iPhone Duo Review + Apple’s Pre-Order Blunder With Andru Edwards

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So they must be pretty damn confident in that hinge if they're letting you use it in that way, because obviously these are APIs.

Yep, for sure.

That's pretty nuts. Welcome to the Power On podcast. We talk about Apple and the world of consumer tech. I'm Mark Ehrman from Bloomberg, and I'm joined by Andrew Edwards of GearLive.com. And of course, we are going to break down the iPhone Duo. Andrew has been using one for about a week as part of his review, so we're going to get all the details on that. We're also going to talk about the iPhone Duo pre-order situation, so stay tuned for all the details on that. So, Andrew, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

How are you holding up with all the... The news the last several weeks, it's been crazy.

And I know there's a lot more. I mean, we got, so we got the home view. We got the Apple TV. We got the home pod. Obviously the duo, the 18, uh, pro like it's just been nonstop, the Apple watches. And then obviously you've already reported. We've got even more coming next week. So it's just like nonstop.

It's every Friday. So you've got, you know, this Friday, the 23rd for anyone who can find one, the iPhone duo a week later, you have the home pod mini. And the Apple TV 4K, the new one with the Siri mics, was supposed to come out on the 30th as well. But in the last couple days, Apple punted that.

Oh, I didn't even know that.

Today, I want to focus primarily, though, on the Duo. Obviously, you've been using one for about a week. And I want to focus on the pre-order situation. First, we got some listener questions. As you know, you can drop us a line whenever at poweron at boomberg.net with your questions. And Andrew and I are going to take a couple questions today from our producer. Alexis, what do you got for us?

So our first question today is from Andy Hoffman, and it's about the future of Apple's laptop offerings. Given the upcoming release of the OLED touchscreen MacBook, do you guys foresee a future where Apple simplifies its laptop lineup now that there are so many models?

Ooh, Andrew, you want to hit that first?

Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, I... Don't think so. I think, and I don't know, obviously, this person personally who asked the question, but I think a lot of times it feels like people who are into tech or just Apple in general think things are so confusing for the average person who walks into an Apple store. But I don't agree. Obviously, we have the MacBook Air. We've got two sizes. We got the Neo in one size, and then we got the MacBook Pro in two sizes.

So it's really, do you want good, better, best And then better and best come in two sizes. Which one do you want, the big one or the small one? It's not that hard to figure out. So I guess though, a question as you're about to answer this is, since they named this event Pro Intel, does that mean that what we're getting is just a replacement for the current MacBook Pro as opposed to something like, you know, an additional line called the MacBook Ultra?

Yeah, so this new touchscreen MacBook Pro Pro is going to come in on top of the current MacBook Pros. You know, the current MacBook Pros with the M5 Pro chip, those start at $ 2, 500. This new MacBook Pro is going to come in above that at a much higher premium because of the OLED and the touchscreen. And so I do agree with you. It's not that confusing, but I do think over time we are going to see some convergence where the regular MacBook Pros and the Touch OLED MacBook Pros become one device, right? That is going to take a few years, but I think we'll eventually get there.

So we're going to have two basically versions of a MacBook Pro, almost like a Pro and Pro Max.

Well, it's really three, right? It's really three because you have the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, which is getting M6. Then you've got the MacBook Pros introduced in March, the M5 Pro and M5 Max. And then you have the third tier MacBook Pro, which is the Ultra tier. They're not going to call it Ultra probably, but it's an Ultra tier. that's going to have the touch and OLED, the dynamic island, lighter, updated ID, etc. So I don't think, though, that's the confusing part. I actually think the more confusing part is what's long existed, which is having this non-Pro, non-Max chip, low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro, and then these Pro and Max versions. That's the confusing part, especially when you've got a MacBook Air with the M5 chip already and

to get the M6 chip. So you're really, the difference between a base MacBook Air and a base MacBook Pro is not that significant, right? And so there will be some convergence over time. Okay, Alexis, what's next?

All right, for question two, this is from John Chandy. Unlike Andy, he's made his preferences very known. John is a committed iPhone 13 mini user, and he's not looking to get a bigger or a foldable iPhone anytime soon. So he wants to know, do you think Apple will ever produce another mini model.

I'll take this one first. I don't think so. I think that the market has shifted to people not wanting this 5.4-inch screen, unless you're talking about the outside of an iPhone Duo, and we've shifted to 6-inch plus. I don't think there's any going back at this point. I think the iPhone mini, and I've said this many times, was device-created because you saw the, I would say, the vocal minority of the Apple internet blogger community talking about how they want this mini device. And the fact of the matter is everyone who voiced for that device would never buy one in the first place because the people saying, oh, it would be too so well, I want that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We all know that you want the most expensive, you want the priciest, you want the biggest screen, you want the best camera. The iPhone mini was an abject failure that they had to discontinue after two They had the 12 mini, the 13 mini, and that was it. It ain't coming back, at least in this lifetime. So what do you think?

I agree. I think if you, I mean, I haven't used a mini phone since the, it was the 12 and 13, right? 12 to 13 until in some ways the Duo. Like if you want that feeling of using a tiny screen, the Duo will give you that on the outer display, but obviously at a much, much, much higher price point than anything else Apple sells.

Yeah, and the price benefits of the Mini at this point with the memory shortage, those are in the trash can anyways. So you're not really getting that benefit. The iPhone Duo review. You've been using it for a week.

Yes.

What's the deal? Start from the beginning. You unbox it and set it up for the first time. Talk me through it.

Yeah.

And you can show it to me.

