

There are exceptions. Apps playing music, giving directions, handling a call or finishing an upload can keep running in the background. Some apps can also wake briefly to refresh their content, which you can switch off — more on that below.

Why swiping them away backfires

When you swipe an app away, you remove it from memory entirely. The next time you tap it, your iPhone has to start it from scratch: load it from storage, rebuild its screens and fetch fresh content.

That fresh start, called a cold launch, takes more work than resuming a suspended app. Once, you’d never notice. But, if you operate like how I used to and clear out Messages, Safari and Mail several times a day, your phone repeats that work over and over for no benefit.

Apple’s own advice is to force-close an app only if it has stopped responding.

When you should swipe an app away

Force-closing is useful for troubleshooting. If an app freezes or stops loading, swiping it away and reopening it gives it a clean restart.

The rest of the time, leave the App Switcher alone. If you want to cut background battery use, these steps help more.

• Turn off Background App Refresh for apps that don’t need it. Go to Settings, General, Background App Refresh and switch this off completely, or any apps you don’t need updating in the background.
• Check which apps use your location. In Settings, Privacy & Security, and Location Services, set apps to "While Using the App" unless they need your location all the time.
• See what’s actually using your battery. Head to Settings and Battery, then "View All Battery Usage" to see which apps are consuming the most power.

Tethered to a charger by 2 PM? If you voted no, drop your iPhone model in the comments and tell us which app is eating through your battery the fastest.

More from Tom's Guide

• I turned off this hidden iOS 27 setting and instantly fixed my iPhone’s battery drain
• The 4 emergency phone tweaks that keep your battery alive in a power outage
• iOS 27 has a hidden anti-scam setting — here’s why every iPhone user should turn it on

If you're hoping to pick up an iPhone Duo of your very own, you're going to have to wait. The foldable is technically on sale, but unless you managed to score a pre-order right away then you could be looking at a months-long wait before your unit actually arrives.

At the time of writing, it doesn't actually matter which iPhone Duo variant you want — they're all equally (albeit temporarily) sold out. That's the bad news, but the slightly better news is that you don't necessarily have to wait until 2027 to pick up one of your own. I don't mean getting gouged for a scalped unit, that's a complete waste of money. I mean shopping around at different retailers and carriers to see what options are available.

You won't be able to magically pick up an iPhone Duo tomorrow, but at the time of writing some units will be available before the end of the year — or several weeks before Apple expects to be able to fulfil new orders.

Quick Links

• T-Mobile: up to $1,000 off w/ new line + unlimited
• Verizon: up to $1,000 off w/ trade-in + unlimited
• AT&T: up to $1,200 off w/ new line + trade-in
• Xfinity Mobile: up to $1,000 off w/ trade + unlimited
• Red Pocket: $100 off + data from $10/month

iPhone Duo Availability (Updated October 23)

As you can see, Apple is completely out of iPhone Duo units and isn't expecting to start shipping more until late January — though delivery estimates have been reduced by a few days across the board and some pre-orders will be arriving sooner.

It's also been confirmed that Apple has implemented a two device limit on all Duo pre-orders. It's not entirely clear whether this has always been the case, or if Apple realized this was necessary after the fact. Which should help avoid pre-order waits getting too extreme.

Apple is pretty much your only option when it comes to buying an unlocked iPhone Duos for the time being. However, if you are willing to lock your device down to a specific carrier, you can pick one up a lot earlier.

Both AT&T and Verizon currently promise some iPhone Duo units will be available in mid-December, while T-Mobile is expected to have stock available from late December and into January depending on the storage configuration.

Best Buy is also expecting to deliver all storage variants in late December, and you will be forced to lock your phone to either AT&T or Verizon. Sadly it doesn't matter which carrier you choose, they're all due no earlier than December 22.

Sadly, Walmart is totally out of stock at the time of writing, with no mention of when iPhone Duo units might be available to ship.

iPhone Duo UK Availability (Updated October 23)

iPhone Duo availability in the U.K. is pretty dire, and it's not looking good for those of you that will want to get your hands on one. A pre-Christmas delivery is going to be borderline impossible, especially since Apple is out of units until January 22, while both Argos and Currys are completely sold out. Carphone Warehouse is out of stock until January 7.

When it comes to mobile networks, Three has made it clear it won't be getting more iPhone Duos until January 20. Vodafone promises a 13-14 week delivery window, which takes us to January 20.

Meanwhile EE and O2 have been far less helpful, giving very vague details about how deliveries will happen more than 4 weeks into the future. This could mean anything from late November to this time next year for all we know.

Can I just go to the Apple Store?

