By now you’ve seen the keynote, watched the ads, and read the early reviews. You know what the iPhone Duo’s features are. But what is it like to use it, right here at the launch?

We’re working on our iPhone Duo review, but as the Apple Stores open up today to hand over a precious few preorders and disappoint legions of would-be drop-in buyers, I wanted to share some initial impressions. Here are six things I discovered on my first day with the iPhone Duo.

Outside bad, inside great

When you have the fold folded, it’s not a great experience. Even with the home row and controls on the side, it’s the smallest iPhone display in many years, and most apps just aren’t formatted for the odd shape. Unless you’ve been clinging to your iPhone 13 mini all this time, you’re likely to find that even optimized apps, which put their controls off on the right edge to allow more vertical room, are frustratingly small.

If you are an iPhone mini diehard, the screen won’t bother you, but the massively fat and chunky form factor will. What good is a small screen when the phone is so thick and wide that it’s definitely not going to fit in the pocket of a pair of tight jeans?

The actual display quality is fine, and so is the outside selfie camera. But that outside screen is for quick-hit info checking, firing off a short reply, dialing a phone number, or asking Siri stuff. That said, there is one huge benefit: the keyboard. While it takes up like half the vertical space, the extra-wide shape makes the whole keyboard a lot larger and easier to use. It’s even wider than an iPhone 18 Pro Max keyboard, and the extra few millimeters really help.

However, the inside display is a delight and makes me want this same nanotexture treatment on all iPhones. It has a lovely paper-like feel to the touch and seriously cuts down on glare, while still remaining bright and sharp. Granted, blacks aren’t as deep as on a glossy screen, but it’s still very good, and the trade-off is totally worth it for all the glare (and crease) you don’t have to deal with.

When using the inner display, the Duo feels super thin and light, comfortable and easy to use. The more time you spend with the Duo unfolded, the more you love it.

A status bar and Dynamic Island upgrade

Without a camera cutout in the middle of the display (inside or out), Apple moved the Dynamic Island to the upper right corner. It surrounds the front camera when closed, and just pops up out of nowhere on the inner display.

It’s actually in a really great spot, expanding down vertically as necessary. I prefer it to the centered one, and it makes me want Apple to stuff the camera up in the corner on all future iPhones.

There’s a new status bar element beneath it that, again, is a step up from current iPhones. A bar at the top shows battery (with percentage if you like), the Wi-Fi symbol in the middle is your Wi-Fi strength, and a series of four dots underneath is your cellular strength. It’s a brilliant little mash-up that again, should make its way to other iPhones.

No information is lost, space is saved, and it takes all of two seconds to get used to the change. Plus, you can tap on it to show the entire Control Center (so you don’t have to do an awkward edge swipe), which is already my favorite thing. When you do, the symbols separate and expand to show more detail.

StandBy any time

Another trick the Duo can do that other iPhones can’t is enter Standby mode when not connected to power. Just lock the screen and then stick it in “tent” posture, and it becomes a nice little smart clock for your desk. Or open it partially like a book, and you get a two-page Standby mode view.

It’s clever, it’s fun, and it makes the “put my iPhone down on the desk while working” thing actually useful. I can see this being the preferred way for Duo owners to place their phone when out with friends—keeping their phone out of their hands while still letting them see the clock or showing a conversation-starting photo album.

Dear Apple, please give every iPhone with an always-on display the option to go into Standby mode when not connected to power. Even lying flat on a desk, it would be nice.

The cameras are (mostly) fine

The 48MP main camera is not as good as that on the iPhone 18 Pro, even if you ignore the aperture blades. It starts to get a little noticeable in low light. But it’s close, and it’s certainly good enough. The ultra-wide is as good as Apple’s best, and as useful as ever for macro shots.

Weirdly, you get like half the Pro camera controls from the iPhone 18 Pro. There’s no aperture control (of course), no histogram, no shutter speed. But you do get white balance, manual focus with focus peaking, and the new photographic styles with adjustable skin texture and grain.

The front-facing selfie camera has the center stage functions (auto-rotate and auto-zoom) introduced in the iPhone 17 line with the new 18-megapixel sensor, but this isn’t that sensor. It’s the older 12MP sensor, and the dynamic range and clarity just aren’t as good. It’s fine, but the newer 18MP sensor on the other recent iPhones is better.

But that inside selfie camera. Oh. Oh no. No, that’s a potato. It takes blurry, awful 4MP photos that have a bunch of post-processing to over-sharpen and restore some detail. It’s kind of good enough for a FaceTime call in good lighting, but it’s absolute trash compared to the selfie cam since iPhone X. If this is the cost of an under-display camera, I don’t want it.