Oh, absolutely. Where is it? Here it is. All right. So you unbox this guy, and I feel like you would hope and expect there to be some sort of, I don't know, fanfare to it. But it's really like anything else. On the inside, you've got the unfolded air, and right beneath it is the USB-C charging cable, and that's all you're getting in the box. So you're done with the unboxing in 20 seconds. Setting it up, like you pick it up, you hold it in your hand, and it's really, there's just a strangeness to it because it's wider than any other iPhone that you've ever used.

And things are shifted because of the right-hand navigation. So when they say you get this 5.4-inch display, you do. But if you can imagine, there's like an invisible line between the apps and the navigation. And so that's really unusable space. And what kind of throws you off is that Apple is so good when it comes to where they place things on the screens. But with the Duo, when something is centered, it's not centered on the display.

It's centered in the left area. So in other words, if something is centered on the outer display, it's actually pushed to the left. There's more space to the right than to the left when something's centered. So it's just not bad by any stretch of the imagination. It's just something different that your eye is like, wait a minute.

Did they make the right decision doing that? Because when they announced it, they spent a lot of time how this was an intentional decision. to push everything to the left, but the nav on the right, the icons on the right. Do you think that was necessary or should have they just sort of left the dock and the nav stuff on the bottom and top?

No, because I think once you start using it, because that's the initial impression that you get, but once you start using it, it really does start to make sense that the navigation over there makes a lot more sense. And what reveals that, let me see if I could find an app that is not optimized. So here's one.

So YouTube Studio, not optimized, right? So it's not using this right-hand navigation at all. So its navigation is still along the bottom. I know you can't see this in the display, but- Yeah, we got enough of it, yeah. Okay, so the navigation for this app, because it's not optimized, it's still at the bottom. So any unoptimized app is gonna still have that bottom or top or both navigation.

And when it comes to that, it just feels way more cramped versus when you go into an app that is optimized, let's say, Instagram, Meta yesterday released all their apps and they're not optimized. All of this is just vertical space now. So you don't have to deal with anything at the top or bottom anymore in Instagram. Everything's pushed off to the side, which makes that, it makes more sense because this area is so much smaller. You want to at least have that vertical to be nice and clear, which it does.

What does an optimized app versus a non-optimized app look like on the inside?

All right.

So you actually have three different types of apps. There is the non-optimized app, which let me open up YouTube Studio again. So this is what that's going to look like on the inside.

It looks terrible. It reminds me of day one of the iPad.

Yes. Now, Apple does allow you to You can turn it. You can make it bigger or smaller. Kind of like what you could do on an iPad with an iPhone app when you're running it on an iPad. And it doesn't look terrible when you do this, but you can definitely tell this is a stopgap. This is not, you do not want to live like this. And especially you do not want to live with this center with, you know, two thirds of your screen is just unused. Not good.

Then there are apps that are optimized for iOS 27, but they're not optimized for iPhone Duo. And those apps would be something like this RSS reader, where it's taking up almost the whole space, but it's still not using the right-hand navigation. So I think iOS is smartly optimizing based on it being written for iOS 27. It'll smartly resize the app for the developer.

For the inner display. Because of the resizability APIs they added in the OS. That makes a lot of sense.

Yep. And then you can go into an app that is optimized for iPhone Duo. This is like Apple Music right here, where it's just, it's going to take the whole thing, left to right, full display. And when you close it, you get the same full display on the outside that you get on the inside. Because the displays are the same aspect ratio, what you see on the outside is what you get on the inside. Really nice.

So that's where we want, like, as quickly as humanly possible, we need our favorite apps to be updated for iPhone Duo layout, like, immediately. Right. We're still waiting on things like YouTube, TikTok. Meta seems to be the only one that kind of got on board that is like one of the huge ones that you want to see on day one.

It's pretty interesting given that Meta and Apple seem to be, you know, thawing their difficult relationship, right?

There's been a lot.

Going on between the two companies. I'll have more to say on that in a future episode, but that's another interesting example, the duo apps on day one.

So I just got to throw this out there. Touch ID is annoying. Um, when you were used to face ID, which we've been using since the iPhone.

10, it's been 10 years or nine years.

It's, it's not, it's just not as good. It's just, that's just the honest truth.

Well, when you got the 10, you felt like you were moving forwards because touch ID was so good, but face ID felt like an improvement, right? You didn't feel like you're going backwards, but you're saying you feel like going from touch ID or from face ID to touch ID is a step back. You feel like you're going back a decade.

And that's the thing is I actually said that in my review is that it's like you're opening this device, you turn it on and it feels like as you're using it and you're opening it up, it's like, I'm like stepping into the future, right? And then Touch ID is like, nope, come on back. We're going in the past a little bit. The annoying part for me is that there are times, a lot of times where it's like, oh, we didn't catch that. Could you put your fingerprint again?

It's like Face ID never is like, hey, we didn't get your face. It just works, right? I'm not a product designer. I don't know what it takes to do these things. They put it in the power button, which I don't know if that makes it a worse fingerprint reader or not, but it's just nowhere near as good. So that would be one disappointment.

So a few things here to unpack. One, Why did they go with Touch ID versus Face ID? I think there's a few circumstances here. One, the display is very thin on the outside. It is iPhone Air thinness, but there is more components you need to get into this device than you need to get in the iPhone Air. The miniaturization is just at another level with this device. Second, I think they wanted consistency between the outer display and the inner display. So even if you were able to get Face ID on the outer display, you're not going to be able to get it on the inner display.

