Apple's $1,999 folding iPhone puts two apps side by side with a drag

Steve Moser had worked out his problem with the folding iPhone before he had held one. "My left hand has learned to operate a smart phone and my right hand does everything else," he wrote in a post quoted by Cult of Mac ^[6]. Cult of Mac reports that Apple put the Touch ID sensor on the right side of the Duo, moved many navigation elements to the right of a redesigned Home Screen, and that on a wider body some left-handed users may find the device unusable ^[3][5]. The publication attributes the sensor move to the passport-like design, which also brought a hole-punch front camera in place of Face ID ^[3].

The split is the behaviour that reaches the most product teams, and the detail worth reading closely is who starts it. Most single-screen foldables treat the unfolded panel as a tablet screen and make the user enter a separate multitasking view first, Windows Central notes ^[12]. On the Duo demos, the drag alone docks the app, with no separate multitasking view, and the Home Screen sits on the other half until the user picks something ^[11].

Critics say Apple is late to book-style folding phones. Cult of Mac reports that many pointed out Samsung has been releasing them for seven-plus years, and Samsung Mobile US replied to the launch with "Let us know when you're done reheating our leftovers" ^[8][7]. Apple opened the Duo segment by saying "others have created foldables that just feel like two phones awkwardly stuck together" ^[13]. Windows Central says that is a nod to the Surface Duo, which Microsoft launched in 2020 with two internal screens and no outer display, and killed two years later ^[9][10]. So the multitasking model Windows Central credits has been off the market roughly four years ^[21].

Apple framed the iPhone and the Duo as "personal hubs" for AI ^[25]. CNET reports that no Siri home display appeared at the event, and that the Duo can be tented to show a calendar or an alarm clock ^[15][16]. CNET's writer says the tented phone is not big enough to serve as a second TV screen and its speakers do not compare with room-filling home displays ^[16].

Teams tell themselves foldable support is a size class, handled once in a layout pass. The demos describe someone halving the window while a form is half filled in. Two failure modes are worth separating. A broken layout is visible in a screenshot and gets fixed in a sprint. Lost state on resize arrives weeks later as a support thread about a vanished draft, and the screens to look at first are the ones holding unsaved input.