Apple confirmed that Apple Stores would have a "limited" amount of iPhone Duo stock on launch day, but we didn't expect that would last very long. At the moment we don't know if and when Apple Stores will get hold of more iPhone Suos, but given the extreme demand online we don't expect them to be available for in-person purchase anytime soon.

Apple has confirmed that the in-store pickup option will be returning to the Apple website on October 24. Not only does that mean you should be able to see if any Apple Store in your vicinity have iPhone Duos in stock, it's likely this will give you the opportunity to reserve a unit to save any disappointment when you actually get there.

However, it's unclear how effective this will be at getting you an unlocked iPhone before January.

What to do if you can't grab an iPhone Duo this year?

The good news is that those of you that have picked up iPhone Duo pre-orders from Apple may have noticed that your delivery estimate has actually decreased over the past few days. It's unclear whether is happening everywhere, but the fact that Apple is adjusting its delivery estimates does bode well.

One thing you should also note is that Apple operates a two-week return policy. It's possible that some of the Duo units that are shipped to customers on October 23 will be returned, either because someone decided they didn't want it anymore or because they were purchased by resellers who couldn't sell their stock.

That could lead to a trickle of Duo units being recirculated from the returns department and back out to other customers — especially if they're unopened. We can't predict how much of an impact this will have on wait times, though, and it will likely differ from region to region.

The last thing you should do is resort to buying from scalpers and resellers, regardless of where they may be selling. You'll end up paying an overinflated price for a phone that will be back in stock in the near future, and all you'll gain is a few extra months of time. Apple wants to get these to you as soon as possible, so don't waste your money.

Finally, if you just want a foldable and don't have your heart set on an iPhone Duo, you can always try out one of these six alternatives. They're Android phones, but given how many brands love to mimic iOS, you may not notice much difference.

More from Tom's Guide

• My iPhone 18 Pro Max just got delivered and I immediately regret the purchase — and I think iPhone Duo is to blame
• I've waited 5 years for the iPhone Duo — here are 7 reasons I decided not to pre-order
• iPhone Duo modes explained — 6 ways you can use Apple's new foldable

Apple's next product launch event is taking place on October 28 in Los Angeles, where we expect the company to launch a touchscreen MacBook Pro, an OLED iPad mini and more.

Invitations for the event, dubbed "Pro and Tell," started going out this week and Tom's Guide received one. It's pretty clear the from the teaser that the next MacBook Pro will be a prominent part of the event.

Here's everything you need to know about the Pro and Tell event.

When is Pro and Tell?

The Apple Pro and Tell event takes place on October 28, 2026 starting at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET in Los Angeles.

What we expect to see

We expect at least three new devices to launch next week, including a new MacBook.

The touchscreen MacBook Pro is supposed to feature an OLED panel, a first for an Apple laptop. The rumored MacBook Ultra, could also get a name change and slight redesign, mostly making it thinner and lighter.

Additionally, Apple may abandon the webcam notch in favor of an iPhone-esque Dynamic Island. It's not clear what chipset it will feature; rumors have suggested both the current M5 Pro and M5 Max silicon or the newer M6 chip which first launched in the latest Mac mini.

The updated iPad mini similarly should feature an OLED panel, following the iPad Air and iPad Pro from the last two years. It may also get a repositioned front-facing camera to support landscape video calls.

Finally, we should see an M6-powered version of the iMac. We aren't expecting a redesign or any other new features based on current rumors. If the new Mac mini is any indication, an M6 iMac will be significantly faster and more efficient.

Outlook

Apple has been rumored to be working on an OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro for years, so it will be interesting to see how the company finally implements the new display.

The iPad mini is one of the best tablets available, and adding an OLED screen should make it even better.

Tom's Guide will be on hand to get all the latest news and hands-on with Apple's newest devices. Keep us in your tabs to stay up to date.

More from Tom's Guide

• At $1,000, Apple's rumored HomeView Max better do the dishes, too
• My iPhone 18 Pro Max just got delivered and I immediately regret the purchase — and I think iPhone Duo is to blame
• 20 smart iOS 27 features that will make your life easier — and how to use them

Apple is reportedly developing a premium HomeView built around a motorized arm that spins 360 degrees and turns the display toward whoever's speaking, per Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. A larger 9-inch screen, a 2027-2028 target, and an identity crisis about whether it's a "Max," an "Ultra," or something with its own name.

We’ve only just got the first HomeView, but the Cupertino crew is thinking about the long-game here, and it expands into a companion era I’m not sure we’re ready for — with a fascinating backstory.

What’s actually rumored

Per Gurman, the arm-equipped device pairs the motorized base with a bigger 9-inch display — up from the 7-inch panel on the standard HomeView just announced. But what’s key to note is that this is not HomeView 2.