And we can talk about the under-display FaceTime camera right now and how it's probably not up to par with, you know, non-under-display. And so I think those are the two main considerations. Maybe cost was another consideration, too, because the Face ID module is much more expensive than Touch ID. And you already need to get the cost down. You're dealing with the memory shortage and everything there. But here's what I've heard. There are a few different features that Apple's already looking at for the iPhone Duo 2 and the iPhone Duo 3. One thing that Apple has been actively working on is under-display Face ID. And you saw they took a bigger step towards that with the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max this year, where they made

the dynamic island much smaller. They moved more of the components under the display. I'm told there are iPhone Duo 2 prototypes at Apple already that have an under-display Face ID sensor and camera feature. on the outside screen. So that is something we could see. So I would anticipate this Touch ID to Face ID thing is fixed by the first update or the second update. So in the next two to three years or so. The other thing I did hear that they've tested internally for the iPhone Duo 2, and I'm not sure where it is on the phone, and I definitely can't vouch for if it's going to happen or not, is the action button. So they're looking at bringing the action button back this is the first iPhone without a mute switch slash action button.

So you have to go into control center for that. How has your iPhone usage changed, right? Like if you're like me, you're probably always on your phone. You're probably always responding to messages immediately. You're probably deep in Instagram and everything. Do you find the fact that you need to open this thing up is making you use your phone less? Or is it that it has a bigger screen making you use it more? Or is it too early to tell given you've probably been living your whole day in this thing in the last week?

Yeah, okay, so I've been an iPhone user since the first iPhone, and I have used, I don't know, I've used an iPhone since the first iPhone was released for at least several hours every day of my life since that day, since 2007, right? So I am used to using a slab iPhone, right? And I know everything that this can do because you can only hold it one way, I guess two ways, sideways or vertical, right? That's it. So...

With the Duo, it's interesting because there's so many different things that it can do now. You have to remind yourself to try stuff. It's not just, okay, I can hold it this way. I can hold it vertically. I can hold it horizontally. I can open it and do that vertically or horizontally. Oh no, wait a minute. I have like folded view, which will change things sometimes. I have the laptop view. pose or whatever they call it, tabletop pose. Oh, wait a minute. There's also the, the tent mode. Like, so, so many, and you can see, like, as I'm moving it around, this app is just like contorting to whatever I'm doing, right. Based on how I'm holding the phone and how, how folded it is. So it takes time to like, remind yourself like, oh, there's

other things I can do with this that the developers have worked on and put into their apps to make them even better that I'm not even thinking of because I'm so used to the fact that you hold an iPhone either vertically or horizontally and that's it. So it's really, it's almost like a, I don't know, a whimsical learning curve because there's so many other things that this can do that no other iPhone in the past has been able to do. Um, And like one interesting example is games in particular. So when I say games, I would imagine most people are thinking, oh, yeah, you can use that bright inner display to play games and they'll probably look really great, which is true.

Yeah, you know, by the way, my iPad basically at this point is a Grand Theft Auto machine. I have all the GTA on the App Store. I got Liberty City, San Andreas, Miami, and I'm pouring through those on my iPad Pro 13-inch. That's what the iPad Pro is for, right? You need the M5 chip. For San Andreas. Anyways, please tell me you've used GTA already on the Duo.

I have not played GTA on this. But what is interesting is, aside from the display looking good, which as an aside, so many people are worried about the crease and worried about the matte finish being washed out. The crease is a non-issue, like a complete non-issue. And the display is not washed out. This display is bright, vibrant, gorgeous.

I have nothing negative to say about this inner display. But... The hinge can be monitored by the software. So there are games where it's like, there's like a marble game where like you use the, you're like tilting the phone to move the marble around. And then there's doors. And in order to open the doors, it's like, you need to hold to 90 degrees and then, okay, fold this one to 120. You can use the, that's the old as a game mechanic. There's another super simple game where it's like, you just have to like, it tells you how many degrees to open. So just open to like 120 degrees and, And then it's like, it'll, it'll rate how well you did on guessing, like how many degrees it was supposed to be open. So the software can

read the hinge to like an insane degree. So that gaming is even more unique on this device than any other Apple product that you own.

So they must be pretty damn confident in that hinge if they're letting you use it in that way, because obviously these are APIs.

Yep, for sure.

That's pretty nuts. Do you feel that you're going to need to replace that cover display? after a period of time? Because I know if you got AppleCare, you can swap out the cover sheet for, what is it, 19 bucks that they threw the Apple Store online. Do you feel like that's a thing that's going to happen over time?

Because on my Z Fold 8 and my past Samsung foldable phones and other foldable phones, like if my nails get too long, which they usually don't, but sometimes they do, you press with the wrong finger at the wrong time and you've got a dent in there for life. Is that a thing on the iPhone?

So this is a review unit from Apple. So I haven't like... Well, actually, if I guess if I paid for my own thing, I would probably treat it better than, I don't know, but I haven't tried.

You have Apple's permission. You have Apple's permission.

I haven't tried to damage it on purpose, but I know exactly what you mean. The thing with this display, and again, I haven't tried to damage it, but number one, it supports Apple Pencil, right? So Apple is confident that you can take an Apple Pencil and use it on there and write and draw and all that.

Right, that would dash it in if, you know.

Right. Secondly, this display is thicker than most foldable displays. Like there's a lot of protection on this display. They talked about, I think it's like eight different layers aside from the actual screen. So I haven't done this, but I've seen others who have tried to like scratch and like exactly what you said, like try to push their nail into it and it just doesn't mark up. So, I mean, for $ 20, it's great that you can just go to an Apple store and swap it out if necessary.

But in my, you know, again, limited testing, one week, it feels like this thing's going to hold up really nicely.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the reason Apple didn't give me an iPhone Duo review unit is because I was one of the first reviewers of the Galaxy S8. Fold, the original one in 2019. And I took the cover sheet off myself, right? Because the way they designed the phone, it looked and felt and was removable like a piece of, like a screen protector that comes in the box that you take off to use the phone.

I took it off.

