These clever apps show off the iPhone Duo’s potential
It’s been a long time since I’ve been genuinely excited about a new iPhone.
For years, a new iPhone meant a device that was thinner, faster, and had a camera that came with incredible upgrades. At some point (and Apple devotees can debate which year’s model this was!), a new iPhone became an incremental upgrade. Slightly better, slightly faster. Maybe there was a new button to learn, a new charging cable, or a new notch on the screen, but the iPhone itself remained the same rectangular glass and metal handheld it always was.
The iPhone Duo changes this, allowing Apple to enter the market for foldable phones with a phone that, while imperfect, is whimsical, fun, and, yes, actually exciting.
Image Credits:Apple
It’s hard to say when the urge to acquire the iPhone Duo first kicked in. I’ll admit that it wasn’t during the official announcement, which left me feeling puzzled about the device’s potential. Do I actually want a phone that folds, I wondered? Was propping up the phone as a little tent to watch Netflix worth all that extra money? (The Duo starts at $2,000).
As it turned out, the desire for the Duo grew on me as I saw developers embracing the new foldable design to create Duo-optimized apps. Apple’s software development community, after all, is what keeps me locked into the iPhone. Apple developers are active, creative, engaged, and still often build for iOS first – a must if you like trying things early.
Of course, the initial Duo reviews have pointed out how many mainstream iOS apps have not yet been made ready for the Duo, which is true. Many of the apps you use every day were not optimized by launch day, meaning they’re surrounded by black bars, have their controls in odd places, or have to be enlarged with a tap, similar to the early days of running iPhone apps on iPad.
But the developers who have specifically built for the Duo sparked my interest. Soon, my inbox was filled with pitches for clever apps I couldn’t yet try unless I got my hands on a Duo. Hello, FOMO.
The best of these don’t just adapt their apps to display correctly on the foldable form factor, but make use of the fact that there are different displays of different sizes – and they incorporate that into the design of the apps themselves.
Below are some of my early favorites, tested on a review unit provided by Apple.
Netflix
Image Credits:Apple
Let’s start with the basics. Netflix is one of Apple’s hand-picked partners for the Duo launch, and had its streaming app Duo-optimized by the time the device shipped, alongside others like the MLB app, NYT Cooking, Slack, my preferred calendar app Fantastical, and others. But Netflix is the perfect showcase for what I expect will be a regular Duo use case: watching movies and TV.
The streaming app hasn’t just been expanded to fill the screen; it takes advantage of the fact that there are two different screen sizes to build for. On the outer screen (the display you see when the device is folded), you can scroll through Netflix’s short-form, TikTok-like “Clips,” then open up the device to continue watching videos on the larger matte-screen inner display. The transition between the two experiences feels as seamless as unfolding the Duo itself, as the content automatically adapts to the new screen size.
As I personally find myself watching most TV on my phone these days, as opposed to big screen in the living room, I appreciate having the option to shift from a phone to a larger screen with one device. This is going to be one of my most-used apps, I think.
Deck-Man (Formerly Duo-Man)
Image Credits:Deck-Man
Look, I called it back in September. I have to credit Deck-Man, which was previously known as Duo-Man, as being the first app that made me want to get a Duo. Designed by indie developer Vidit Bhargava at a hackathon, the music player takes clever advantage of the Duo’s two screens to imitate how Walkman cassette players used to function.
The playful app reimagines the cassette player as a digital experience with retro vibes, allowing you to browse through your favorite albums as cassettes, then load them into the player. You can then control the playback with play, pause, fast-forward, and rewind controls, as you would on a hardware device, complete with authentic-sounding clicks and cassette sounds that were recorded from a real portable cassette player.
Image Credits:Deck-Man
With the Duo open, the cassette appears to play on the right side of the screen, next to album imagery on the right. When closed, Deck-Man’s interface looks like the front of a Walkman.
The app has appeal not only because it built something that could only exist on a hinged, foldable device like the Duo, but also because it taps into the growing demand for retro tech, which is partly a cultural response to the speed at which the AI industry is shipping out products. Retro tech, like dumbphones, digital cameras, vinyl, CDs, and landlines, recalls an older time when tech use was intentional, not just baked into every aspect of our lives.
Honestly, if you buy a Duo and don’t install Deck-Man, I’m convinced you just don’t know how to have fun.
Duo-Man is now Deck-Man!
Expanding my app to have a unique experience on all platforms and not just the Duo, so it only makes sense to have a better name reflecting that.
See you October 23 on the App Store! pic.twitter.com/kCdjcmbeGG
— Vidit Bhargava (@viditb) <a href="https://
Source: techcrunch.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.