It’s a more premium experience, and a companion that is actually able to rotate on its base and look at you as you walk around a room. Less of a passive device on your kitchen countertop and one that can actively engage with you — with a rumored $1,000 price tag penciled in for a 2027 launch.

Apple already showed you this future

In February 2025, Apple Machine Learning Research published a video of a robot lamp research demo — a little articulated Pixar-looking lamp that watched a person move around a room, and responded with something uncomfortably close to personality. Head tilts. Leaning in. The unmistakable energy of Pixar’s mascot coming to life with a machine learning degree.

Nobody treated it as a serious thing at the time. But here we are in October 2026, watching how things can come full circle. The more I watch it, the more I realize this wasn’t just a lamp demo. It was Apple workshopping the idea of making your furniture behave like it notices you.

And soon, we may see what that looks like in a real product. But that’s not the only place where Apple may have already been unintentionally working on the HomeView Max.

The car is dead. Long live the car’s robot arm

Here’s the story underneath the story: the $10 billion electric car is the most expensive graveyard in Apple history. When it was gutted, we all thought that everything was scattered into the wind.

Gurman’s reporting suggests something more deliberate — the robotics lived on, moving the arm from the driveway to the living room. And all that gesture recognition, smooth motion and spatial awareness of that car arm is reportedly being repackaged as this screen that turns its head when you walk in mid-Siri.

As a tech nerd, this is an absurdly cool use of some serious engineering.

The reality check: this is a pet, and pets are expensive

So, it’s time to put the tin hat on, together.

First, the swivel is the whole thing — and the entire privacy conversation. Apple’s pitch has always been privacy-centered, and for good reason when you see what other companies are doing.

And while that may well be the case with this arm version of HomeView, I think there’s a creep factor to a screen following you around the room that will cause some spirited discussions around the Thanksgiving table.

Second, that rumored price is going to turn some heads. Compared to other smart home hubs, the current HomeView is already pretty pricey and kind of limited in functionality. Now we have a premium robot sibling option set for launch next year? That’s a big test of household budgets.

Third, Siri has to be good. A robot arm that turns toward you only matters if there’s something worth saying to it once it’s looking. The HomeView ad does show how it can fit into a chaotic family household, but if my iPhone’s Siri response time is anything to go by, those pauses between people asking questions and getting answers would actually leave some awkward silences.

When it’s just a screen on your countertop, that can be forgiven. But when you make it a companion, it has to be near-instantaneous. The arm, ironically, is probably the least important component of this device when it comes to actually using it.

Who should care?

Gurman’s report uses the word “companion,” and I couldn’t agree more. For the past decade, smart home devices have been appliances — helpful, static and furniture-adjacent.

This robot arm is the moment the real hub is elevated above being just a screen with a speaker, but a feeling that something in your house knows you walked in.

Are people going to be comfortable with this? That’s something we’ll find out. Apple’s $299 HomeView is a slightly high, but rational price for a smart display, and it’ll get the software updates the robot needs anyway.

This rumored arm version is for a different person entirely: the smart-home early adopter with a spouse who’s stopped asking where the money went, and the Apple watcher reading the tea leaves.

So to figure this out, I turn to you, dear reader!

More from Tom's Guide

• Should you buy the Apple HomeView? 5 reasons to pick one up (and 2 reasons why you might want to hold off)
• I’ve been living with Nvidia’s RTX Spark for a week — it’s not a MacBook Pro killer but something much weirder and wildly powerful
• Elon Musk just unveiled a flying car — watch the Tesla Roadster's incredible launch

The first iPhone Duos will be landing in users' hands by the end of this week, and it means we finally get a chance to find out all the things we still don't know about the phone. One thing we can cross off the list is the phone's total battery capacity, thanks to the newly published EU energy label.

According to EU law, all phones that go on sale in the region also need a publicly accessible Energy Label, which offers key details about the device in question. Alongside information like IP rating, drop test performance and repairability, the labels also lists the phone's energy performance and battery specs. In the case of the iPhone Duo, it confirms the long-standing rumor that the phone packs in a 4,883 mAh battery pack.

For reference the eSIM-only variants of the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max both have respective 4,288 mAh and 5,567 mAh batteries. Which means the iPhone Duo falls somewhere in the middle of the two.

However, considering this is a dual screen phone, one of which is almost 8-inches in size, it's not entirely clear whether the actual battery life will do the same. We'll have to wait and see how the Duo fairs in our own battery life testing.

How iPhone Duo's battery compares to other foldables

As you can see, the iPhone Duo's battery life isn't dissimilar to that of other foldables out there. It's slightly below the Z Fold 8 Ultra, and slightly higher than the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, though both of them are full size book-shaped foldables with a little more space for larger batteries. As is the Motorola Razr Fold, which has a hefty 6,000 mAh battery hiding inside.