The phone was destroyed completely within 24 hours. I tweeted about it and they had to delay the Z Fold for three months and re-engineer the whole thing. Cost them millions of dollars. We had a meeting. They were very mad at me. Uh, but look, Samsung wasn't my fault. It was engineered that way. So Apple, I know it has nothing to do with anything else. I know it's exclusively about that and, uh, not wanting me to ruin the launch.

Yes. I remember you doing that. And I remember the Samsung collecting my review unit from me, like promptly because of the issue that you, that you discovered.

I mean, it was crazy. It wasn't discovered in, in, in production or testing. And of course, you know, I feel like if you have a device and you can remove the screen protector super easily, uh, And that can destroy the phone. I feel like maybe you have an engineering problem or a marketing issue or something. But anyways, it's neither here nor there. Samsung's gotten pretty good at these things. And I think that's one of the reasons that Apple's launching this, because the category has gotten matured.

The displays have gotten better. And Samsung is making, you know, some good money on this category at this point. So are you all in on this thing? Are you done with the A-Team Pro Max and you're just pivoting to this phone? Are you a foldable for life now?

So here's the thing, like, I'll give you two answers. The one answer would be if this wasn't my job and I just had to go buy a phone, I would buy the iPhone Duo. But as someone who makes content, like when I'm on the go, the iPhone 18 Pro, this is my camera. Like this is my video camera. This is where I take pictures with. And I do not feel like I can rely on an iPhone Duo to take over that job. I just cannot. Um, so, okay.

So what we need to talk about that because the camera's most used feature on any phone, what's the deal with the cameras?

So it's just, the cameras are fine in everyday use. Like if you're just taking pictures of things of yourself or things around you, you even have, you even have camera features that you don't have on other iPhones. Like the, the fact that you can set it up to just take photos of you while you're posing. Right. And you've got the fact that you can use the back camera.

to take selfies in duo mode. So there are things you can do with this phone that you can't do with others, and the cameras on everyday, I'll call it everyday usage, are great. The day after I got the phone, I went to a Doja Cat concert, and I brought that phone with me, and I brought the 18 Pro with me, and I'm like, okay, let's see how this thing works at a concert. Now, when you go to the concert, you look around, everyone has their phone out, everyone's trying to take photos, everyone's trying to take videos of the performers, right? I think if you had an iPhone Duo exclusively in your pocket and you went home and looked at your photos afterwards, you would be very disappointed in what you would get.

Well, that's not good.

But here's the thing. This is in low light taking photos of someone who is 300 feet away or whatever, right? So it's a very specific situation that we probably don't find ourselves in that often. Like how often are you at a concert or taking photos in the dark of a person who's far away? It's pretty rare. But when you do get into that situation.

Every weekend though.

Right. If you have season tickets to like, you know, the Lakers, that might be a problem for you. So in everyday use, like I'm saying, like taking photos of like your friends, your family and yourself, it's fine. Like it's not a problem at all. If you want to do things like spatial photography, like if you have a vision pro and you want to take like the spatial photos or videos, you can't do that. It doesn't have the telephoto that it requires for that.

I think we both know what that doesn't matter anymore.

Listen, I'm still holding out hope. I'm one of the people that emails you angry whenever you say anything negative.

I'm sure you are. I don't think you'd be on this podcast if you're one of those people.

So it really is about specific situations, though, like where the iPhone Duo just, and again, it's not going to keep up. And I guess that is the reason. Like when you talked about, you know, previously, the idea was that this would be called the iPhone Ultra. Yep. I'm thinking ultra is at the top of everything, right? So it's going to at least have the same cameras as the pro would have. And if that was the case, I could use the iPhone duo for everything. I wouldn't need another phone. But the fact that it doesn't have a telephoto, the fact that it doesn't have as long of a, you know, it's just the zoom range and just even the wide camera in general, this is the best camera Apple makes on the 18 pro. This is

what's going to stay in my bag. So this will be in my bag. The pro or the duo rather will be in my pocket. And then they introduced that new feature in iOS 27, which is iPhone handoff, which means you can use one phone number now between two different iPhones. And I wonder if this was the reason why this was released now. Because some people, not everybody, but some people are going to want to buy a Duo.

And they're going to want to use either an 18, which that's probably a rare one, but someone who's owned a 17 or 16 that has a better camera on it. They still want to be able to use that. And so they can use iPhone Handoff, pay T-Mobile five bucks or Verizon 10 bucks, which is crazy, and still be able to use both your phones and your phone number and have a connection anywhere you go.

Well, God bless those people. And I wonder how many of those people there are outside of folks like you and I who have to do that and live and breathe this stuff.

I am curious.

But okay, cameras.

Okay.

That aside, what about battery life? Because that's another one right there. How does the battery life stack up to your 18 Pro Max? I'm sure it's not close.

Yeah, I'm going to go back to the concert that I just was going over, right? So I was going to the concert. I always take an external battery with me, and that day I forgot it. So I'm like, okay. Like I just got this device one day ago. Siri's still doing its indexing. It's going to take forever. Siri took five days to index. On the Duo? Yes, on the Duo. But I have a one terabyte Duo and I have like 600 terabytes. I mean, sorry, 600 gigabytes used on it. So I have a lot.

They didn't even give you the two terabyte?

They didn't give me the two terabyte. I don't know. I don't know. Listen, it's the Ternus era now. Things are different. Cost cutting. Exactly. I didn't bring my battery. So I was curious, how is this going to go? How is this going to work? So obviously I'm driving in my car, I'm charging up in the car and then I get to the concert and it was fine.

Like I have not had a day where I've had to worry about battery life. Is it as good as a pro max? It is not as good as a pro max. It's better than a pro, um, at least by a couple hours, better than a pro. So This year's Pro matches the battery of last year's 17 Pro Max. So this has a better battery life than the 17 Pro Max does. So basically, that being said, battery is a non-issue for me.

