Apple on Wednesday unveiled its first foldable phone, called the iPhone Duo, a device that opens like a book into a wide screen. The announcement marks the biggest change to the iPhone since it was introduced in 2007, and an entry into a category that Samsung has dominated for years.
In its announcement, made by Apple’s new CEO, John Ternus, at the company’s Cupertino, California, headquarters, Apple emphasized that it took time to develop the idea after rivals embraced it years ago.
“Others have created foldables that just feel like two phones awkwardly stuck together,” Ternus said in the livestreamed event. He described the Duo as having “a larger display that feels as natural and intuitive as iPad.”
Ternus said it was the “largest display ever on an iPhone, while still fitting easily in your pocket.”
Apple said the device would sell for a base price of $1,999. Preorders would start Oct. 16, and the device will be available at stores on Oct. 23, the company said.
Once opened, the double-wide screen is 50% larger than the size of the iPhone Pro Max and measures 7.6 inches on the diagonal, said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing. He said the device is made of titanium, has speakers on the top and the bottom, and initially will come in two colors: “star white” and “night sky.”
Apple said the iPhone Duo is actually two screens: an internal screen that’s visible when it’s opened like a book, and an external screen on the outside. The external screen is about 90% of the surface area of an iPhone Pro, Joswiak said. Videos of the device showed that the screen is usable even when the phone is not fully unfolded.
“You can use it in any orientation or pose,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. He said users could “set it on the table and watch a show hands-free on the outer display without a stand.”
The larger internal screen has given app developers and users new display options, according to Apple’s demonstration. People can view two websites at once, open two apps side by side, or allow content to scale to the larger size.
“You can move an app over to one side and launch a second app on the other for powerful split-view multitasking. Or launch a second window of the same app, like Safari, for comparison shopping,” Federighi said.
The dual screens could also be helpful when taking photos, the company said: People can take selfies with the device’s rear camera, and when they’re taking photos of other people, their subjects can see themselves in the outer display and check the framing.
The shape is also unusual: When folded, the iPhone Duo looks like a large D with two rounded edges, a design choice that one of the Apple presenters said “invites you to open it.”
Apple said the device has an integrated array of magnets for a “satisfying and secure closure” when it’s folded up. And the company said it is bringing back its “Touch ID” fingerprint-identification system for securing the iPhone Duo, with an authentication button on the device’s side.
The iPhone Duo also has two batteries — one on each side — but they operate as one, the company said. It estimated battery life at 31 hours when using video playback on the inner screen, 44 hours when using the outer display and 24 hours when using both screens equally.
The iPhone Duo announcement, described by Ternus as “one more thing” in a phrase coined by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, capped a day of product announcements by Apple.
Ternus and other employees announced the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, which include incremental changes to the product lines like new colors and a new ability to customize the voice of its Siri artificial intelligence assistant.
The company highlighted increased battery capabilities in the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, which it says charge faster than previous generations and have over 24 hours of battery life.
Other changes include a feature called “Apple Reference Image,” which the company said could be used to prove the authenticity of an image in an era when AI-generated content is becoming ubiquitous.
The company also said it was improving the aperture control on the iPhone camera and the device’s thermal management, which is designed to prevent overheating.
Ternus inherits a company facing increasingly serious competition in phones and pressure to show that it can still drive the upgrade cycles that made the iPhone the most profitable product in consumer electronics.
Wall Street investors appeared to shrug at the iPhone Duo announcement, which was widely expected ahead of Wednesday’s event. Apple shares were down 1.9% in afternoon trading, lower than when the livestream event started.
A foldable iPhone is Apple’s first genuinely new iPhone form factor in nearly two decades. The appeal of the devices is often about their size — some foldable phones expand to be as large as a tablet, while others are marketed for how compact they are when they fold up.
Apple is known for launching products into existing markets and quickly taking over market share, as it did with wireless headphones and smartwatches. Samsung has cornered the foldable phone market since 2019, building niche demand for the product that shipped 19.6 million units in 2025, just a fraction of overall smartphone sales.
On Monday, Chinese tech companies Huawei and Xiaomi launched their own foldable phones, priced at $2,980 and $3,725, respectively.
Fans of foldable devices have worked to attract converts and dispel consumers’ potential concerns, including about durability: If it can fold, does that mean it can break more easily? Livestream videos posted online claim to show users folding some devices 200,000 times.
So far, though, foldable phones have struggled to break through to a major success in the mobile market.
The idea of a flexible display has been around for decades. In 2007, the same year Apple introduced the iPhone, a company called Polymer Vision released a prototype of a foldable e-reader called Readius with a grayscale display. The company shuttered in 2009.