The closest we have to Apple's passport-shaped design is the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, which has a slightly smaller 4,800 mAh battery.

This phone lasted just shy of 13 hours during testing, which may give us a benchmark of what to expect from the Duo. Not only is Apple's battery store an extra 83 mAh of power, it also features the same energy-saving features as the 18 Pro series — including the A20 Pro chipset and C2 modem.

I'd expect the iPhone Duo to last a little longer than the Z Fold 8 based on those two factors, but we can't know for sure until we actually get it into the Tom's Guide lab.

Everything else the EU just revealed about iPhone Duo

The EU Energy Label also confirmed some other details. One of which is that the Duo's battery is rated for 1,000 full recharge cycles (zero to 100% and back), which means it should keep at least 80% of its total capacity for that duration.

The Duo also lasted 140 free falls without causing problems, though this number dropped to 35 when it was dropped with the screen fully open.

So as durable as it may be, the iPhone Duo is still a lot more fragile if you leave the inner screen open and exposed. For comparison the Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra both lasted 210 drops, which dropped to 45 when opened, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max lasted 180.

As for water, the phone is IP68 rated (as expected) and is capable of being immersed in up to six meters of water. The screen is also listed as scratch-resistant up to 5 Mohs on the hardness scale, compared to just one on the Z Fold 8 series. Since this is the same as the iPhone 18 Pro Max, which has a Ceramic Shield 2 display, my guess is that only the Duo's outer display was tested.

The Duo's repairability index score of 2.65 is also lower than that of the other three phones. The 18 Pro Max hit 3.14, while the Z Fold 8 and 8 Ultra score 2.79 and 2.78, respectively.

More from Tom's Guide

• My iPhone 18 Pro Max just got delivered and I immediately regret the purchase — and I think iPhone Duo is to blame
• 7 ways the iPhone Duo could change foldables for the better
• iPhone Duo modes explained — 6 ways you can use Apple's new foldable

There’s tremendous anticipation for the iPhone Duo, and current delivery dates for pre-orders indicate you might have to wait until next year to get it in your hands. Three months is a long time, but if you’ve already committed to that $1,999 investment, you’ll have plenty of runway to pick up some of the best gear to complement it.

Considering this is Apple’s first foray into the foldable space, it unlocks a whole new category of add-ons tailored to the dual-screen form factor. Having spent the last year testing the best phones on both sides of the aisle — from standard flagships to rival foldables — I have a good idea of which gadgets are actually worth splurging on.

From obvious essentials like cases designed to protect that delicate hinge to less obvious productivity tools, here are the best iPhone Duo accessories to buy right now.

Best iPhone Duo accessories you can buy right now

More from Tom's Guide

• iPhone Duo Geekbench scores leak, and Apple's foldable is about to leave Android rivals in the dust
• iPhone Duo: Here’s why an iPhone 18 Pro Max and MacBook Neo combo is the better buy
• Apple increases iPhone Duo production by 30% — here's what that means for you

Apple will reportedly unveil the long-rumored OLED MacBooks at an upcoming event on October 28. Bloomberg reporter and Apple tipster Mark Gurman (via MacRumors) shared details on X about the devices we can expect.

In addition to touchscreen OLED MacBooks, we might see new M6-powered Macs and a new iPad mini with an OLED panel and a repositioned front camera. These devices would complement the other Apple computers released this year, including the MacBook Neo, Mac Studio, and Mac mini.

Apple hasn’t officially announced an event or which devices it might unveil, so take all of this with a healthy dose of skepticism. That said, here are the rumors and reports we’ve heard about the devices Gurman claims we’ll see on October 28.

Touchscreen OLED MacBook Pro models

I’ve previously reported on the rumored MacBook Ultra, which will reportedly feature an OLED touchscreen and a new design. While MacBooks that fit that description should still launch, Mark Gurman says they'll be part of the MacBook Pro line.

Aside from the name, the OLED MacBook Pros are expected to be the thinnest and lightest MacBooks ever, which would be quite a feat if they outdo the MacBook Air in that regard. OLED panels are thinner and lighter than traditional displays, so that may be a factor—just as the iPad Pro M5 is thinner and lighter than a similarly sized iPad Air thanks to its OLED panel.

Rumors suggest Apple may abandon the notch in favor of an iPhone-style Dynamic Island. Some folks have never liked the notch on current MacBooks, so this upgrade would be welcome news if it’s true.

We don’t yet know which chips these 14- and 16-inch OLED MacBooks will use, but reports suggest they will use the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips from the existing MacBook Pros. Even if these are technically last-gen chips, they are more powerful than the M6 processor in the current Mac mini, so these machines won’t be compromised in that regard. That said, I expect these MacBook Pros will command a very steep price.