Okay, let's say someone listening to this podcast, and I'm sure a lot of you are, left-handed. What is your advice to them? What are they doing?

That's a good question. I'm not left-handed. So let me, I'm going to pick it up and hold it in my left hand right now just to see. Like, actually, you know what? Okay, this is crazy. Left-handed is almost better. Left-handed is almost okay. Okay? Because when you're holding it in your right hand, you have to make sure not to touch what's on the right hand of the dock.

The dock is all the way on the right. So you have to, like, reach over the dock to use it. When it's in your left hand, the dock isn't in your way at all. It's fine. And I can still just reach over and touch the dock. So this is actually, this is a non-issue to me. And when it's open, now it's a two-handed device, so left or right-handed doesn't matter at that point. Yeah, it doesn't matter. But yeah, when it's closed, no. This is, again, I'm not left-handed, but Using it left-handed is 100%. I can use it left-handed with no problem right now. So I would call that a non-issue as well.

I think you just sparked a bunch of Google searches for how to become left-handed if you're right-handed just because you said it's even better for left-handed users. It's like all those people who said when Apple Pay came out, they're never shopping again at a non-Apple Pay supported store. Now we're going to have a bunch of people who are just, I need to become left-handed now. Wait, back to the camera, the inner display camera, the FaceTime camera.

Yeah.

It's called the FaceTime camera for a reason, right?

Yes, it is.

Because you're not going to want to take selfies with it.

Do not take photos with it. Like, you can. They let you. But the thing is, you can take selfies... in more ways with this phone than any other iPhone, because you can see yourself from the back camera and you can use the cover display. So they already give you two great options. I don't know why you would, why you would say to yourself, I'm going to open this up to take a selfie.

Well, to get the bigger viewfinder.

God, no. It's just not a good photography camera. And I think they know that. Like you said, they named it the FaceTime camera for a reason. And if you're on FaceTime using it, it's no big deal. It's fine. You don't look bad when you're FaceTiming. But If you're going to like, if you're using it for something you want to save and cherish or whatever, use one of the other cameras.

Now, what about the OS experience? Like side-by-side apps? Are you a side-by-side apps guy on the iPad? Are you a stage manager guy? How are you using your iPad? And how similar and different has it been on the Duo? And what do you think of the implementation?

That's a good question. So on the iPad, I use it in windowed mode. So if I have multiple apps open, they'll be in different windows.

And....

I feel like side-by-side is something different than that because side-by-side is really, at least for me, what I found so far, it's a convenience thing. So if I want to copy something, like you might send me a text and it's like, oh, let me copy that and put it into whatever, Safari or whatever it is. Well, I got to go into messages, find your text, copy, close, go over to Safari, open it, right? Yep. Now I can just like literally copy it. Like it's all right there.

Copy paste, like, or.

Just drag it over.

I can literally just drag it. Yeah. So it's really, it feels like a time saver in a way that it hasn't been for me on the iPad, just because I don't use the side-by-side feature that often on the iPad. I just never think about it. And I kind of forgot about it on the Duo as well until I was like looking through it, like starting to put my review together. It's like, oh, I forgot. It's like side-by-side apps.

And now, like, I'm using that all the time. One thing most people don't know, let me see if I can show you here, is you can go side by side, but I'm starting a YouTube video real quick. Today I'm doing something. So I have my floating video, and then I can go, so I can go side by side with two different apps plus have a floating video. You can have four things on screen. And let's say I wanted to respond to this.

What's the fourth thing? So two side-by-side?

The fourth thing is the keyboard. So I can have a keyboard, two apps side-by-side, and a floating video. So I think most people thought, oh, Apple's just going to give us two things side-by-side, and that's it. You're not going to be, like, if you want video, that has to be one of the two. No, you can actually do a floating video screen, two apps side-by-side, and if one of the apps requires you to type, you can still have a keyboard at the bottom as well. So technically four different components on your screen at once.

What about the speakers? How do those compare? Because obviously the speakers on the iPhone 18 Pro Max are amazing. You get, you know, firing out of the bottom, firing out of the top through the speaker, the earpiece. What's the deal on the Duo?

Very good. No, they're very good. And you have, again, you have speakers. So you got speakers on the top and bottom if you're holding it vertically. And then if you open it up, still top and bottom, but it's more stereo. Like you can't really tell That one side's coming from the top and one side's coming from the bottom.

Apple says it's spatial audio. And then when you're doing even like this little laptop mode version, you've got left and right. And then tent mode as well, you still got left and right. So you've got great sound no matter which pose you end up using. They all sound really good. Like that's actually one of the better features on the phone is the speakers.

What about like when you're gaming or watching video or running two apps side by side and a video feed and a keyboard, super thin, does this thing heat up? Can you like, are you really feeling it? Or does the vapor chamber and everything do a good job of making it not really, you know, feel hot to the touch?

I haven't felt it get hot. I have felt it get warm. So when I say warm, I don't mean, I mean it gets hot, but not uncomfortably hot. So the vapor chamber does a great job Mine was warm from when I turned it on until I want to say, so I got the review unit on what day was the home view event? Was that a Wednesday?

That was the Tuesday, the 13th.

Okay.

So Tuesday through like Saturday, it was just constantly warm because again, Siri was indexing the entire time. It's, you know, it's downloading your stuff. It's basically optimizing your phone. Now, a couple of days later, now that we're a week since, it's fine now. So I've never felt it get uncomfortably hot, including one of the videos I worked on was, it's like the top 20 games that are duo optimized on day one. So I spent probably two hours just recording.

