Apple enters foldable era with iPhone Duo

Apple has introduced its first foldable smartphone, iPhone Duo, marking a major addition in its hardware line-up. For the technology giant and its global user base, the launch represents an entry into foldable hardware, providing a large display canvas in a pocketable format.

Alongside the foldable flagship, Apple also debuted its conventional top-tier handsets, the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, featuring variable aperture camera optics, enhanced thermal cooling, and 2-nanometer silicon processing.

The introduction of the iPhone Duo positions Apple within the expanding foldable device market, where competing manufacturers like Samsung, Google, and Huawei, have been refining flexible screen mechanics and hinge durability.

By combining structural engineering with tailored software features, Apple seeks to redefine multitasking, media consumption, and mobile productivity on flexible displays.

Engineering, displays, and design

Built around an engineered frame, iPhone Duo features a grade 5 titanium chassis, a mirror-polished finish, and a 3D-printed hinge cover with a micro-blasted surface. The device incorporates a Ceramic Shield back panel and a Ceramic Shield 2 front screen offering three times greater scratch resistance than previous generations, alongside an IP68 rating, indicating complete dust protection and water resistance up to six metres for 30 minutes, for environmental durability. Its folding hinge contains over 100 individual components engineered to support the display centre and relieve bend stress during operation.

Unfolded, the iPhone Duo reveals a 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR inner display equipped with a matte nano-texture coating that reduces reflections and softens crease visibility. Closed, a 5.4-inch outer display provides 90% of the screen area of an iPhone 18 Pro. Both panels support ProMotion technology, Always On functionality, and a peak outdoor brightness of 3000 nits. Apple confirmed that support for the Apple Pencil stylus via USB-C will arrive on the device later in the year.

Discussing the significance of the new foldable model, John Ternus, Apple’s CEO, said, “iPhone Duo is the most transformational change to iPhone since the original. With an entirely new design and intuitive experiences, it shows what’s possible when hardware and software are engineered together and redefines what it means to use a foldable phone.”

Camera innovations and reimagined software

For photography, iPhone Duo incorporates a 48MP Fusion Main camera with an optical 2x Telephoto lens, a 48MP Fusion Ultra Wide camera, a Center Stage front camera, and an under-display FaceTime camera. The folding form factor enables novel imaging workflows, including Smart Take, which utilises on-device AI to analyse scenes in real time and automatically trigger the shutter when subjects pose. Additional integrations include Duo Preview for outer-screen framing, Kid Cue for displaying animations to attract children, and Duo FaceTime for shared video calls.

The handset operates on iOS 27, adapting Lock Screen controls and the Dock to the display side to maximise vertical viewing space. Split View allows users to run two applications side by side on an iPhone for the first time. The device is powered by the A20 Pro chip, fabricated on a 2-nanometer process technology, paired with a custom vapour chamber, a sealed liquid-cooling structure that dissipates heat, and a dual-battery layout providing up to 31 hours of video playback on the inner screen, 44 hours on the outer screen, or 24 hours under equal display usage.

Highlighting the productivity capabilities of the foldable format, Ternus noted, “With the largest display ever on iPhone that still fits easily in your pocket, combined with the power of A20 Pro, iPhone Duo helps you stay more immersed and productive wherever you go, whether you're enjoying content, multitasking across apps, or gaming.”

iPhone 18 Pro series

Concurrently, Apple announced the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, reinforcing its traditional flagship series. The Pro models introduce a 48MP Fusion Main camera equipped with a variable aperture system featuring six laser-cut blades. This optical mechanism allows the lens to adjust physical light entry and depth of field, the distance range in an image that appears sharp, automatically or manually across four distinct settings.

To support content authenticity, Apple introduced Apple Reference Image, an opt-in tool that signs sensor pixels at capture to create unalterable reference files. The devices also support the SynthID standard to help identify AI-generated or modified imagery.

Commenting on the advancements in the Pro line-up, Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said, “With iPhone 18 Pro, we have made advancements to the areas our users care about most - camera, performance, battery, and intelligence. And we didn’t just make incremental improvements in these areas - we took huge leaps forward to create the best Pro iPhone we have ever made.”

Under the hood, both Pro handsets contain the A20 Pro silicon chip, featuring a 6-core CPU, a 7-core GPU, and a Dual 16-core Neural Engine housing 32 total cores for machine learning workloads. An upgraded thermal system uses a vapour chamber with three times the surface area of the iPhone 17 Pro, delivering up to 40% higher sustained performance. Battery efficiency has also increased, with eSIM-only models reaching up to 36 hours of video playback on the iPhone 18 Pro and up to 45 hours on the iPhone 18 Pro Max.

Pricing and availability

Across both product lines, Apple is deepening its integration of Siri AI and Apple Intelligence, enabling personal context processing, onscreen awareness, and secure cloud operations via Private Cloud Compute. Hardware connectivity is driven by the N1 wireless networking chip - supporting Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread - alongside the C2 cellular modem. Furthermore, Apple is expanding its eSIM-only model distribution - replacing physical SIM cards with digital subscriber profiles - across international markets.

Pricing for the iPhone 18 Pro starts at Rs 164900 while the iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at Rs 179900. Pre-orders for the Pro models open on Saturday, September 12, with retail availability beginning Friday, September 18. The iPhone Duo is priced from Rs 299900 across storage capacities of 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. Pre-orders for the iPhone Duo begin on Friday, October 16, followed by store availability on Friday, October 23.