New iPad mini

Apple is also reportedly launching a new iPad mini model. The main upgrade expected for the company’s smallest tablet is an OLED display, making it the second iPad to feature that technology after the iPad Pro.

Rumors about the iPad mini’s refresh rate have been inconsistent. The current model tops out at 60Hz, but some believe an OLED panel could bump it to 120Hz, like the iPad Pro. While Mark Gurman says Apple has tested 60Hz and 120Hz versions, it hasn’t decided which to use.

Like the current iPad Air and iPad Pro models, the iPad mini is expected to receive a repositioned front-facing camera to support landscape video calls. The diminutive tablet is also rumored to get a redesigned speaker system. We also don’t know whether this model will be thinner and lighter or have smaller bezels than previous iterations.

M6 Macs

Apple debuted the M6 chip with the new Mac mini M6, but it’s safe to assume the company will also bring this processor to its MacBooks. If Gurman’s report is accurate, we could see an entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 at this October 28 event. We’re not sure if this will keep the same design as existing MacBook Pros.

Similarly, Apple could unveil a new M6-powered iMac. That’s all the report says, so it’s anyone’s guess if this all-in-one will feature an updated design or other new features beyond a spec bump.

While on the topic of the M6 chip, Gurman says Apple won’t develop any M6 Pro, M6 Max, or even M6 Ultra processors. Apple reportedly wants to pivot more toward AI and better graphics performance. To that end, the company plans to focus its efforts and resources on developing M7 chips sooner—which means skipping higher-end M6 processors.

Outlook

With this Apple event reportedly happening on October 28, we won’t have to wait long to see whether any of these rumored new devices are real. That said, Apple tends to release new Macs and iPads around that time of year, so don’t be surprised if it launches new devices. Stay tuned for more updates as we hear them!

More from Tom's Guide

• iPhone Duo pre-orders LIVE — latest stock updates and shortest wait times
• Apple 'Welcome home' event RECAP
• I tested the Mac Studio M5 Ultra — and it’s the best kind of overkill

If you’ve been eagerly eyeing Amazon’s Echo Show or Google’s Nest Hub smart displays but wanted to wait and see what Apple had up its sleeve, you’re in luck: the wait is finally over. Unveiled earlier this week, the Apple HomeView officially launches on Friday, November 13.

Rumors of a smart speaker with a built-in display from Cupertino have been making the rounds online for years. Mark Gurman first reported all the way back in 2021 that Apple planned to expand its smart home lineup with a display-equipped device.

Then came reports of a smart display attached to a robotic arm that could swivel to follow you around the room, much like the now-discontinued Echo Show 10. Later, in 2023, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted the new device would feature a 7-inch display.

Now, after five years of speculation, the Apple HomeView is real and could be in your house in time for the holidays. But is it actually worth buying? Here are five reasons to pick up the HomeView to control your existing smart home devices — or make it the starting point for your setup — along with two reasons you might want to skip it for one of the best smart displays instead.

Apple HomeView: Reasons to buy

Apple’s first smart display brings a lot to the table, especially if you’ve already bought into the company’s ecosystem. From its dual dashboard system and hands-free recipe navigation to deeper Siri AI integration and seamless FaceTime calls, here are the top features that make the HomeView worth adding to your smart home.

Smart home dashboard

One of the hardest things about living in a smart home is having to juggle between multiple apps on your phone. If you have one of the best iPhones, the Apple Home app helps simplify this, but the Apple HomeView takes things a step further.

The HomeView actually features two distinct dashboards: a shared household view and a personal one. When no specific person is in front of the screen, the device defaults to a shared layout displaying universal widgets for controlling smart lights and thermostats or viewing live security camera feeds. This is a great addition for guests, who can easily adjust a room’s lighting without having to guess the exact names of your individual smart lights.

Then, when one of up to six household members approaches the HomeView, the display switches to a personalized home screen using facial recognition. This second dashboard surfaces your private reminders, personal calendar events, and favorite accessory shortcuts pulled directly from your iPhone.

Siri AI

Just like how Amazon’s Echo Show smart displays got an upgrade to the AI-powered Alexa Plus earlier this year, HomeView relies heavily on Siri AI. Powered by Apple Intelligence and the built-in A18 chip inside HomeView, this new version of Siri is tailored to handle natural follow-up questions, mid-sentence corrections, and complex, multi-part commands without you having to repeat the wake word.

When paired with your iPhone or iPad, Siri AI can pull personal context from Apple’s first-party apps like Messages, Mail, Calendar, and Reminders. At the same time, Siri AI on HomeView uses broad world knowledge to deliver conversational answers instead of just redirecting you to a web link on your other devices.

