Apple iPhone Duo

At Rs. 724,999, the Apple iPhone Duo is the most expensive of the big book-style foldables in Pakistan. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 costs Rs. 614,999 and the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold Rs. 699,999, and both offer a slightly larger 8.0-inch inner screen and three rear cameras against the Duo's two.

What the extra money buys is the iPhone experience in a foldable shape:

• Strengths: an excellent matte inner display, the efficient A20 Pro chip, battery life that easily lasts a day, IP68 dust and water resistance, and very polished software for opening, closing and running two apps side by side.
• Weaknesses: it is thick and heavy at 254 g, there is no Face ID and no telephoto camera, the inner selfie camera is poor, and many third-party apps did not use the big screen properly at launch.

Two local points matter. The phone is eSIM only (dual eSIM, no physical SIM tray), so check that your network can issue an eSIM before buying, and its PTA status was not confirmed at the time of writing. A cracked folding screen is also a far bigger repair bill than on a normal iPhone.

Verdict: worth it for an iPhone user who wants an iPad mini-sized screen in their pocket for reading, documents and multitasking, and who can afford a first-generation product. If you mainly want the best iPhone camera, a lighter phone, or the most features for the money, an iPhone Pro model or one of the two Android foldables is the better buy.

The inner screen is the highlight of the iPhone Duo. It is a 7.6-inch LTPO OLED at 1878 x 2670 pixels (about 430 ppi) with a 120Hz refresh rate and up to 3,000 nits peak brightness, matching the outer screen.

Its Nano Texture matte finish is what sets it apart:

• It almost completely hides the fold crease and fingerprints.
• It is strongly anti-reflective, so it stays readable under lights and outdoors where glossy phones turn into mirrors.
• The trade-off is slightly lower contrast and a touch less sharpness on small text, because the matte layer diffuses light a little. Most people will not find this a problem.

For video, the gain depends on the content. Standard 16:9 videos get almost 50% more viewing area than on an iPhone Pro Max, but wide cinema-style films gain nothing, because the extra space becomes black bars. Holding it open in portrait like an iPad mini works well for reading.

The outer screen shares the same unusual shape. Apps that are not yet updated for the Duo show a black control bar down the right side, which cuts into the viewing area, so the closed screen can feel less polished than a normal iPhone.

The iPhone Duo uses the Apple A20 Pro (2 nm), the same chip as Apple's Pro models, with 12GB RAM on every storage version. In daily use it feels as fast as a current iPhone Pro: apps open instantly, and switching between the closed and open screens picks up exactly where you left off, even mid-scroll.

The limits show under long heavy loads:

• The cooling system is smaller than in the Pro models, and when the phone is closed, heat gets trapped between the two screens.
• In a 20-minute stress test, performance starts slightly below the iPhone 18 Pro Max and falls faster as the test goes on, although it still beats Samsung's equivalent foldable.
• Gaming suffers more from software than from power: few games were optimized for the Duo's screen shape at launch.

There are also some first-generation bugs, such as brief freezes and odd behaviour if you stop halfway while opening or closing the phone. For normal use, though, performance is not a reason to avoid it.

The camera is the iPhone Duo's biggest compromise compared with an iPhone Pro. It has a 48 MP main and a 48 MP ultrawide camera, but no telephoto.

• Daylight: photos from the main camera are close to the Pro models in detail and skin tones. The main difference is less natural background blur.
• Low light: the smaller main sensor gets noisy sooner than the Pro cameras, though results are still clearly better than the Galaxy Z Fold 8.
• Zoom and portraits: shots beyond about 4x are much worse than on a Pro, and video tops out at six times digital zoom. For portraits you must either stand close with the main camera, which distorts faces, or step back and zoom digitally, which loses quality.
• Ultrawide: useful, but not sharp from corner to corner.
• Video: footage looks good, especially outdoors. Reports differ on Pro video tools such as ProRes and Log, so do not count on them if you shoot professionally.

Selfies need care. The 12 MP outer selfie camera is clearly behind the Pro's, and the under-display camera on the inner screen is poor, best kept for FaceTime calls. The smart workaround is to flip the phone, slide the rear-preview control, and take selfies with the main or ultrawide cameras, which gives the best selfies of any iPhone. The rear screen can also show your subject the framing, and Kid Cue plays colourful animations to catch a child's attention.

The iPhone Duo has a battery of about 4,900 milliamp-hours, split across the two halves. Battery life is one of its strengths:

• With a typical mix of about 75% closed and 25% open use, it lasts a full day with heavy, high-brightness use and often ends the day with 30% or more left.
• Using the big screen more drains it a little faster, but not by much.
• It lasts longer than the iPhone 18 Pro and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 in mixed use, but well short of the iPhone 18 Pro Max.

Charging is the weak point. Apple quotes 50% in 20 minutes with a fast USB-C charger, but a real 20-minute charge reached only 42%, behind other iPhones and Samsung's foldable. That speed also needs one of Apple's newer chargers. 25W MagSafe/Qi2 wireless charging is supported, quoted at 50% in 30 minutes.

The iPhone Duo runs iOS 27 (version 27.1 out of the box) with a layout designed for the fold. When closed, the dock, search and status icons move to the right edge so your right thumb can reach them. When opened, Apple's own apps expand into two-column, iPad-style layouts.

Useful features:

• Two apps side by side, which no other iPhone can do. You can pair two apps so they always open together, and copy between them easily. The split is fixed at 50/50, there is no third window, and portrait split screen is limited.
• Half-open mode: the keyboard splits around the fold, and StandBy turns on in a tent position even without a charger, with a glowing alarm clock.
• Safari works especially well, with a desktop-style tab layout.
• Apple Pencil support is promised by Apple later this year.

Limitations:

• App support: at launch, many big apps, including Spotify, Google Maps, Google Docs, Discord and X, showed as small phone apps with black bars, or were simply stretched. Apple says they will fill the screen once developers update them for iOS 27.1, and apps such as Instagram and Netflix already have.
• No Face ID: unlocking uses Touch ID in the side button, with a deliberate short hold before it unlocks so you can read the lock screen first. It works with banking apps, but it feels slower than Face ID and is awkward in portrait. You can also unlock with an Apple Watch.
• Right-hand bias: notifications pull down from the top-left corner and the volume buttons sit on the top edge.

Apple does not list a fixed number of years of iOS updates on the spec page. Its iPhones usually get long support, but that is a track record rather than a written promise.