So I wanted to show playing B-roll of all 20 of these games. So I'm sitting there recording and I'm gaming the whole time. dual optimized, so it's full screen games. And again, it just got, it just got warm, but it wasn't, it wasn't hot. It wasn't like, you know, the iPhone, like, what was it? 16?

16 Pro.

It wasn't like that. It just gets warm, which is, you know, expected and fine. No big deal.

It's pretty amazing that Apple got away with the 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max overheating, right? Like they talked that thing off as a software issue. It really probably was a processor thing. And mostly probably a titanium lack of heat dissipation thing. They didn't just coincidentally switch to aluminum. They had known for years they were heading in this direction, bigger batteries, faster processing, et cetera, that these things were going to heat up more. So, um, I guess good on them for figuring it out with the vapor chamber on this duo. Um, so you would say the vapor chamber, it does its job here.

Oh yeah, for sure. And like, you know, the, It's almost comical to even talk about at this point. Like even in my review, I'm like, okay, it has an A20 chip in there. It's like A20 Pro rather. Like what is there to even say at this point? Like it is so fast.

There's nothing to say about it. I wasn't even going to ask you about it. I mean, the thing's going to work. It's going to do what it's supposed to do.

Yeah. Don't even, don't even, it can handle whatever you throw at it. Put it that way. Okay.

So the Vision Pro, don't get mad at me. Feels like a first generation product, right? You can tell it's a first gen product. Does the iPhone Duo feel like a first-generation Apple product, or does this feel a little bit more baked?

First of all, I don't think the Vision Pro feels like a first-gen product, other than the size and weight. But when you put it on and experience it, it feels very futuristic.

It feels futuristic, but it's too heavy. The M2 version was probably a little too sluggish.

Yeah.

We don't have to get into the debate.

I just wanted to defend some of my brothers out there.

Well, it's a dwindling number.

When it comes to the iPhone Duo, it's actually, you know, it's an interesting question because it does feel really well-baked in a lot of areas. The software experience, fantastic. The chip, insane. IP68 water and dust resistance, when Samsung hasn't been able to do that after, what is it? Are we on eight of them, right? They still haven't been able to do that. And you get this right out of the gate with Apple. But at the same time, and you didn't say anything about this, so I'm kind of worried.

You did say they're working possibly on Face ID, which I feel like is needed. Touch ID makes this feel like a first-gen product. And the other thing is that lack of a telephoto. Are they going to bring a telephoto in?

That's on their list. I don't know when that's coming, but that's going to be hard to do, man. I mean, that is a physics problem that maybe could be solved with AI, right? You've seen Google with the Pixel solved Zoom with AI. Apple may have to go into that direction. So I think Face ID.

Will be sooner. Has three cameras. Like what is it because they want it to be so thin? Like, is that really the limiting factor?

I mean, it's not even the thinnest foldable, right? I mean, the Samsung one is marginally thinner. But getting a telephoto in there, I don't think that's a cost issue. I think that's a purely a physics issue in terms of the depth needed. It's going to be interesting to see how they end up solving that. But I agree with you.

If they want this to become the mainstream phone, it's going to need to get the face ID in there and it's going to need to get the telephoto in there.

What I wonder about that, and I know you had reported that there may be larger sizes in the works. I wonder how they approach that because one of the hallmarks of of their announcement was that the two displays are the exact same aspect ratio. So what you see on the outside is what you get on the inside when you unfold it. And if you were to make the outer display larger, even though this outer display is pretty small, it's very wide. So I'm wondering if you grow this diagonally, all of a sudden, it's almost too wide in a way. Now, if you're only doing maybe half an inch or something like that, probably fine because then on the inside you probably gain a full inch maybe i don't know.

I mean what i heard just to be specific about the larger screen version of the duo is i heard i mean it's it's marginal it would be that the bigger screen or the inside screen increasing by it's like this is rough like very roughly half an inch right and so That wouldn't necessarily make the outer screen much bigger.

I honestly haven't done the math on what half an inch would mean for the outer display. I'll do that later. But we're not talking about an eight and a half inch, nine inch inner screen. We're talking about like high sevens, very low eights for your first number.

Okay. So you're talking about replacing it with... a slightly larger device as opposed to having like a pro. Right.

That's what I've been talking about in the same sense that Apple moved from a 6.7 inch max to a 6.9 inch max, right? They've gone from, they went to 6.1, a 6.5, to 6.7, a 6.9. I'm talking about natural size progression. So like going from, what is it, 7.6 to 7.9 or to 8.1, right?

Right.

Not talking about two different variants. This would be the same phone, but a later generation. That's what I've heard at least that they've been looking at.

That I would enjoy. And quite honestly, I feel like it's the outer display that needs it more, not the inner display. I don't feel like I'm lacking anything. uh for size even though it's actually smaller than an ipad mini it really it really feels like you open it up and you have a 120 hertz pro motion display oled ipad mini in your hand.

Okay last thing on the duo itself before we get into the pre-orders the color i know you love the white one i am locked in on the night sky you've seen both you've played with both uh what's your take.

So for me, when it comes to color, there's a reason I like the star white. And so I think of it always as a content creator, like what is going to look good on camera? And so the thing with the night sky is it's not that it's a bad color, but everything is so uniform. It's almost, you know, from the bezel to the back to the hinge, it all looks like one color. So it's harder to get a great shot of like on this. I can get you a great shot of the hinge versus the back glass, right?

On the night sky, it's just a little bit harder to do. I also feel like even going back to when the iPhone X launched, this is almost like a return to the classic in a way. I wouldn't want a white or silver iPhone 18, 17, 16, any of those. I actually think that's the worst color. But when you're starting fresh with a new line, Take me back to classic Apple white.

Fine.

It's nostalgic. It's nostalgic.

Exactly.