When it comes to HomeView’s 7-inch display, Siri AI acts directly on what’s currently on screen. For instance, you can look at a live camera feed and ask it to unlock the front door — provided you have a compatible smart lock installed. Likewise, when looking at a recipe on your HomeView, you can ask Siri AI to add those ingredients straight to your shopping list.

Hands-free FaceTime, messages and calls

Having to prop your iPhone up every time you want to FaceTime with your grandparents gets old fast. Fortunately, Apple’s HomeView handles video calls with ease thanks to its 12MP camera equipped with Center Stage auto-framing. You can also start a FaceTime call completely hands-free just by asking Siri, which is especially handy if you’re mid-recipe and need to quickly check an ingredient with your parents.

Just like on a Mac, you can send iMessages directly from the HomeView. While you can type them out using the on-screen keyboard, you can also dictate them — and have incoming replies read back to you — using Siri AI. Phone calls work seamlessly, too; if your iPhone rings in another room, you can simply answer the incoming call directly on the smart display’s screen. Plus, HomeView doubles as an in-home intercom, letting you blast quick voice announcements like “dinner is ready” across every Apple device in the house.

Multi-person recognition

That 12MP camera on the front of HomeView isn’t just for video calls. While the new device lacks Face ID, it uses the camera to scan the faces of up to six people in your household. This is what allows your personal dashboard to automatically pop up when you walk up to the screen.

In a way, HomeView’s multi-person recognition feels like having separate user accounts on the shared family computer back in the day. Once the device recognizes you and verifies your unlocked iPhone or iPad is nearby on the same network, you can securely access your personal iMessages, calendar, and reminders. HomeView’s far-field microphones also support multi-user voice matching, allowing Siri AI to differentiate between family members and respond with personalized answers when different people talk to it across the room.

Step-by-step recipes

There’s no better place for a smart display than the kitchen, and Apple definitely considered this when designing HomeView. One of its best features is how you can take any online recipe you’ve opened in Safari and send it straight to the device. From there, HomeView strips away all the clutter and reformats the page into clean, step-by-step instructions with large text that’s easy to read across the room. It even uses proximity sensing to automatically scale the text size up or down based on how far away you're standing.

Since you don’t want to be touching a glass screen with messy hands, you can navigate the entire process using voice commands. Saying phrases like “Siri, next step” lets you advance the recipe without leaving greasy fingerprints on the display. HomeView’s recipes also feature embedded step timers, allowing you to set, label, and manage multiple concurrent timers hands-free while you cook.

Apple HomeView: Reasons to skip

As impressive as the HomeView is on paper, it isn't going to be the right fit for every home. Between its strict reliance on the iPhone and the steep additional costs required just to get a clean wall-mounted install, here are two major drawbacks you should keep in mind before picking one up.

iPhone required

Unlike Amazon’s Echo Show or Google’s Nest Hub devices which are platform agnostic, for the best experience with Apple’s HomeView, you’re going to need an iPhone or at least an iPad. In fact, without one, you can’t even set up a HomeView since you need a device running iOS 27.2 or later just to register it.

While there are households where iOS and Android co-exist, non-iPhone users won’t get anywhere close to the full HomeView experience. Without an iPhone or iPad, you don’t get access to the device’s personal dashboard since facial recognition won’t work — it only matches faces to active Apple IDs. Essentially, without an iPhone, you're stuck feeling like a guest in your own home.

A clean install costs even more

At $299, the standard Apple HomeView is already one of the most expensive smart displays on the market, sharing a price point with Amazon’s much larger Echo Show 15. However, if you want to wall-mount it — especially if you’re aiming for a sleek, wire-free installation — that $299 base price quickly balloons.

Unlike the tabletop model, the wall-mounted HomeView doesn't include a mount or a power supply in the box. Choosing the DIY route with Apple’s entry-level Power Mount USB-C adds $59 to your tab, pushing the total to $358. If you want a hardwired, flush-to-the-wall setup without visible cables dangling down to an outlet, the Power Mount AC Wired costs $79 extra — plus the additional cost of hiring a licensed electrician to wire it safely, which Apple recommends through a partnership with ADT.

Finally, if you want to run power and data over a single network cable, the Power Mount PoE costs an eye-watering $129 on top of the display, and that's before factoring in the cost of a PoE switch or professional installation.

More from Tom's Guide

• Apple HomeView is already discounted ahead of next month's release — here's how much you could save by pre-ordering
• Amazon Echo Show 15 vs Echo Show 21: which wall-mountable smart display should you buy?
• Apple's HomeView isn't reinventing smart displays — it's fixing what made me abandon my Amazon Echo Shows

The iPhone Duo is officially available to pre-order, and that means we're one step closer to experiencing Apple's first foldable for ourselves. The fact that Apple is jumping into the world of foldable phones is a big deal, and it's practically guaranteed that other foldable phone makers will be watching the iPhone Duo with great interest.

