Apple unveiled its first foldable iPhone on Wednesday, and it is called the iPhone Duo, not the iPhone Ultra most coverage had assumed. The phone starts at $1,999 for 256GB, with pre-orders opening October 16 and retail availability on October 23, a few weeks behind the iPhone 18 Pro models announced at the same event.
Two screens, one hinge
The Duo uses a book-style design with a 7.6-inch inner display and a 5.4-inch outer display, both with a custom nano-texture finish Apple says reduces glare and minimizes crease visibility. The FaceTime camera hides under the inner display, and biometrics come from a Touch ID sensor built into the side button rather than Face ID. The frame is grade 5 titanium, with IP68 water and dust resistance, in star white and night sky colors.
Apple’s chief hardware officer Johny Srouji said AI played a direct role in production, not just design.
“During manufacturing, we use AI algorithms to precisely match each individual hinge with its best-fit housing to ensure perfect alignment, and a confocal laser progressively scans the topology of every single unit and 3D prints up to 25 micro layers of a custom photopolymer to eliminate residual waviness.”
– Johny Srouji, Apple chief hardware officer
The hinge has been the weak point of every foldable shipped so far, which is why Apple made it the centerpiece of its pitch. Srouji also described a multilayer lamination strategy for durability and said the phone works in any orientation, including partially folded, with iOS reacting to the angle.
The price fight behind $1,999
The $1,999 sticker is notable because Bloomberg had reported Apple was weighing a $2,199 start, up from an initial $1,999 target, after memory and component costs spiked across the industry. Qualcomm raised its own chip prices in September citing “unprecedented increases in memory pricing,” and RAM costs have pushed up everything from laptops to consoles. Apple appears to have absorbed some of the increase to keep the phone competitive with Samsung’s foldables, which have held the category almost alone among mainstream buyers for years. Analysts at IDC have predicted Apple could sell more than 10 million foldable units in year one.
Battery is split across both halves: 31 hours of video playback on the inner display, 44 hours on the outer. The phone runs the same A20 Pro chip as the new iPhone 18 Pro, with a display engine that drives both screens simultaneously and Apple’s C2 cellular modem.
iPhone 18 Pro raises prices $100
The Pro phones themselves are iterative on the outside and more aggressive on the inside. The headline change is a 48MP camera with a mechanical variable aperture made of six blades, plus new pro controls for shutter speed, aperture and histograms. A redesigned vapor chamber handles cooling, and video playback is rated at 36 hours on the Pro and 45 on the Pro Max. A new burgundy color replaces last year’s orange.
Pricing went up: $1,199 for the iPhone 18 Pro and $1,299 for the Pro Max, $100 more than last year. Pre-orders open Saturday, September 12, with availability on September 18. The standard iPhone 18, 18e and iPhone Air 2 are pushed to spring 2027 as Apple splits its launch calendar across two seasons, a revenue-smoothing strategy Bloomberg first reported last year.
| Model | Price | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone Duo (256GB) | $1,999 | October 23 |
| iPhone 18 Pro | $1,199 | September 18 |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max | $1,299 | September 18 |
A new CEO’s first iPhone event
The event was John Ternus’s first as CEO after taking over from Tim Cook on September 1. Alongside the phones, Apple showed the Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4 with health features that listen to conversations and recap the day, an AirPods 5 refresh, and a new feature meant to prove iPhone photos were not AI-generated. The always-listening watch drew immediate coverage of its own, with critics asking where the line sits between ambient computing and ambient surveillance.
The Duo also carries Apple Pencil support, coming later this year, a rethought Split View that lets users pin video to the top half while working below, and a redesigned Standby mode. Supply could be tight early: analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has said Apple plans around 8 million units through the end of the year, and Chinese availability may lag because the eSIM-only design faces slower adoption there, as happened with the iPhone Air.
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