3.5 days with the iPhone Duo ●

November 2, 2026

I'm about four days into iPhone Duo ownership. I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far.

I managed to get an October 23 delivery, but had a flight booked early that morning. So the Duo sat with neighbours for a week.

In the meantime, I read and watched a lot about the Duo and sporadically bothered Myke about his experience with it.

Myke was very positive. The reviews were generally favourable, too, I thought. There were certainly complaints, and John Gruber skewed more negative than I would've expected. But the impression I came away with was: first-generation product with a lot of polish and promise, and a new form factor that looked like fun.

All sounded good to me.

In the ensuing days, though, a Narrative started to build online. I started seeing people talk about returning the Duo for various reasons. “Crackgate” popped up. People were writing “reviews” after spending an hour in an Apple Store. And then it all seemed to snowball.

If you pop your head into /r/iphoneduo, it's a miserable experience. There's very little about what people are actually doing with the device. Mostly, it seems to be a vocal minority having issues and a lot of other people jumping on the bandwagon for easy internet points.

By the time I got home and switched it on, I was half expecting something flimsy and buggy, with virtually no optimised apps.

A few days in, my experience has been pretty much the opposite.

• The hardware itself feels fantastic. It's certainly got some weight to it, but that hasn't bothered me much in day-to-day use.
• Coming from an iPhone 17 Pro, I was prepared to hate the outer screen. I've actually quite liked it. Apps like Safari leave some of the right-hand side of the display unused, which isn't ideal, but for basic phone use it feels perfectly comfortable.
• Touch ID was another thing I expected to struggle with. Based on what I'd read, I immediately turned on Apple Watch authentication. It works very well. A little too well, in some cases. I've accidentally unlocked my phone in my pocket a few times. I still think Face ID is superior, but I've otherwise had no trouble with Touch ID. I'll likely turn off the Apple Watch authentication and stick with vanilla Touch ID.
• The inner screen is, on average, good. In the right light, it's phenomenal. In the wrong light, it's a little too washed out for my taste.
  • You can definitely feel the crease in day-to-day use. In the wrong light you can see it more clearly, too, if you catch it at the right angle. Neither bothers me particularly.
• The camera seems fine. In daylight, I don't see an enormous difference from my 17 Pro. In low light, it's clearly much worse. Not ideal, but not a deal-breaker for me.
• I've found the right-hand UI elements great, although I am right-handed.
• On apps, the Narrative would have you believe there are very few options. Most (if not all?) of the apps I use daily are optimised. Fantastical, Things, Reeder, Overcast, Foodnoms, Screens, GoodLinks, ChatGPT, The Outsiders, Liftin', Sequel, Mimestream, WhatsApp, and Withings are all great. Even apps like FotMob and Revolut have been updated.
  • A shout-out to Indigo. Ben said, “I know I'm tooting my own horn, but I really think Indigo blows every other social media app on the Duo out of the water.” I'd go further: it might be one of the best overall apps for the Duo.
• A few aren't optimised yet, including Runna, Proton Mail, and Microsoft Teams.
  • On the subject of Runna: if your sole product as a company is an app, you should be ready for this sort of thing day one. They haven't adopted any liquid glass conventions. I suppose they're trying to push people to Strava (which has been optimised for Duo), but they still market Runna heavily to runners. Strange. I am looking forward to moving on from it.
• Using apps side by side is a revelation. It's simple to manage, where the iPad has often been convoluted, and I've used it a lot more than I would've expected. I manually track my health habits in a Numbers document. On my old iPhone, I'd open Numbers, swipe into the multitasking view to peek at a metric in another app, then swipe back to type it in. On the Duo, I can just put Health.app or Withings on one side and Numbers on the other.
• Reading has been great. Kindle, Panels, GoodLinks, Reeder, and the like are all great. The inner display isn't quite big enough for comfortable comic book reading, but it's not far off. Certainly enough that you can catch-up on your backlog, rather than doomscrolling.
• There's room to be creative with this thing. I keep finding slightly different ways to use it and little touches I love. I haven't had that experience with an iPhone in years.
  • By way of example:
    • We had some friends over on Halloween and I wanted to keep up with a football match. Normally, I'd stream the game on my phone and lean it against something. I started to do the same on Saturday, then ended up watching on the outer screen in tent mode. I realise this is a small, relatively obvious thing, but it was really nice.
    • I left the inner display open for a while earlier and stumbled across StandBy. I'd seen it in tent mode, but hadn't expected it on the inner screen too. In retrospect, I'm sure I saw it in the marketing materials. Still, there's a lot you can stumble across. Fun.
• What I miss most in day-to-day use is the Action Button, of all things. I remember thinking it was a strange addition to the iPhone, but I ended up relying on it, mostly for the flashlight. Again, not the most novel use, but a handy one when you've got two young children and you're forever trying to cross a dark room or find something under a car seat. I hope to have that button back at some point.
• The speakers sound great to me. For listening to a podcast, at least, they sound noticeably better than the ones on my iPhone 17 Pro.
• I've definitely encountered a few software glitches, usually a slightly misplaced UI element. They've been fleeting and nothing particularly troublesome. I expect they'll be ironed out quickly.

It's only been a few days. Perhaps some of the appeal will wear off, or the washed-out look of the inner display in certain light will start to grate on me. But I don't think so.

As it stands, this is the most fun I've had with an iPhone in years. It's novel and interesting, and it's already made a few things I do every day easier.

I'm hopeful that Indigo is a model for other developers. They released an initial UI, then got hold of a Duo and immediately reworked it around what they'd learned from using the device. The result is phenomenal.

Some apps could use that sort of iteration. I'm excited to see how that plays out.

But, so far, I'm very positive on it all. And, for what it's worth, I wasn't the only one. At our Halloween party, the Duo got passed around between friends. Anecdotally, all of them wanted one.