By which I mean they're going to be looking for ways they can copy Apple and enhance their own foldable offerings. Phone development often seems like a cycle of companies constantly taking existing ideas and adapting them for their own devices. Apple does it, and in turn the iPhone's popularity means it's a popular target for plagiarists. Which has led to a shocking number of Android phones that feel like they're running a bootleg copy of iOS.

Needless to say, there are definitely some aspects of the iPhone Duo that will make their way to the foldables of the future. That's not necessarily a bad thing either, and here are the seven ways iPhone Duo could end up changing foldable phones for the better.

More wider foldables

We've already seen an influx of wider foldables ahead of the iPhone Duo's launch, and at least one wider non-folding phone, and that trend is likely to continue going forward. The last several years have seen phone companies tell us that bigger is better, but when it comes to foldables that might not necessarily be the case.

As we discovered with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, the passport-like design feels a lot better than the taller, book-ish shape of the Z Fold 8 Ultra. The slightly more compact nature of the phone also makes it more portable, and simpler to pull out and use — which has always been a point of contention with previous foldables. So, if foldable phone makers double down on using a similar design to iPhone Duo, I certainly won't be complaining.

Stylus support

The loss of stylus support on the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is something that Samsung foldable fans have been complaining about ever since — and I'm on their side. I'm a big proponent of the fact that tablets work best when you're able to use some sort of stylus alongside the touchscreen. Apple clearly recognized that with the iPhone Duo, and I suspect that Samsung (and others) will figure that out pretty quickly.

So far the only other foldables that offer stylus support are the Motorola Razr Fold and the Oppo Find N series — both of which have their own specialized foldable-friendly stylii. But since iPhone Duo supports the same Apple Pencil (USB-C) as most recent iPads, I wouldn't be surprised if future foldables supported a stylus that also works with other devices.

More under display cameras

Again, this is something that Samsung pulled with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, though in this instance I wasn't really mad about it. Under-display cameras don't have a good reputation for quality, and the fact Apple has emphasized that its own option is strictly for use with FaceTime and video calling apps suggests it hasn't found a way to deal with that yet.

If Apple keeps the camera limited to video calls, where quality is less of an issue compared to taking photos, then it might not be such a bad feature to have. It certainly doesn't take much away from the inner screen after all. And considering other phone companies have dabbled with under-display cameras in the past, this may well prompt them to try again — though there may be some guardrails.

After all, having video calls on a larger screen makes sense, but there's only so many ways you need to be able to take photos with your phone.

New foldable screen designs

There have been no shortage of attempts to eliminate the crease running down the center of a foldable phone's display, and that work will no doubt continue regardless of Apple's thoughts on the topic. However, the way Apple has designed its screens could lead to some changes elsewhere.

Most notably, Apple has utilized a "nano-texture" coating on the Duo's large display, which is designed to minimise glare, and offers a matte surface in contrast to the typical glossy phone screens we're used to. That screen is also built to be more durable and scratch-resistant, which is always a fear I have with foldable screens. It's different to the point that this could be something we see adopted elsewhere, even if non-folding phones retain the same designs they always do.

Better durability

Apple didn't invent the IP68-rated foldable, but there are too many companies like Samsung that still disregard dust resistance. On top of that, Apple seems to have done a lot to bolster the durability of its first foldable, offering materials and design choices that we don't see on ordinary iPhones anymore.

The nano-texture coating on the foldable display is one prominent example, since it's designed to improve scratch resistance and ensure the normally fragile screen is as well-protected as it can be. The frame is likewise made of titanium, a material that phone companies have dabbled with in the past but quickly dropped — likely over cost concerns.

I have a suspicion that we will be seeing an influx of titanium designs and other durability enhancements in the near future. Which I definitely will not complain about.

Vapor chamber cooling

Vapor chambers have been showing up more and more in recent years, especially in high performance phones like Samsung's Galaxy S series and Apple's iPhones. Performance makes heat, and vapor chambers help disperse that heat to keep the phones performing better for longer.

Sadly foldable phones didn't get that memo, so phones like the Z Fold 8 have the same performance capabilities and no way to move the generated heat around. iPhone Duo does not fall into that trap, and Apple even added hardware to help heat traverse the central hinge and radiate away more safely. That means the performance benchmarks could be a lot better than we're used to on other dual-screen devices.

It's not all down to the vapor chamber, and the sheer power of the A20 Pro will be doing a lot of heavy lifting. But since every little helps, it's likely that Apple's rivals will be considering throwing in their own vapor chambers on future models.

Magnetic wireless charging

Apple popularized magnetic wireless charging with MagSafe, but even when a standardized option became available for Android phone makers, very few of them actually bothered to sign on. Instead they pointed customers to special magnetic cases.

