9to5Mac's Overtime podcast sat down with the iPhone Duo the day before launch. One host had carried a review unit for about 18 hours, after a developer event in New York where teams from MLB, Instagram, Fantastical, and New York Times Cooking demoed their Duo layouts. The hosts' shared verdict: closed, the Duo is a so-so phone, and open, it's a great tablet.

Where the hosts land

  • The inner screen is the iPad mini Pro people asked for. OLED, 120Hz ProMotion, and the A20 Pro, by the review-unit host's account, with no reason left to carry an iPad mini too. The one iPad trick missing is floating windows.
  • Split view beats the iPad's. Two apps sit at a fixed half and half, each acting like its own iPhone, so there's nothing new to learn. On a flight of under two and a half hours, the review-unit host ran X and Slack side by side and posted videos to X straight from a USB-C drive through Files.
  • Touch ID is the biggest step back. Without Face ID, notification previews stay hidden on the Lock Screen, an airport Apple Pay purchase took an extra second or two, and clammy hands on a bumpy landing meant repeated misses.
  • The cover screen is for typing. Quick replies feel better on the 5.4-inch outer keyboard than on the stretched inner one, though neither host would want the outer screen as their only iPhone, unless it were for someone who misses the mini.
  • The camera is enough unless you're a creator. The other host sorts buyers into creators, content consumers, and business users, and expects only creators to miss the telephoto. Smart Take, which shoots once everyone has posed, won over a birthday crowd.
  • Most people should still buy a Pro. For a phone kept three or four years, drops and sand in a foldable's hinge give the review-unit host pause, so the advice for an average buyer is the latest Pro iPhone.

The review-unit host also expects the Duo to do for Wall Street what BlackBerry did for email, and says it never ran warm on the flight. One detail from the New York event: the nano-texture layer on the inner screen can be peeled off and replaced, which nobody recommends trying.

A January delivery date has an upside for iPhoners caught when iPhone Duo pre-orders slipped to January: the hosts expect Duo-specific iOS updates and more Duo apps before those orders ship. Touch ID is the complaint I'd take most seriously, since no app update reaches a fingerprint sensor.