// 9TO5GOOGLE — MOBILE & WEB
The iPhone Duo’s rocky launch is a reminder of how far Android foldables have come
Good morning. Today I’m finding open source alternatives to all of my apps, poring through Pitchfork’s list of the 100 best indie rock albums to find ones I haven’t listened to, and preparing my body for November 19th by pre-loading GTA VI (and replaying GTA IV in the meantime).
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On Monday, I unboxed the iPhone Duo I pre-ordered back in October and experienced a disarming sense of déjà vu. It’s beautiful hardware married to a messy, often painful software onboarding experience atypical of Apple’s usual polish. It reminds me of the Galaxy Fold’s early years.
I was most looking forward to the combination of a foldable form factor and Apple’s superior app ecosystem, but even the apps that have been updated to support the new aspect ratio, on both the front and back, feel ungainly and buggy. In moving UI elements from the bottom to the right, even with the display open, the Duo forces a rebuilding of essential muscle memory that’s prevailed across mobile platforms, including Android foldables, for 20 years.
The front display, in particular, is a massive test of one’s patience: apps, even ones ostensibly optimized for its stout dimensions, often feel unusable, with UI elements that would be prominent on the iPhone 18 Pro hidden behind overflow menus on the Duo. It’s exasperating and, frankly, boggling.
But what’s interesting is the enthusiasm with which developers are approaching the new form factor. Reddit threads reveal dozens of Duo-optimized app recommendations that feel novel and, if not polished, then propulsive. There’s a fascinating delta between waiting for my bank, or Starbucks, or Kobo, to get its act together to support the Duo and seeking out net-new opportunities and experiences.
I spent most of the summer using the Galaxy Z Fold 8, and I didn’t expect going back to it to feel so stately and predictable: the showcase of a platform with fewer highs but none of the Duo’s current lows.
I’m not sure if I’m going to keep the Duo and wait out its colicky infancy. But I do know that until now I hadn’t given Samsung enough credit for the amount of work it did to make foldable software feel ordinary, and that’s the highest compliment I can pay.
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