iPhone Duo: Apple explains why it has waited ten years for its foldable

Just hours before the unveiling of iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro, Apple CEO John Ternus and Greg “Joz” Joswiak (Apple’s Senior Vice President of Marketing) spoke in a lengthy interview, recounting the choices behind the company’s first foldable and the reason for nearly a decade-long wait compared to the industry’s early players.

From the screen crease issue to the reinterpretation of iOS for two displays, up to the price, the two executives offered a broad overview of the thinking behind the new releases.

iPhone Duo Apple: why the company waited nearly ten years

According to what Ternus said, the decision to enter the foldables market arrived only when a product idea had reached the standard of quality and design that the company sets as its goal, not before.

Joswiak added that the basic concept of a foldable is simple, a large screen that folds back into the pocket, but the solutions seen on the market up to that moment had not convinced them, in line with an approach that the company claims it has never followed when launching products mid-cycle.

The turning point, according to Ternus, was rethinking from scratch the aspect ratio of the device: instead of joining two traditional screens into a square and bulky format, Apple chose proportions designed specifically for everyday use, working in parallel on hardware, software and design.

No crease: the secret of the iPhone Duo display

The most discussed theme of foldables remains the same: the infamous central crease of the screen. To solve it, Apple designed a hinge intended to keep the screen completely flat. In addition, it inserted the OLED panel between two layers of flexible glass to make it tougher and smoother.

On top of all this, a special nano-texture layer was applied, already seen on iPad and MacBook Pro, but developed here with a new approach: unlike a traditional iPhone, the inner display surface is not glass but a polymer material, precisely to guarantee the flexibility needed for the fold.

Ternus said that the first working model with this solution was immediately recognized as the right one, to the point that it pushed the company to lock down its secrecy in a particularly tight way.

iOS reimagined for two screens, between Apple Pencil and developers’ apps

On the software side, Ternus explained that one of the boldest choices concerns moving the main controls of iOS to the right side of the interface: a solution born from the need to reclaim vertical space when the device takes on the elongated passport-like form when closed, and which has proven intuitive because the controls remain under the right thumb both when the phone is closed and open.

The coherence between the proportions of the external and internal screens, according to Ternus, was designed specifically to allow developers to scale content naturally between the two screens.

On this front, Apple claims an advantage tied to its long-standing iPad experience: many iPad apps, unlike Android tablet apps which, according to Joswiak, remain simply “bigger phones”, were already designed for a larger panel, making it easier for developers to adapt them to the iPhone Duo.

Among the examples cited in the interview is the Netflix app, cited as one of the most successful results of this work. Ternus added that the fact that the iPhone Duo arrives on the market only in October, later than the other announced models, has given developers more time to build experiences designed for the dual screen instead of simply enlarging an interface.

For the first time, moreover, an iPhone officially supports Apple Pencil. According to Ternus this is not about breaking a rule but about seizing an opportunity at the right moment: the iPhone Duo works perfectly even without a stylus, but the larger inner screen allows you to fully leverage its potential for those who want it.

A steep price

Asked about the price of the iPhone Duo, $1,999 on the U.S. market (in Europe it costs €2,369), Joswiak replied that it is a device particularly complex from an engineering standpoint and that, in his view, it still offers a good balance between features and price.

The two executives also confirmed, without going into details, that this year there was no new base iPhone 18 introduced. From the rumors so far, we know that the standard model and the alleged iPhone 18e will be launched in spring 2027.

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