GoKawiilEvery big purchase in your life is a roll of the dice, but buying the first version of something always feels extra risky. The new iPhone Duo looks cool, with its passport-style hinge and massive displays, but buying it is still a risk. You’re spending at least $2,000 on something you’ll use for multiple hours every day over at least the next 12 months, which is enough to give just about anyone a moment of pause to check in mentally and make sure this is the right decision.
The risk is real, but the rewards could potentially be felt by millions for years to come.
Apple/Screenshot by CNET
Apple is nowhere near the first to make a foldable phone, but this is the first iPhone that will bend (more than once, at least). That’s an interesting place to be, due largely to the folks who tend to own iPhones. Samsung is in its seventh year of releasing foldables, and I maybe see one or two of them in the wild when I wander major cities or busy airports. The folks who have them love them, and they’re happy to tell their friends about the cool things these phones can do, but the audience is largely early adopters, comfortable with things that aren’t fully baked.
Feedback from someone who isn’t tech-obsessed will always be more valuable to Apple than to a lot of its competitors. Features will be created and retired from that feedback, and it will eventually appear on most other folding phones.
My favorite example of this is actually another Apple product, the Watch. The first Apple Watch had some fitness features, but was largely focused on the idea that you could leave your phone behind because that’s what the competition was doing already. Instead of trying to replicate your phone in watch form, right down to the tiny keyboard seen on other smartwatches at the time, Apple focused on its fitness tracking and health monitoring features. They quickly became the most popular.
By the time the third-gen Apple Watch was announced, GPS and cellular features were now being shown off as a way to make those fitness features better. The Watch was no longer about replacing your phone. Now that we’re at Apple Watch Gen 12, fitness is basically all anyone talks about.
The iPhone Duo can be propped half-open to easily watch movies and access controls. Abrar Al-Heeti/CNET
The next six months are going to be important for the future of Apple’s contribution to the foldable phone market, because the audience response will help shape the next iPhone Duo. Popular third-party apps will become native features, accessories will be made to address situations that haven’t happened yet and current features will be copied in every direction. It benefits everyone if the majority of the folks providing early feedback and getting excited about new ways to use this phone are outside of the standard group of IT folks, business execs on weekly flights or whoever is going to watch that front screen for 44 hours.
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