This iPhone Duo review starts with the only question that matters. Apple finally folded, literally, and the result went on sale in India on October 23 at Rs 2,99,900, per Gizbot’s roundup of the launch. Should you buy it? If you are deep in Apple’s world, can spend Rs 3 lakh without flinching, and want a tablet that fits in your pocket, yes. For everyone else, no. The hinge is superb. The cameras compromise. And even if you say yes today, Gizbot reports fresh orders now show delivery on January 23, 2027. You are not buying a phone. You are joining a queue for one.
iPhone Duo review: great hinge, weak zoom, wild price
Start with the critics: the first wave of reviews is unusually aligned. Engadget scored the Duo 8.8/10 and rated its hinge among the best it has used on any foldable, one that holds the phone partly open without feeling loose. The Times of India gave it 4.5/5, saying the novelty wears off fast, meant as praise. TechRadar called the design “Apple at its best”, CNET liked that it opens fully flat, and Tom’s Guide called it the foldable to beat, while finding it heavier and thicker than expected.
Then the dissent. The Wall Street Journal called the Duo too much iPhone and too little iPad, unconvinced a pocket tablet is worth 800 dollars more than an iPhone 18 Pro. John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball, described a week with the Duo as using an extraordinarily polished prototype, not a finished product he would want to buy and carry. MKBHD put it bluntly: if you are a regular person who mostly texts, scrolls and browses, it is probably a no.
The screen you unfold is the whole point
Folded, it is a passport-shaped phone with a 5.4-inch outer display; open it and you get a 7.6-inch inner OLED with a nano-texture matte finish that cuts reflections and hides the crease, per phoneprice360. Both screens run 120Hz ProMotion at up to 3,000 nits, and comparos notes the crease is invisible head-on, though some reviewers still caught a faint line under certain light.
The software is where the screen earns its keep. iOS 27 brings Split View for two apps at a time, saved app pairs, and two windows of the same app, per phoneprice360. Slack, Instagram, Netflix and ChatGPT are already optimised for the bigger canvas, the Wall Street Journal reports, and Google says its big apps will support the Duo at launch. But Google Photos has no timeline, un-updated third-party apps leave wasted space on the big screen, and Apple Pencil support only arrives later in 2026, per phoneprice360. Buy the Duo for what Apple’s own apps do today, not for what others might do by summer.
The camera is where Apple blinked
Two 48MP sensors, main and ultrawide, and no telephoto lens. At this price, that stings. The 2x zoom is a crop of the main sensor, but mytechhub’s review notes the zoom falls apart between 8x and 10x, and Engadget says photos trail the iPhone 18 Pro in low light. The hidden under-display selfie camera inside fares worse: MKBHD called it bad, so use the outer 12MP Center Stage camera for selfies and video calls.
Duo Preview, Smart Take, Duo FaceTime and rear-camera selfies put the second screen to real work, per the Times of India review. But clever is not the same as complete, and the contrast with Android foldables is brutal: our Vivo X Fold 6 review covers a 200MP Zeiss main camera with a 3x periscope telephoto at Rs 2,19,999, Rs 80,000 less than the Duo’s starting price. If photography decides your purchase, this is not your phone.
Rs 2,99,900, and you still wait till January
The price ladder, per Gizbot and phoneprice360: Rs 2,99,900 for 256GB, Rs 3,24,900 for 512GB, Rs 3,74,900 for 1TB, and Rs 4,49,900 for 2TB. In the US it starts at 1,999 dollars, roughly Rs 1.9 lakh; Gizbot notes duties and 18 percent GST explain part of the gap, but Indian buyers still pay over Rs 1 lakh more.
Pre-orders opened on October 16 and sold out within an hour, per Gizbot, and fresh orders now show delivery on January 23, 2027. Now the alternatives. The iPhone 18 Pro starts at Rs 1,64,900, per Gizbot, and gives you a telephoto lens for Rs 1.35 lakh less. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 launched in India at Rs 1,79,999, per Gizbot, with a similar 7.6-inch inner screen, and reviewers rate the two on par for photos, yet the Duo costs about Rs 1.2 lakh more. And if your budget is closer to a lakh, the base iPhone 17 costs Rs 99,900 after Apple’s September hike, as our iPhone 17 review covered, while the iPhone Air now lists near Rs 97,900, as our iPhone Air review noted. The Duo costs nearly three of those.
The daily trade-offs nobody puts in the headline
Weight first: 254 grams, the heaviest iPhone ever, per phoneprice360 and comparos. The Economic Times, after five days with it, praised the Grade 5 titanium frame and Ceramic Shield 2 protection. Then the small cuts. Touch ID lives in the power button because there is no Face ID, which the Wall Street Journal says it missed, while CNET hopes Apple adds it next time. There is no action button either, which the Journal’s reviewer also missed. The Duo is eSIM-only in India, per phoneprice360, so two-physical-SIM users should stop here.
Battery is the one genuine surprise. The dual-battery design delivers up to 44 hours of video on the outer screen and 31 hours on the inner screen, per phoneprice360. The Economic Times got up to two days with light use and about a day and a half with heavy use, while the Journal still had 10 to 20 percent left at 11:30 pm after a day of nonstop testing, though the 18 Pro Max claims 30 hours of typical use against the Duo’s 24. The A20 Pro chip, with a vapour chamber, matches the iPhone 18 Pro for speed, per mytechhub, though The Verge reported some heat and lag during long camera sessions. CNET found typing in landscape a stretch. None of these kills the Duo. Together, they describe a first generation.
So, who actually buys this?
Buy the Duo if you live inside Apple’s ecosystem, multitask for a living, and want the largest iPhone screen ever made. Buy it if Rs 2,99,900 is a rounding error in your budget and you collect first-generation Apple hardware. Skip it if you photograph with zoom, need a physical SIM, treat Face ID as muscle memory, or want a finished product rather than a promising one.
Here is the trade-off that matters most. Ordering today still means waiting till January, so waiting costs you nothing, and generation two will almost certainly add the telephoto lens, Face ID and the app support this one is missing. Meanwhile the Duo’s real gift to everyone else is pressure: once Apple legitimises foldables, Samsung and Vivo have to fight harder on price. This iPhone Duo review lands in one place. Admire it. Do not order it. Not yet.