There was speculation as to whether the iPhone Duo would support MagSafe or not, but now we know it does even if the size of the Duo makes certain accessories attach a little awkwardly. Google, obviously, already supports Qi2 magnetic charging, but the other foldables out there? Not so much, and we've never really had a good excuse as to why.

Here's hoping that changes, though I will admit this might be more wishful thinking. After all, magnetic wireless charging has struggled to gain traction in recent years, despite the previous years of Apple support. So phone makers aren't always willing to copy everything.

More from Tom's Guide

• iPhone Duo: Here’s why an iPhone 18 Pro Max and MacBook Neo combo is the better buy
• iPhone Duo modes explained — 6 ways you can use Apple's new foldable
• iPhone Duo Geekbench scores leak, and Apple's foldable is about to leave Android rivals in the dust

So far, I’ve pitted the iPhone 18 Pro Max against some of its fiercest rivals — like the Galaxy S26 Ultra. But I’ve also put it to the test against its predecessors, like the iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPhone 15 Pro Max, to see what major improvements the latest model actually delivers.

This time, I’m going further back to pit the iPhone 18 Pro Max against the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Clearly, a four-year gap gives the 18 Pro Max a major advantage, but if my past face-offs are any indication, there are always surprises that make me rethink when it's truly time to upgrade.

I’ll break down side-by-side camera samples, battery life runtimes, and benchmark scores so you can determine if it’s worth the jump. Because honestly, given the current state of flagship phone prices, I could easily see someone holding onto their phone for five full years.

iPhone 18 Pro Max vs. iPhone 14 Pro Max: Cameras

To see the biggest impact of that four-year gap, look no further than camera performance. On paper, the iPhone 18 Pro Max clearly packs the superior setup: a 48MP triple-camera system headlined by a mechanical variable aperture on the main lens and a 48MP telephoto shooter with 4x optical zoom. Other notable hardware upgrades include a brighter f/1.48 maximum aperture on the primary sensor and a wider field of view from the upgraded 18MP Center Stage selfie camera.

The upgrades aren't just limited to hardware. The shooting experience on the iPhone 18 Pro Max is significantly elevated by new Pro Controls, offering granular manual control over settings like shutter speed, focus, and white balance. On the video front, the iPhone 18 Pro Max pulls well ahead with native 4K 120fps recording, Log capture, ProRes, Cinematic mode, Audio Mix, and smart focus tracking.

Look closely at the side-by-side low-light samples above, and a clear pattern emerges. Considering its four-year-old hardware, the iPhone 14 Pro Max still holds up reasonably well.

However, the iPhone 18 Pro Max’s wider aperture and updated optics clearly give it the edge — delivering sharper detail, better-exposed shadows, and noticeably cleaner results with far less noise.

Zoom is another area where the iPhone 18 Pro Max holds an inherent hardware advantage: it packs a 48MP telephoto camera with 4x optical zoom versus the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s older 12MP sensor with 3x optical zoom. For the comparison above, I captured test shots at 4x, 8x, and 15x to highlight the differences across the range.

At 4x zoom, it’s tough to spot a clear winner from the overall frame, but cropping in reveals sharper edge definition around the statue with the iPhone 18 Pro Max. Pushing to 8x zoom, the textures on the surrounding stone blocks are noticeably crisper on the 18 Pro Max as well. And finally, at 15x zoom, that advantage becomes unmistakable. While the iPhone 18 Pro Max takes the win across the focal range, the zoom gap isn't quite as dramatic as the disparity in low-light performance.

What about other shooting conditions? The differences are mostly minor, proving that the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s main camera is still a solid performer that consistently delivers excellent results. You can see in several of the side-by-side shots above how closely it matches the iPhone 18 Pro Max in dynamic range and color reproduction.

That said, here are a few other takeaways worth noting:

• Ultrawide detail: The iPhone 18 Pro Max captures slightly finer detail and crisper edges with its ultrawide shooter.
• Macro mode: While close-up shots look sharp on both, the iPhone 14 Pro Max suffers from more visible noise and grain.
• Selfies: The iPhone 18 Pro Max’s updated 18MP Center Stage camera offers a noticeably wider field of view, making it far better suited for group shots.

Just like in my previous face-offs against older flagships, the iPhone 14 Pro Max proves it's still a capable everyday shooter. However, there are simply too many compelling reasons to justify jumping to the iPhone 18 Pro Max. I’m not just talking about its massive leap in low-light photography—it’s the mechanical variable aperture, granular Pro Controls, and versatile video suite that ultimately seal the deal.

iPhone 18 Pro Max vs. iPhone 14 Pro Max: Specifications