The Weekly Spark - 12th September 2026
Apple has finally made a folding iPhone and at first glance, the new iPhone Duo looks like it could replace two devices: your standard iPhone and your iPad mini. You carry one device, unfold it when you need more room and leave the small tablet at home.
Except I’m not yet convinced that it is there. In fact, after the most recent Apple event where they launched other products as well as the iPhone Duo, I have ordered the regular iPhone 18 Pro rather than the Pro Max or the Duo, and I think I may have made the more sensible choice.
The Duo is undoubtedly exciting. The bigger question is whether it gives us enough of an iPad experience to make the iPad Mini unnecessary.
An iPad-sized screen in your pocket
The iPhone Duo has a 5.4-inch outer display, but open it and you get a 7.6-inch folding OLED screen. That is getting close to the iPad Mini’s 8.3-inch display, except the Duo folds down into something you can put in your pocket.
Both of its screens support ProMotion at up to 120Hz and reach 3,000 nits outdoors. When unfolded, the phone is just 5.2mm thick. On paper, its display technology looks considerably more advanced than that of the current iPad Mini, which still uses a 60Hz, 500-nit LCD panel.
Its shape is unusual, though. When closed, the Duo is only 11.8cm tall but 8.4cm wide. It is more like carrying a rather thick passport than a conventional phone. At 11.3mm thick when folded and 254g, it is also 43g heavier than the standard iPhone 18 Pro.
That may be perfectly manageable, but this is not a normal iPhone that happens to open. You will notice it in your hand and your pocket.
The iPhone Duo - opened and closed
More than a stretched iPhone
To Apple’s credit, it has done more than simply stretch iOS across a larger screen. The Duo can run two apps side by side and lets you drag content between them. You could keep Safari open beside Notes, move a photograph into an email or watch a video while working in another app.
Open it vertically and you get a wider keyboard, which should make writing emails and editing documents considerably more comfortable than on a normal phone. The hinge can also hold the Duo at different angles, allowing it to stand by itself for a FaceTime call, a workout video or a bit of hands-free viewing.
It even supports the Apple Pencil, making this the first iPhone with the potential to work as a proper digital notebook. However, Pencil support will not be available at launch; Apple says it is coming later this year. It will also work only with the cheaper Apple Pencil (USB-C), not the Pencil Pro. That means no pressure sensitivity, squeeze control, double-tap gesture or wireless charging. Apple has not announced a way to attach or store the Pencil on the Duo either, so you will presumably be carrying it separately. It is a useful addition, but it is not yet the complete pocket-notebook experience.
It runs iOS, not iPadOS
This may be the most important distinction. The Duo runs iOS 27 rather than iPadOS.
Apple has shown Split View with two apps, but it has not announced Stage Manager, a desktop-style extended display or anything resembling the iPad’s more flexible windowing system. The USB-C port supports USB 3 data transfers at up to 10Gb/s and DisplayPort output, but Apple lists conventional video mirroring rather than an extended desktop interface.
You can connect a Bluetooth keyboard, of course. But by the time you have packed that and an Apple Pencil, the great “one device” argument has started to wobble.
Nor will the Duo automatically inherit every iPad app merely because it unfolds. Final Cut Pro for iPad, Logic Pro for iPad and Procreate remain part of the iPad ecosystem. The Duo gives you more space for iPhone apps; it does not give you the full iPad software experience.
Use apps side-by-side
The camera compromise matters
Both the Duo and the iPhone 18 Pro use Apple’s new A20 Pro chip, so the foldable is hardly short of power. It has vapour cooling, a seven-core GPU and the same new Siri AI features. Performance should not be the problem.
The standard iPhone 18 Pro I have ordered starts at £1,199 and has a 6.3-inch display. At 211g, it is easier to hold and far more conventional to carry. Apple rates it for up to 34 hours of video playback. The Duo manages 44 hours when using its outer screen, but that drops to 31 hours when using the large display you have paid all that money to unfold.
The bigger difference is the camera system.
The Duo has capable 48-megapixel main and ultrawide cameras, but it does not have a dedicated telephoto lens. It tops out at 2x “optical-quality” zoom, which is achieved by cropping into the main sensor rather than using a separate optical lens.
The iPhone 18 Pro adds a dedicated 48-megapixel telephoto camera offering 4x optical zoom and 8x optical-quality zoom. It also has a variable-aperture main camera, more extensive manual controls and support for professional photo and video formats.
Its front camera is 18 megapixels, compared with the Duo’s 12-megapixel outer camera. The Duo also has a separate under-display FaceTime camera, although Apple has not published a megapixel figure for it.
The foldable does have some clever photographic tricks. Whoever you are photographing can see themselves on the outer display, and the phone can stand up without a tripod. For casual family photographs and hands-free filming, that could be genuinely useful. For content creators like me who use an iPhone as part of the production process, however, the 18 Pro is clearly the more capable camera phone.
The iPhone 18 Pro can tell you if AI has been used on a photo
First-generation compromises
The Duo does not have Face ID. Apple has returned to Touch ID in the side button, presumably because fitting the TrueDepth hardware into a foldable design would have added thickness. It also lacks the Action button, LiDAR scanner, dedicated telephoto lens and some of the 18 Pro’s professional recording options.
It is eSIM-only worldwide, with no physical SIM option. Apple describes the inner display as scratch-resistant, but it remains a layered folding screen. Early hands-on reports suggest the crease is extremely difficult to see, although you can still feel it when running your finger across the centre.
We also do not know how that screen or the hinge will fare after months of normal use. This is, after all, Apple’s first attempt at a folding phone, regardless of how confident the keynote presentation appeared.
None of that means the Duo will be unreliable. It means we do not yet have the evidence to know.
The price settles it, at least for now
The entry-level iPhone Duo costs £1,999 with 256GB of storage. A 256GB iPhone 18 Pro and a 128GB Wi-Fi iPad mini currently cost £1,798 together.
That means you can buy the better camera phone and a larger dedicated tablet and still spend £201 less than you would on the cheapest Duo.
You would have two devices to charge and carry, admittedly. But each would be better suited to its particular job. The iPhone 18 Pro gives you the more complete camera system, while the iPad mini gives you a larger display, proper iPad apps, Pencil Pro support and iPadOS.
The Duo’s convenience is real. So is the premium Apple is asking you to pay for it.
The future of the iPad mini?
I can see devices such as the iPhone Duo eventually taking over from the iPad mini. The current mini is approaching two years old, and Apple has not exactly been rushing to update it. If the Duo becomes cheaper and gains more of iPadOS’s productivity features, carrying a separate small tablet may begin to feel unnecessary.
This first version is not an iPad mini folded in half, though. It is a very expensive iPhone with a larger display and some genuinely useful multitasking.
If photography and video matter to you, the standard iPhone 18 Pro offers the better camera system in a much more manageable size. If you want the complete small-tablet experience, the iPad mini still does things the Duo cannot.
Would you replace your iPhone and iPad mini with one folding device, or would you rather keep two devices that are each better at their particular jobs?
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