When Apple released the very first iPhone, I bought one. Apple has released a new iPhone every year since then, and every year, I’ve bought one.
Some of these new iPhones provided dramatic jumps forward. The iPhone 4’s flat glass and stainless steel band felt stolen from the future. And the iPhone X, which did away with the home button and brought us Face ID, heralded a change in design language that persists to this day.
But most of the time, my new iPhones felt all too familiar. I still got the rush of placing a frantic early morning order. I still got the joy of unboxing an elegantly packaged product. In daily use, though, the new iPhone felt pretty much like the one that replaced it. Last year, this boredom, paired with Tim Cook’s open support for the Trump administration, led me to do what most of my friends thought unthinkable: I switched to a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7.
I loved carrying a folding phone! And I carried it for 28 days before returning it.
Why?
Mostly because it wasn’t an iPhone.
As it turns out, having a phone that works seamlessly with all my other Apple gear (my AirPods Pro, my MacBook Pro, my Mac Studio, my Apple Watch) makes a huge difference in my quality of life. Having a phone that routes all my photos to my Apple Photos library — more than 120,000 images spanning decades of family history — means a lot to me. And since a phone plays a critical role in how I document my days, having a phone that takes great photos (not just adequate ones) really matters.
So I’m very happy that, this year, two things have happened that have me really excited. First, Tim Cook is no longer CEO. And second, Apple is releasing a new and exciting iPhone in a form factor I already know I’m going to love.
For me, the decision to order an iPhone Duo is less about specs or cameras or the invisibility of the folding screen’s crease … and more about recapturing a feeling of delight that Apple products haven’t inspired for far too long.
I’ve Already Owned the Future
When I bought that Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 — my first non-Apple phone since 2007! — I took it on a week-long vacation in Hawaii. As part of that field test, I decided to see if the phone’s flexibility was adequate enough to replace not only my iPhone, but also my laptop and faithful Kindle. Apart from a travel-sized Bluetooth keyboard, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 was the only gadget I took on the trip.
Samsung’s folding phone got a lot right. Every time I unfolded it, it was like witnessing a small miracle. On the plane, I could fold it into a personal cinema with the movie in the top panel and controls on the lower one. Reading an ebook felt like reading a tiny hardback novel. With the screen opened flat, I could navigate the Big Island with large, vivid, highly detailed maps that were easy on my 60-year-old eyes. Photographs proved easier to edit, and those I’d shot earlier, on my iPhone, looked incredible. (More on this later!) And every single time I took it out, total strangers spotted it, asked questions about it, and wanted to hold it, bringing back memories of how I felt when I carried around that very first iPhone.
At the same time … I quickly learned the Z Fold 7 wasn’t perfect.
Samsung deserves accolades for being the first major brand to put a commercially available foldable smartphone on the market (in 2019!). That said: because the unfolded aspect ratio was square and videos tend to be rectangular, movies felt dwarfed by the big, black letterbox bars at the top and bottom of the screen. While the central crease down the middle of the device was less noticeable from some angles, it was always visible. For a phone that cost more than $2,000, the Z Fold 7 always felt plasticky, cheap … and fragile. And if you think Siri is a lackluster virtual assistant … try chatting up Bixby.
In the name of novelty, I forgave all these flaws. I found Android app equivalents for all but two of my most beloved iOS apps. I even made peace with being that “green bubble friend” all the iPhone users gossip about. But ultimately, three issues became deal-breakers for me.
Why I Sent the Future Back
For all the Z Fold 7’s foldable magic, the cameras sucked. The camera app felt fiddly, with hidden controls for a bewildering range of lenses, modes, and megapixel settings. Hoping to learn some shortcuts, I watched a lot of YouTube videos … and still spent way too much time at Volcanoes National Park tweaking settings and reshooting pics. Low-light images were too hazy and soft. And while friends with iPhones took vibrant, vivid images of beaches and beverages, my Z Fold 7 photos of everything from surfers to sunsets looked grainy and waxy.
Google Photos doesn’t play well with Apple Photos. I tried to go all in on Android and move my massive Apple Photos library into Google Photos. The transfer took weeks, but even before the slow import completed, I discovered a deal killer: as my pics made their way from Apple Photos to Google Photos, they lost all their metadata, including the original date, time, and GPS information. And because Google Photos doesn’t play well with others, getting new photos off the phone and into my existing Apple Photos library was a painful manual process.
Samsung’s innovations didn’t extend to software. Having a phone that folded out into a tablet delighted me … but apart from a few of Samsung’s own apps, very little software took advantage of the bigger screen. While the unfolded phone looked like a tablet, it behaved like a phone with a very large screen. Samsung had been producing folding phones for seven years, but even after all that time, very few Android apps tapped into the hardware’s full potential.
