I’ve reviewed almost every Android foldable this year — here’s how the iPhone Duo compares

Apple’s first foldable matches its Android rivals in a few key areas, but it falls short in others.

by Dominic PrestonNov 6, 2026, 12:30 PM UTC Dominic Preston is a news editor with over a decade’s experience in journalism. He previously worked at Android Police and Tech Advisor.

When I first read Allison and Nilay’s Verge review of the iPhone Duo, I was immediately struck by one of their complaints: that the cover display is too small. That’s not how the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 feels, I thought. Had they got it wrong?

After a week and a half using the Duo, I know exactly what they mean — and it’s not the screen’s fault at all. Apps that feel comfortable on Samsung’s short foldable and the similarly sized Xiaomi 18 Fold are often cramped and compact on the Duo’s cover screen, robbed of screen space by a right-hand rail that most apps don’t make use of anyway.

That’s just one of the ways that Apple’s first foldable feels fundamentally different from the Android alternatives. I’ve reviewed almost every Android foldable that was released this year, from Samsung and Google to Honor and Oppo, and I’ve been surprised to realize that the Duo holds its own against them all on hardware, but is let down by iOS itself. For now at least, Android is slicker for folding phones — though I don’t know how long that will last.

Size, shape, and build quality

The iPhone Duo feels great. Mostly. Its curved frame and Ceramic Shield back have that ineffable Apple feeling, a sense of polish that helps justify the $2,000 price tag. The hinge in particular is satisfyingly smooth, closing and opening with a comforting magnetic click. Compared with the Galaxy Z Fold 8 or Xiaomi 18 Fold, the Duo just feels better.

But part of that is down to the Duo’s big drawback: its weight. At first it feels encouraging, the reassuring heft of all that glass and metal. Then I started using the phone, and I realized it’s just plain heavy. It weighs more than all of its rivals — even ones with larger screens — and any attempt to use the Duo one-handed makes that obvious quickly. It’s a little thicker than some other foldables, too, though in practice that bothers me far less.

The squat shape won’t be for everyone. The Duo is even shorter and wider than the Z Fold 8, though almost identical in dimensions to Xiaomi’s 18 Fold. I’m a fan of this design, which is both cute and comfortable when folded shut and gives you a natural choice of portrait or landscape orientations when open. The major downsides are that the short cover screen makes some apps awkward to use, and it’s wide when you need to stretch across to the other side — a problem worsened by some of Apple’s software choices. More on that later.

And while the Duo’s IP68 rating is an obvious advantage over much of the competition (only Google and Honor can match it), we’ve not seen many recent Android foldables struggle with hinge and display damage quite like the Duo. It’s still not clear how widespread Duo screen failures really are — they don’t seem to be as ubiquitous as Samsung’s first-generation failures back in 2019 — but non-impact damage like this is almost unheard of in modern Android foldables. It’s a reminder that the Duo is still a first-gen product while some Android rivals are into their eighth iteration.

The crease and screen

The screen is the Duo’s smartest hardware trick, and easily my favorite thing about the phone compared with other foldable phones. No rival offers anything like the “nano-texture” (read: matte) finish on the inner screen, which is easy on the eyes in more ways than one.

Crucially, it also helps mask the phone’s crease, which isn’t quite invisible but is well-hidden. The Duo’s crease is somewhere in the middle of the Android pack: subtler than Google’s and Honor’s, more obvious than Samsung’s. Oppo’s near-invisible crease remains the best, but not by much. The Duo’s matte screen means it’s harder than most to see (though visible from an angle), but it’s still easy enough to feel, and a couple of friends have immediately remarked on it when trying the phone. Still, I don’t want to over-egg it: The Pixel 11 Pro Fold is probably the only one out of this year’s foldables with a crease I’d say is a problem. The Duo’s crease is easy to ignore.

I’d actually say the Duo’s under-display camera is more of an annoyance. It’s not only inside an extra-pixelated circle of screen, but that’s the only patch without the matte coating, which makes it a little more distracting. I can mostly tune it out, but not entirely. I’d probably prefer a regular selfie camera tucked right into the corner, as on the Xiaomi 18 Fold and a few others, but I suspect opinions will differ here.

Finally, the Duo benefits from stylus support, letting you use a USB-C Apple Pencil on the central screen. This isn’t unique — Samsung used to offer the same, and both of Honor’s and Oppo’s latest foldables work with their styli — but plenty of the current Android crop don’t offer the option. I don’t have an Apple Pencil, so I haven’t been able to test it myself, but my colleague Allison is clearly a fan.

Cameras and battery life

The iPhone Duo’s cameras, like those on most foldables, are fairly basic, with a pair of 48-megapixel rear lenses, one main and one ultrawide. It’s a setup comparable to the Z Fold 8, and both phones’ cameras are good, but not great. Most other Android foldables (including Samsung’s Z Fold 8 Ultra) instead offer triple rear cameras, netting you a big boost in photographic flexibility. They often use larger sensors than either Apple or Samsung, so their main cameras are better, too. Still, Vivo is the only manufacturer getting close to slab flagship quality in its foldable cameras, and its hardware lags behind in a few other respects that would prevent it from being my foldable recommendation overall.

As for selfies, the front-screen camera is pretty basic, but you can take better shots using the rear cameras by opening the phone up and flipping it round. T

Source: www.theverge.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.