Will the iPhone Duo send folding smartphones mainstream?

Dezeen Weekly

The episode explores two major shifts in design and architecture: the hands-on reveal of Apple's new foldable iPhone Duo and the controversi

Key takeaways

• The Apple iPhone Duo features a highly satisfying mechanical hinge and a matte inner screen designed to hide the display crease.
• Apple's strategy focuses on entering the foldable market only when technology is mature enough to avoid the 'gimmick' reputation of predecessors.
• The iPhone Duo maintains a consistent aspect ratio, transitioning from a passport-sized outer screen to an A4-like internal display.
• Donald Trump announced that his proposed Washington D.C. triumphal arch will function as a military complex for drones and snipers.
• Legal challenges against the 'Arc de Trump' argue that the project could compromise the nearby Arlington Military Cemetery.

Main topics

• Apple iPhone Duo
• Foldable Smartphone Market
• Arc de Trump Controversy

Notable quotes

Their skill is entering a market when the technology is developed enough so that it works really well.

Conclusion

The episode highlights how both consumer technology and political arch

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:03) Welcome back to Dazeen Weekly. I'm Jennifer Hahn. Speaker 2 (0:06) And I'm Nat Barker. And for this week's episode, we're joined by Dazeen editor Tom Ravenscroft. Welcome back to the pod, Tom. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1 (0:12) Tom is joining us today because he's one of very few people in the world who has actually held Apple's new foldable iPhone in their hands. So he's going to tell us all about whether it lives up to the hype and how it all works. Speaker 2 (0:22) After that, we'll be talking through the latest with the triumphal arch of Washington, D.C., better known as the Arc de Trump, following a bizarre announcement from Donald Trump over the weekend. Speaker 1 (0:31) But let's start with the fun stuff. Tom, you went to a briefing at Apple's HQ in the UK to see their new foldable phone in person and talk to their new head of engineering about how they designed the mechanism behind it. First things first, what did you think of the phone? Speaker 3 (0:44) Surprisingly great. I was very dubious of the idea of a folding phone. People have probably seen other folding phones and it's just reeks of gimmick Speaker 1 (0:55) and kind Speaker 3 (0:56) of like no one actually needs a folding phone. You don't want to... get your phone out of your pocket and then have to unfold it to look at it. So I went in with, Speaker 1 (1:04) yeah. Speaker 3 (1:06) A healthy Speaker 1 (1:06) dose of scepticism, I guess. Speaker 3 (1:08) Yeah. As soon as I picked it up, it was great. Speaker 1 (1:12) I Speaker 3 (1:12) reckon I spent like 10, 15 minutes just opening and closing it. It's kind of, the mechanism is great. It's kind of very Apple. It feels, everything about opening and closing it feels very right. Like satisfying, Speaker 1 (1:28) kind of? Yeah, Speaker 3 (1:29) super satisfying. It just works really nicely. Like the physical mechanism is great. And also, for people who haven't seen the Duo, the way it works is that when you get it out, the outside has a screen on it, like a passport size is how it's described. So the outside of the passport has a screen on it. And then when you open it, about kind of a third of the way through opening it up, that screen and what you have on that screen is transferred. into the inside of the book. And then when you snap it open, that's then just a bigger screen. Speaker 2 (1:59) So yeah, it just works really, really nicely. And why are we talking about it on the podcast, Tom? Why is it a big news story this? Because this isn't the first folding phone. I think Samsung brought one out in 2019. Google Pixel, Honor, Motorola, Oppo, they've all got them. So why is the Apple iPhone Duo a big enough deal for us to talk about it on the podcast? Speaker 3 (2:20) I think basically Apple have a reputation of entering a market. kind of at the right time. That's their kind of like USB. That's their thing, isn't it? There were MP3 players before the iPod. There were smartphones before the iPhone, smartwatches before the iWatch, you know, but their skill is entering a market when the technology is developed enough so that it works really well. Speaker 1 (2:42) Maybe apart from that headset. Which headset? The Vision Pro. Exactly. Oh, the Vision Pro. Yeah. Speaker 3 (2:47) The Vision Pro, yeah. But again, the Vision Pro, they waited, you know. Yeah, but then was it worth the wait? But it's still that the aim was the same, right? Which is like not weighed into the VR market before the market was kind of established and they could put something out that they were happy and proud of and worked. And I think probably some of the previous iterations of folding phones had problems with them that Apple would argue this one doesn't. And Speaker 2 (3:14) I suppose the implication as well is that Apple... are a company that have the ability to trigger a paradigm shift in a product category, right? There were smartphones before the iPhone, but now all smartphones are basically the iPhone. There were smartwatches before the Apple Watch, there were earbuds before the AirPods, but now those are the kind of archetypal products in each of those categories. Speaker 1 (3:37) Although is this really different enough from other folding phones on the market to be redefining the category? I feel like it does pretty much the same thing, but like maybe with a more satisfying and less buggy mechanism. I don't know. I Speaker 2 (3:47) think that's probably a reasonable question. I think that most folding phones tend to be tall and thin in shape. This one is slightly different in that it's when it's closed, it's like. kind of the size of a passport, right? Albeit thicker