Apple iPhone Duo Reaction - DTNS WEEKEND

Sarah Lane (0:17)

Hey, everybody, welcome to the DTNS Weekend Edition, gratefully provided to you, and thanks for your support of our show. I'm Sarah Lane, and today, we've got a fun panel. We're going to analyze Apple's announcement of that iPhone 18 Pro, the iPhone Duo, the Apple Watch Series 12, and the AirPods 5, and everything in between. Joining me on our discussion today, again, great panel. We've got Nica Montford, Terrance Gaines, and Jenn Cutter. Nica Montford and Terrance Gaines, two halves of SnobOS podcast. You both have enjoyed many an Apple event for this. Thanks to both of you for being back with us today.

Terrance Gaines (1:01)

No problem.

Nica Montford (1:02)

Good to be back.

Sarah Lane (1:04)

Jenn Cutter, obviously, you know her from DTNS and Daily Tech Headlines. Hey, Jenn.

Jenn Cutter (1:08)

Hey, it's good to be here. It's fun to talk about Apple stuff and just Apple.

Nica Montford (1:12)

Yeah.

Sarah Lane (1:12)

You and I, I mean, gosh, I can't even remember the last time we were on a show together. We're ships in the night these days. So yeah, no, it's good to have everybody here because we all care about it.

I was thinking about, okay, what do we tackle in terms of what was announced? And I had thoughts of just going in order of how the announcement went on Tuesday, September 9th, but I think we should just start with the Duo, the iPhone Duo because that's the big one that has gotten so much press over the last couple of days, especially from publications and people who have been able to try it out at the Apple event in general. So Nica, I'll just start with you. Do you want this?

Nica Montford (1:57)

No.

Sarah Lane (1:58)

No. Okay.

Nica Montford (1:59)

All right.

Sarah Lane (1:59)

Let's talk about it.

Nica Montford (2:01)

So the thing is with the foldable phone, I always call it a flip phone because it's not really folding. It has a hinge. But for me, the point of it is, if I were to get a foldable phone, for me, the use case is using as a daily driver, basically as a phone. So I want it to look like my iPhone.

My issue honestly is with the aesthetic of it. I don't like the squished passport type of look to it. Maybe superficial, but I like what I like. But just looking at the technology itself, that looks pretty cool. The demo that they gave in the event, the device and its functionality, looks pretty good. The price tag is pretty hefty and it doesn't aesthetically look like I would want it to look, because I would mostly use this folded and not open.

So that's my whole thing with not just Apple's foldable, but with any foldable is I want it to look like my phone.

Sarah Lane (3:07)

Terrance, are you going to be arguing with Nica on SnobOS? I had a later date about this, or do you agree?

Terrance Gaines (3:15)

I agree.

I, on our show, we talked about this yesterday, and it's my week to produce the show. So the title for this week's show in SnobOS is impressive yet unattractive. What I mean by that is, same thing that Nica said, I was looking for two vertical phones smashed together. So when they announced the iPhone 17 Air last year, my, most people's assumption was, oh, they're just going to smash two of those together. Had they did that, I would have been all in. But since they tried to change the form factor, again, very impressive about why and how, and the thought process that went into why they made it passport style, and when you open it up and turns into a mini tablet, an iPad mini, if you will, impressive on how they did the hinge, impressive on how the transition, you open it up, the screens transition, impressive on the touch and why they did the touch ID versus face ID, impressive that they figured out how to put the camera, the front facing camera behind the screen and hide it to where it doesn't look as visible until you need it. All that's very impressive, yet unattractive because I'm not used to that small passport style look. So having said that, I'll probably wait until they can minimize that crease just a little bit more because we all saw some of the reviews and you can still see that crease. I thought Apple was going to nail it and you can still see it, so I'm going to wait.

Sarah Lane (4:50)

Talking about the form factor, Jenn, 5.3 inches when closed, to me also sounds small because I'm used to the iPhone Pro Max.