Here's a fun fact for you. When Apple was developing the Apple car, Johnny Ive floated the idea of the Apple car only coming in white, only an Apple white.

Just one color.

One color. The idea being the AirPods, the ear pods before that, the original iPod, they became so iconic and recognizable because they all were white. Everyone had the same thing. You can spot it anywhere. So they looked at the Apple car doing the same.

Absurd.

Of course, that never happened and likely never will happen. But, you know, they love their white. I love their night sky. iPhone Duo pre-orders.

I'm glad I didn't have to do it.

Oh, my God. So first of all, let's take a step back here. We're talking about a phone. We're talking about a $ 2, 000 phone that goes up to $ 3, 200. This is not even in the first world problems category because it's not a problem, right? This is a luxury. This is the cherry whipped cream and the nuts on top and the chocolate syrup. So let me just get out of the way. I recognize we're talking about a phone here.

So these are not complaints. This is me talking. You know what? Let me give you a prime example. I'm talking for the people. who need this iPhone handoff feature and consider this a winner, okay?

Right?

This is who I'm talking to.

But even so, if I can interject, it is not a problem. But day one, $ 2, 000 phone, this is one of the very few Apple launches that are different, right? This is only the second time in the history of the iPhone that you're getting a different form factor of the phone.

True.

So you are... And it's Apple. So there is an excitement level and a mania level that you're going to have.

I'm excited. How many times do I trash Apple for not doing enough design changes, not moving quick enough, not doing anything cool or interesting, right? And so for all the people on Reddit and the blogs and Twitter for criticizing me for calling the iPhone pre-orders a disaster, really? You can't have it both ways. You can't be mad at me for trashing them, rightfully so, for not doing enough.

And then I'm excited that they did enough and I want the damn thing, right?

You got to, come on. It's pent-up demand.

It's pent-up demand.

And you know what it is?

It's also pent-up anger towards me for whatever reason, okay?

All right.

So we'll leave it at that. But you open the app. My app didn't let me in until 5.02 a.m. I immediately, I tried to do an in-store pickup at one of the local stores. Nada, nada, nada, nada. Shipment, November 2nd to November 9th. By the time it processed, November 9th to November 16th. And that's where I'm at for me personally.

And a lot of people are in the same boat. So I'm not pleased. Again, context, just the phone. I'll get it. I'm happy to wait. I'll figure out a way to get one sooner on launch day, not to worry. But this is the reality.

Yeah.

What happened here? So they just don't have enough supply. This thing, the pre-orders are a disaster. These are a disaster to produce. They were making hundreds of units a day. Whereas, you know, an iPhone 18 Pro Max, they're probably making tens of thousands of units per day. Initially, they were going to launch end of November, and they were going to launch in two countries, the highest foldable phone demand countries, the US and China. For some reason, they decided, okay, not only are we going to move up the launch by a month, and we don't have enough supply, we're going to do 70 countries from day one. We're going to give this to everyone. And so you're having stores that are getting a few units, okay? Whereas Apple, Every

Apple store in the United States probably has thousands of iPhone 18 Pros in the back at this point. So they went premature because they wanted to give John Ternus a big tailwind, and they wanted to get enough units into the quarter, the holiday quarter as possible, in order to show year-over-year growth at a time when their services are decelerating at a very strong rate. And so it was a financial decision, and they didn't really care enough about the customer here. this was in order to get the revenue numbers up as high as possible to show a plus sign when they report earnings at the end of January.

Well, let me ask you this. I assume they would have had a plus sign anyway on earnings, but let me ask you this.

I don't know how good it's looking. The next two quarters, I don't know how good that's looking. I think that the big quarter for Apple will actually end up being Q2, Q3 for 2027. I think this upcoming Q4 and the Q1 It's not going to be as pretty as some would expect because of the services stuff. And don't forget, no entry-level iPhone 18.

True.

And iPhone Duo not launching the flagship phone, the top-end phone, not launching until a month later than usual. And most of the supply not coming in until calendar year 2027. So there's headwinds there.

Let me ask you this. I believe you're the one who reported this. And I think the reason I believe that is because anything I can remember about being reported, I just assume, I think that originated with Mark. But was the estimate that Apple will be shipping this year, before January, between 6 and 10 million Duo units? Yes.

That was not me, actually. I think that was the first bit that I've heard that wasn't for me. But that was not my estimate. I don't know how many they're going to be able to get out the door this year. In terms of how many they're actually producing, it's sort of in the middle. of that range that you mentioned. It's closer to 8 million that they're trying to get out, but that's not going to be released in 2026. That is an initial order that's going to take you into 2027. And you can bet they're jerking up that number right now.

Okay. The reason I ask is because Samsung does roughly 5 million foldables per year in a 12-month period, and Google does 1 million per year. So if Apple is able to do 6 million between... launch next week or in three days, between launch this week and the end of the year, it's hard for me to say that they didn't make quote unquote enough if they are making in three months what the two other competitors would do combined in 12. Does that make sense?

I agree with you. I think they would.

Okay.

I mean, I would venture to guess maybe they have 6 million orders this year. But there's no scenario, there's no universe in which they have 6 million units in 2026. It's just not possible.

How else would they, I guess that's really the question, I guess. How, if they are going to outdo what Samsung and Google combined can do, definitely in a quarter, let's not even talk about a full year, in a quarter. How else would they do it than this? Like there's going to be, like I said earlier, this pent up demand.

When is Apple going to put out a foldable or just something different for the iPhone? Something like truly different and unique, which they're doing now. Like how are they supposed to keep up with the demand unless they announced it so far ahead and said, you know, we're announcing it in September and we're launching it in January and just spent three months.