than that. So it's a bit more like a notebook format. Although that is the same as Samsung's most recent folding phone as well. So I think there is a reasonable question about whether this product is quite as much of a kind of quantum leap forward to revolutionize the product category. The Speaker 3 (4:16) aspect ratio is important. Like, so the passport size means that when you open it, it's the same aspect ratio open as it is closed. As in, it's basically A4. Speaker 1 (4:25) shrunk Speaker 3 (4:26) down when it's closed and then bigger when it's open. Speaker 1 (4:29) Oh, I see. So like your Speaker 3 (4:31) interface is always the same dimensions. So you're not going from like tall and thin to like, you know, square. You're going from A4 to A4. So kind of mentally you're always in the same space and both screens are the right ratio. Speaker 1 (4:45) Although part of the appeal, right, is that you can use it as a split display. Once you've got the centre display, you could sort of use the top one for watching something and then the bottom could be... Speaker 3 (4:54) I don't think... The keys Speaker 1 (4:55) or something like that, right? I don't Speaker 3 (4:57) think that's how I would use it. No, but that is Speaker 1 (4:59) like one of the USPs. I think it's the first iPhone that will let you run like two apps at once and all this. Which I Speaker 2 (5:03) think is potentially useful. I think it's massively useful. I hate when I have to put in my bank details. I have to send my bank details to somebody on WhatsApp. My bank app kind of disappears for privacy reasons when I open another app. So I like the idea Speaker 1 (5:16) of Speaker 2 (5:16) a split screen. Speaker 3 (5:17) When they were showing it to me, they also, you can drag, like, you can have your photos open and messages or emails and drag from the photo straight into the thing. So I can have like a drag and drop, like a bit of like a iPad functionality. And Speaker 2 (5:29) the screen doesn't have to be fully open like a TV, does it? You can have it partially open almost like it's... Speaker 3 (5:34) Again, I don't think I never, for the half an hour I was playing with it, I never went for that half mode. I think I would use it like 80 % of the time, it'd be your phone and you just... get it out of your pocket and you look at the normal screen and use it as you do your normal phone. And then if you want Speaker 1 (5:52) to Speaker 3 (5:52) watch something or you have a document you need to look at or you want to look at something in a bit more detail, then you would kind of click it open. Or if you're sat on the sofa just playing with your phone, you know, like scrolling through Instagram, then maybe you'd do it. Giant Speaker 1 (6:04) Instagram, exactly what the world needed. Speaker 3 (6:07) Yeah, but I reckon most of the time I'd be using it as a normal phone and kind of like on occasion use the bigger. Speaker 2 (6:14) I think lots of people do use their phones for watching stuff quite a lot of the time, don't they, on public transport and what have you. Reviewers online have definitely echoed what you've said, Tom, and really raving about the motion of opening the screen, not just from a kind of mechanical point of view, but also the software aspect of it as well, where it feels like you're kind of just opening something up as opposed to flipping to a new view. that icon that you were looking at when it was in the folded version, you don't have to search around the screen to see where it was because intuitively it's right where you would expect it to be. Speaker 3 (6:48) Yeah, it means pretty simply it seems to work very well. Like it's super intuitive, like moving between the two screens. Like you said, it's not going from, you know, one thing to a completely different display. Everything just migrates, is probably the right word. Like from the outside screen to the inside, super... neatly your brain doesn't have to reset like what am i looking at here it's just like bam also the mechanism is great it feels really nice like it opens at the right rate it's got a really good level of resistance at the beginning and Speaker 2 (7:20) then yeah when you close it it's got a really nice little Speaker 1 (7:23) apple Speaker 2 (7:23) engineers and designers talk about a custom variable talk profile and those words mean absolutely nothing to me i don't know about you guys but apparently that is what is behind this satisfying action that you're describing there Tom? Speaker 3 (7:36) I mean it sounds like it means that the amount of pressure you need to move it varies. When it's flat and open, the first bit of folding takes a lot of pressure. But I imagine because you don't want to feel like you're holding a book, you want to feel like you're holding a tablet. And so it takes a lot of pressure to get it first bit of fold and then the first like third is quite a lot of folding and then near the end it just clips. so maybe that's what they make sense to me maybe that's a translation of the uh yeah because obviously you Speaker 1 (8:05) don't want it to accidentally close yeah when you're using it the whole point is like but once you do want to close it you want it to do it pretty and i think Speaker 3 (8:11) that's one of the problems of previous folding phones is that they in their kind of ipad mode in their like tablet mode they didn't feel like solid they felt like they were like always kind of about to you Speaker 2 (8:25) know Speaker 3 (8:25) fold whereas this one definitely feels like a an iPad-ish or a big phone. And Speaker 1 (8:30) is there something about the matte screen that's new and different as well? The inside screen is matte, right? Speaker 3 (8:36) I Speaker 2 (8:36) think it just Speaker 3 (8:37) hides the crease better. Speaker 1 (8:40) Yeah, so this is Speaker 2 (8:41) a problem with foldable phones, right? When you have your foldable