Here’s a neat trick, though: When you’re in selfie mode, you can flip the whole Duo around, and there’s a “Slide to show camera” bar that flips the interface to the outside screen while turning off the inside screen so you don’t accidentally interact with it. Then you can take a selfie with the 48MP main camera. It’s pretty awesome, really.

The apps matter most

There are three classes of iPhone Duo apps, and you’ll discover all of them while learning how crucial they are in the first five minutes of using your iPhone Duo.

Old garbage apps: These are apps that haven’t been updated for the dynamic sizing of iOS 27. They have a black bar on the side of the outside screen and appear centered against a black background on the inside screen (though you can swipe to move it from the center to either side). These apps suck on the Duo. They put their interface buttons on the bottom, which makes them feel even smaller, and they waste all that space.

A lot of old apps, small apps from small companies (like a local bank chain), and apps with notoriously bad UI design, such as most car apps or insurance apps. It’s just a terrible experience, and there are a lot of these that probably won’t ever be updated. Thankfully, you can force these apps into split view with a Duo-optimized app that’ll make the awful experience slightly better.

iOS 27 apps: Apps that updated to use iOS 27’s resizable and reconfigurable layout fare a lot better. When you use them on the inside screen, they fill the width and often give you a sidebar, or split info between an index and content. The Tesla app just updated to use this, as does Microsoft Outlook and Robinhood, among others. It’s something of a stopgap, but is a signal that the developer is working on a proper Duo app. In fact, Robinhood says a Duo-optimized app will be available on launch day.

You still get interface elements that don’t use the left/right sidebars, and they don’t understand all the “poses” for Duo, but at least you can go from iPhone app outside to iPad app inside, essentially, and it’s really nice.

Duo-optimized apps: Oh, these are fun. When an app uses the Duo-specific developer frameworks, it will put the interface elements out of the way on the side, mitigating the tiny outside screen (somewhat). Inside, it will fill the display, morph to make correct use of portrait and landscape view, and many times, move stuff away from the crease when you slightly fold the Duo into “book” form.

This is how the Duo is meant to be used, and it’s really great when it’s there. Most of Apple’s apps work like this, as you would expect, but some don’t (I’m looking at you, Wallet and Apple Store). Third-party apps that have updated to Duo-optimized apps all feel great. MLB, Spotify, Slack, Yelp, Instagram, TikTok, Things, Fantastical, Carrot Weather…there are plenty of popular apps with full Duo support, and the experience when you use them is awesome.

But just as many important apps don’t work well on Duo at all. Given the book-sized open position and glare-free, paper-like coating on the display, you would think ebook readers would prioritize Duo support. But Kindle is flat-out busted, and glitches out when you try to show the menu in reader mode. (I actually had to close the Duo and return the app to the outside screen just to get out of the page view!) The Libby app is in desperate need of an update, too.

The app situation is currently all over the place. Gmail supports the iOS 27 reactive sizing, but has a poor layout for widescreen. Google News is an old-style iPhone app that looks and feels terrible on the big screen. Video apps like Netflix, Paramount+, and Prime Video have nice Duo optimizations, but Hulu and Disney+ do not. Lyft, yes. Uber, no.

It’s the Wild West right now, and the situation changes daily. The number of apps you use that are Duo-optimized (or at least iOS 27 optimized) is a crucial part of how much you’ll like using this phone, and it’s a quickly moving target.

I miss Face ID already

You’ve seen a lot of early reviewers complain about the lack of Face ID. They are correct.

We get emails all the time from people who miss Touch ID and want it back. I guess they forget what it was like to unlock their iPhone with gloves, or wet/dirty hands, or to have to reach to a certain spot, or to have their lock screen notifications jump away because you accidentally opened your phone when you unlocked it.

All those experiences come right back with the iPhone Duo. Except one—Apple added a delay on the lock screen. When you put your finger on the side button at the lock screen, your phone unlocks so you can see your notifications, but it doesn’t open yet. A little message shows a fingerprint icon and “Rest to Open” at the top of the display, and your iPhone opens to the home screen after a short pause with your finger on the button.

In the first hour with the Duo alone, there were dozens of situations in which I wanted to fill in a password, download an app, or make a purchase that required me to authenticate with Touch ID. And every single time, I was reminded that I now had to do something where Face ID would simply automatically authenticate. I registered both thumbs and my index finger with Touch ID, and that certainly helps, but it’s still slower and more awkward than Face ID.

Touch ID is more annoying on the iPhone Duo than it was on old iPhones or on an iPad, because those devices are usually held just one way, so the sensor is always in the same place. You get a muscle memory for it. The Duo is held both ways: in one hand and in two. Portrait and landscape. Folded like a tent, folded like a book, unfolded, closed… It’s a strength that there are so many ways to use it, until you need to touch the damn side button for Touch ID.

Stay tuned for Macworld’s full review of the iPhone Duo as I continue my testing.