I think they could have. No, I think they could have waited three more weeks. They're going to get a lot of phones built in the next three weeks. And so I think they could have waited three weeks and they would have been in a much better position.

I don't want to wait three weeks, though. No, I know.

I don't want to wait either, but I may have to. The other thing to note, these are China only. They're not building any of these in India at this point, right? India just doesn't have the production shops to build this thing. It's exclusive to Foxconn in China. And so that is a bit of a gate as well to being able to get as many units as possible out. I will be interested to see carrier stores, the Best Buy, the other resellers, how many units of these things they're actually going to get. It's very possible they're getting very few, and people are not going to be able to get their hands on these for a very long time. So we will see. I will give an update on how my iPhone Duo purchase experience went on the next podcast.

But for you, Andrew, I am happy for you that you have your unit. What are you going to end up eventually ordering?

That's a good question. I think it will be a two terabyte star white. Two terabyte star white. I think that's me right there. Case, no case? You know, Apple sent me their two cases and I haven't even opened them yet. I have never been a case guy. I'm more of an AppleCare guy. And let me just let AppleCare take care of me and hope for the best.

Especially with a phone, any foldable actually. These are just thicker. I don't want to add more bulk to it. I think the better case that Apple makes is the one that has the kickstand because it magnetizes on. But with that one, it's also a folio. So you have to like open it like a book in order to get to the display, which I don't like.

Now you have a fold to open the front screen as well.

Exactly. It's like multiple pages now that you have. You want to open it up. So I'm just going like this. No case. No case for me. That's been my mantra since the original iPhone. I've only ever dropped and broken one iPhone. That was the iPhone 5S. Never anything after that. So I'm just hoping I keep that streak alive.

Good man. Starting today, we're going to end every episode with a little Apple trivia. They're going to try to stump me and my guest every time. So let's dive deep into the Apple archives and throw some stuff at us, Alexis.

Okay.

So first of all, Andrew, I have to ask, given that this is a Mark Gurman show, How confident do you feel about deep cut Apple trivia?

It depends on the era. If we're talking about post Steve Jobs coming back to Apple, I'm feeling really good. If you ask me about like John Scully stuff, I'm lost.

No, these are more modern. These are more modern.

So this first one is a Steve Jobs related question. The question is, which product did Steve Jobs introduce in his last Apple keynote? Was it A, the iPhone 4S, B, the iPad 2, C, iCloud, or D, MacBook Air with Thunderbolt?

I got my answer.

I got my answer. All right, Andrew, you first.

I'm going to go C, iCloud.

There you go, C, iCloud, WWDC 2011.

So clearly that one wasn't hard enough for you guys. I'm going to make this one a little bit more difficult. The question is, what color did the first generation iPhone iPod Mini come in. There is no multiple choice, but I'll give you a hint that there were five colors. You guys can work together on this one.

Okay. So, should I just name some colors? Yeah, you go first. Okay. Silver.

Yep, silver. Okay, I'm in.

Was there a pink? I think there was a pink.

Pink.

Blue.

There's a blue.

Blue. Green.

There's green.

Yellow? Not yellow. Kind of close.

Black.

No. They didn't do black until the mini. Excuse me, until the nano. No, no, not until the nano either. Because it was aluminum, remember?

Oh, yeah.

Silver, pink, blue, green. There's no way it was orange. You said it was not yellow. Hmm. It's not purple.

I'm stuck on that last one.

Okay, give us a hint.

It wasn't night sky.

It's not night sky, and it's not star white. It is Like silver, it is another material that jewelry is often.

Made out of.

There was a gold iPod Mini? No.

There was a gold iPod Mini.

You may have to edit this out.

Did they call it gold? Wow. Okay.

Oh, yeah. The gold iPod Mini is an exclusive color released only for the first-gen model, 4GB capacity in 2004, discontinued the gold finish when it launched the second-gen Mini, and An 05, making it the rarest iPod Mini. And I see some on eBay. Andrew, I did not remember that.

I don't recall that either. That's crazy. That's a good question.

Okay.

Well, yeah, that was good. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me, joining us at Bloomberg for this Power On podcast. I've been on your pod before, and it was an honor to have you as my first outside guest. You're the man. Always love your insights. Always appreciative. Have loved your videos from day one. I remember you're waiting in line for the iPhone videos way back in the day.

I remember you had a big scoop. Don't remind Apple of this or maybe you're not going to get more review units. But you got your hands on the first big iOS update. I guess it's iPhone OS, right? So that was pretty damn cool.

Yes. True. True.

Okay, your review, you talked a lot about it, but I want people to go watch your video and all your other content in this. So please go wild. Tell everyone where they can watch your stuff.

All right, so my iPhone Duo review is live now. If you go to youtube.com slash at Andrew, just my first name, A-N-D-R-U, you'll see it. I've also got two videos dropping later today, one for the iPhone Duo best optimized apps and then iPhone Duo best optimized games.

Perfect.

And how did you get at Andrew for your YouTube username?

I think it's just, it's a rare name. And I knew they were launching usernames. And the second they launched usernames, I chose mine. Same thing on Instagram, at Andrew. I love it. I love it. Well, cool.

Thanks again, man.

For more from Mark, subscribe to the Power On newsletter at Bloomberg.com forward slash Power On. And follow at Mark Gurman on all social platforms. Power On is a production of Bloomberg Podcasts. Our show is produced by Alexis Hott and Keshav Pandya. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henriksen. Audio engineering by Blake Maples. Original music is by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Segura. Our video editor is Bobby Krause. Our executive producer is Amy Keene. And Cheryl Brumley is our head of podcasts. Special thanks to Nick Turner and Tom Giles.

Thank you for listening.

iPhone Duo Review + Apple’s Pre-Order Blunder With Andru Edwards

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