Summary

Gruber reviews Apple's first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo, and finds it a device of profound, irreconcilable contradictions. The outer display is, in his words, the worst iPhone Apple has ever made — cramped, heavy, and awkward. But the inner display delivers the best tablet experience he's ever used, surpassing even the iPad. The absence of Face ID is his personal dealbreaker, turning every unlock into a frustrating Touch ID ritual unless you wear an Apple Watch constantly. He concludes the Duo is a brilliantly engineered but fundamentally compromised first-generation product — an extraordinary prototype, not a finished device worth buying.

Key Insight

The iPhone Duo is two devices in one — the best tablet Apple has ever made folded inside the worst iPhone Apple has ever made — and the missing Face ID alone makes it a product Gruber believes shipped before it was ready.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 9

  The outer device is, by far, the worst iPhone Apple has ever made. It's a miserable fat little thing. The inner device is a splendid, joyful, beautiful tablet, with a UI that out-iPads the iPad.

• 7

  The answer is: They didn't.

• 5

  The Duo isn't really a phone. It's a tablet in disguise.

• 3

  You simply cannot have your cake and eat it too.

• 8

  Ironically, because iPhone Duo is not called an 'iPad', it gets to be what the iPad should've been all along.

• 7

  Every time you pick up the Duo to use it you face The Decision. Open it? Or be lazy and suffer with the outside display? Every time.

• 6

  I don't think Apple should have released the Duo until they figured this out.

• 7

  It's been a lot of fun trying the Duo out for a week, but it feels like I've gotten to use an extraordinarily polished prototype — not a finished product that I'd want to buy and carry.

Tone

critical, opinionated