We Got Our Hands on Apple’s First Foldable Phone

Nicole Nguyen (0:00)

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Nicole Nguyen (0:03)

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Imani Moise (0:34)

Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Friday, September 11th. I'm Imani Moise for the Wall Street Journal. The iPhone just got its biggest makeover since it launched almost two decades ago.

And it comes with a nearly $2,000 price tag. Our personal tech columnist got her hands on the latest model. Then, are we starting to run out of space? In space?

The rising volume of satellites and debris in low-Earth orbit has some worried about collisions. We're taking a look at whether all those satellites can peacefully coexist.

But first, foldable phones aren't new.

Samsung released its first Galaxy Fold in 2019

But they haven't exactly gone mainstream yet. And according to research firm IDC, shipments of foldables actually fell 15% in the first half of this year. Apple is hoping it can change that. On Wednesday, the tech giant revealed the newest iPhone in its lineup, the Duo. The device will cost a whopping $1,999 and start shipping on October 23rd. But our personal tech columnist, Nicole Nguyen, got an early look this week during the Duo's unveiling at Apple Park. We hopped on a call to get her first impressions of Apple's first foldable phone. So, Nicole, you actually got to try out the iPhone Duo. What did you think?

Nicole Nguyen (1:55)

When I picked it up, my first thought was, whoa, this thing is really big. I definitely have hands that are on the smaller side. But I think phones in general have just gotten too big in recent years, and this is a lot of phone. Not only is it a tablet when you expand it and open it like a book, it's 7.6 inches, which is just less than an inch shorter than an iPad Mini. So it is definitely tablet sized. When it's closed and it's in a normal phone form factor, it's squatter and it's wider. So my tiny little hands are trying to reach across the screen to type and to scroll.

I feel like I would have gotten carpal tunnel if I had used this thing for another hour.

Imani Moise (2:42)

I can relate to that. I am a fellow small hands really still holding on to my iPhone 13 mini.

But it sounds like it's quite an adjustment to use this foldable phone.

Nicole Nguyen (2:51)

You're going to have to learn a lot of different new ways to use this device. I'd say that in open mode when you're using that main big screen, it's very similar to using an iPad from several years ago. So you can have two apps running side by side and you swipe up on the app and drag it to these hotspots that automatically snap that app to one half of the screen. But it also has an interface that changes in very new and interesting ways. You can actually prop it up into this little laptop mode and type on a Note stock or word processor or watch Netflix and it can be its own kickstand. Or you can flip it over into a tent mode and watch videos on the outside. No matter how you twist and turn it, it just reorients itself automatically in the way you need to view the content, depending on how you're holding it, which I think is the most interesting dynamic of the phone. I could definitely see myself maybe one day in the future when the price tag isn't $1,999, getting a combo device that's both my main phone and this leisure content watching machine.

Imani Moise (4:07)

So besides binge watching, which is a very, very good use case, when you actually open it up, what does the bigger screen let you do that you can't comfortably do on a regular iPhone?

Nicole Nguyen (4:17)

I think multitasking is the biggest difference. I'd say 90 percent of my workflow is like a word processor on one side, and then something else on the other side. Maybe it's Slack, maybe it's a web page. But I'm usually just looking at two windows side by side.

You can definitely do that on the iPhone Duo. And so for people who are mobile jet setters, maybe they don't have an office, they're on the road. I could definitely see them being drawn to this foldable form factor as like a little mobile office.