Apple introduced the iPhone Duo on 9 September at an event in Cupertino, and the press release is the primary source for all of it: the company's first folding phone, written up the day it was shown. Shut, it is a 5.4-inch handset about the size of a passport, which Apple says is comfortable to use in one hand. Opened, it is 7.6 inches, half again the area of the iPhone 18 Pro Max, and the thinnest iPhone the company has built. Both screens share an aspect ratio, so what sits on one scales onto the other.
What the extra glass is for is stated rather than implied. Apple's term for two apps running side by side is "immersive productivity on the go", and its chief executive lists the uses in an order: "whether you're enjoying content, multitasking across apps, or gaming". Folded, the phone is one app across the full width. Opened, it is two, with a hinge whose job is to make the step between them feel like nothing at all.
The hardware around that promise is the part described in most detail. The hinge is assembled from more than a hundred components and is built to hold the middle of the panel flat when open; a nano-textured layer over the display is there to cut glare and to make the crease harder to see. The frame is grade 5 titanium, the back is Ceramic Shield, the rating is IP68, and the battery is split in two. Touch ID has moved into the side button, where it works the same whether the phone is open or shut.
What the release does not contain matters as much. There is no figure for how many folds the hinge is good for, and nobody outside Apple has used the phone yet: pre-orders open on 16 October and sales on the 23rd, from $1999 for 256 GB. Nor is there a word in it about work. The promise is convenience, and more of it, anywhere; whether that convenience costs the person holding the phone anything is not a question the company was asked here. It is the one this issue's cartridge asks instead.