It’s a little hard to review the iPhone Duo. I’ve been toting Apple’s first folding smartphone for the past week, and several apps I’ve tried to open on the sprawling 7.6-inch screen look awful. Thick, black bars on the sides, with a phone-sized app in the middle of this tablet-like display. But you likely won’t encounter this problem once the Duo is in your hands.

In the past day, a handful of apps I use regularly updated to add full support for the iPhone Duo’s screen sizes and vertical user interface elements. Instagram, Threads, Slack, and even the Google app now have navigational icons on the right rail instead of the bottom center, and the app content is better laid out to make use of the larger screen.

Developers need to target the iOS 27.1 software development kit (SDK) for full Duo compatibility. That will take some time. But it is a little maddening that some app developers, who for years have never seemed to care about optimizing their app for Android folding phones, are so quick to embrace Apple’s fold. Slack, for example, never offered the two-pane view of its desktop app in the Android version, but it’s on the Duo. C’est la vie. Hopefully, Apple’s entry into foldables will result in a “rising tide lifts all boats” situation and Android fold lovers will get to enjoy those optimizations.

In Duo Time, the iPhone Duo arrives seven years after Samsung’s first Galaxy Fold. In Apple tradition, its first entry into an existing category feels fully mature; the Duo has significantly less jank than the first few generations of its Android counterparts. The infamous crease—where the phone folds—is hardly visible thanks to Apple’s display stack and clever use of a matte-finish nanotexture screen. The phone is IP68 dust- and water-resistant (though avoid taking the Duo to the beach, as sand is notoriously detrimental to phone hinges). The software experience, barring the unoptimized apps, feels carefully considered.