How My Situation’s Changed
After sending my Z Fold 7 back, I ordered the iPhone 17 Pro. On one hand, it dependably integrates with all my gadgets and my Apple Photos library. On the other: I’ve never felt like my $2,000 investment bought me much in the way of a better experience than my iPhone 16 delivered.
This year, online chatter drew my attention to several Chinese brands offering camera improvements beyond those offered by iPhones. While I still use my iPhone for casual snapshots and scanning documents, on vacation or at family gatherings, I now keep a Xiaomi 17 Ultra cameraphone on a loop around my wrist. The Xiaomi is my “real camera,” with lenses and a photo pipeline by Leica that produces images that look less digital and more natural. Its low-light and zoom capabilities vastly outperform the iPhone. Meanwhile, the Xiaomi app on my Mac lets me pull photos into Apple Photos with just two clicks.
My Kindle Scribe is my large but lightweight “on the couch” ebook reader; my Kindle Colorsoft is my bedside and travel solution. When my eyes feel too tired to read RSS feeds and Reddit on my phone, I have an old iPad Pro to tap around on while watching t.v. My MacBook Pro is my desktop machine by day and my constant travel companion when we’re on the road, supporting everything from journaling to web site updates to photo editing.
This setup serves me pretty well … but it also has me excited about the potential of the iPhone Duo.
Why the Duo Feels Like the Right Phone, Right Now
The Duo’s Pop-Tart-sized, flip-open hardware will provide a welcome break from the iPhone Pro’s slabby form factor. Its internals are very much like the iPhone 18 Pro’s with the exception of the weaker camera array. But with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra in my other pocket, the Duo’s camera doesn’t have to be good … just good enough.
I now know from first-hand experience how important it is to have a phone that makes the most of prior investments in Apple’s ecosystem (the AirPods Pro, my Apple Photos library, CarPlay, my Apple Watch, my password manager, my smart home controls, my messaging integrations, my health history).
I know from using the iOS 27 betas that Siri AI is a vast improvement on the old Siri — and I’m already reaping the benefits of a Siri assistant that knows all about my email, my calendar, my messages, my point-to-point navigation, and even the contents of my photo library. An example: I snap photos of my handwritten journal pages so ChatGPT can OCR them and add them to my Obsidian journal. Because Siri AI “reads” these, my phone can now answer questions like, “What was the barbecue joint we went to in Pontotoc, Mississippi, with Hudson and Susan about a month ago?”
Cynics will say I’ve sold out to the comforts of Apple’s “sheep pen.” And, to some extent, that’s true; it is no accident that Apple’s hardware and services work best with other Apple products. That said: freedom doesn’t feel like freedom when your watch stops working, your earbuds don’t maintain a connection, and your precious photos are lost in space. And having sampled the Android environment (on Samsung, Xiaomi, and Boox devices), I know that Android’s “openness” has a kind of lock-in of its own … and a software ecosystem with far less elegance, simplicity, and polish than iOS.
I live where I live … and right now, I’ve made an informed decision to live in Apple’s walled garden. So the Duo will give me the form factor I love … without sacrificing compatibility with my other Apple kit.
Because my Xiaomi 17 Ultra is now my go-to camera, I no longer feel compelled to have the Duo be the “one device that does it all.” That said: I do think the Duo’s unfolded screen has some potential to replace my Kindle, my couch-time iPad, and maybe even my MacBook Pro (only when traveling, and when paired with the lightweight foldable keyboard I bought to go with my Z Fold 7).
What the Duo Must Deliver
Owning the Fold didn’t quell my desire for an iPhone; it proved I wanted one.
I’m in a good position, then, to buy the Duo. I have a fine phone; replacing it isn’t urgent. I’m not buying an iPhone just because it’s September … or because of a carrier discount … or because the processor is faster (though, if promotional materials are accurate, it is) … or because the camera is incrementally better. I’m buying it because, for the first time in years, Apple’s put out a device that seems highly likely to provoke the kind of surprise and delight I always derived from owning and using Apple’s products.
Apple gives me fourteen days from delivery to decide if any new iPhone — including the Duo — is right for me. That’s enough time to explore whether or not the crease is distracting, whether or not the hardware feels elegant, and whether or not third-party apps are taking full advantage of the foldable form factor. I want to use it without a case; I want to know if I can trust it in real-world conditions.
Will battery life be sufficient? Will I reach for it instead of an iPad? Instead of a Kindle?
These are all good questions. The most important question of all, though, is simply this: will the Duo make owning an iPhone feel magical again?
