iPhone Duo a godsend for mini iPhone fans, minus the price

After years of fans complaining that the beloved iPhone mini disappeared, Apple brought back a pint-sized phone that costs as much as a MacBook Pro. I want one.

You may remember me as the author of nearly 3,000 words about how the iPhone 16e seemed like a stupid product. You also may remember that a large portion of that rant was, more or less, me yelling about how Apple should have never discontinued a small iPhone SE or the iPhone mini.

After I wrote my iPhone 16e piece, the one thing that surprised me was the number of people who also missed the iPhone mini. There were a lot of you.

I learned that we often had similar traits. A lot of us are women who prefer smaller phones for ease of use.

A lot of us are slow to upgrade, even before the iPhone mini. And a lot of us were people who didn't live on our phones, either.

The iPhone mini, it seems, was a perfect mix of small enough to take anywhere while still being capable enough to do daily tasks. And there were a lot of us who missed it.

But, apparently, it was still an underperformer, and just like the iPhone Plus-sizes, it was entered into the annals of history as "a nice idea, but the customer base has spoken" product. I fully expected Apple to shitcan the idea of a small iPhone for the rest of eternity.

But then came the iPhone Duo.

Pretty big ambition in a pretty small package

Initially I thought the iPhone Duo, back when we were all calling it the iPhone Fold, was going to be two iPhone Airs stuck together. But then at some point enough credible leaks came out suggesting that the iPhone Duo would be a squat little guy.

I didn't want to like it. And, from a cursory search on the internet, it turns out that I'm far from alone.

I will say, there are still a very vocal subset of users who are still begging Apple to bring back the iPhone mini proper. I am one of those people.

If Apple would have announced the iPhone 18 mini, I would not even look at the iPhone Duo. Seriously.

But I live in a world where I didn't get an iPhone 18 mini announcement. I got an iPhone Duo announcement, and now I have to live with everything that entails, starting with the price.

It costs $2000. Minimum.

I hate how much iPhones cost. Any of them. Point at a brand new iPhone you can buy right now. They're all too expensive.

It doesn't matter if it's the iPhone 17e, the iPhone Duo, or anything in between. Unfortunately, that's just the time we live in.

Normally I'm somewhat insulated from needing to worry about what an iPhone costs. I update pretty rarely, so if I buy an iPhone for $800 and it lasts me 5 years, I can justify it as costing about $0.44 per day to participate in society.

Is it ideal? No, but all things considered, I've spent more on less.

But if I upgrade my iPhone now, and I've only had it since October, my price-per-day of owning it skyrockets, and then I have to deal with the idea of plopping down well over 2 grand for the base model.

The timer resets. Even if I do keep the iPhone Duo for five years, that's $1.10 a day.

There's a lot competing for my Apple hardware money. I could also take $2000 and buy myself a 14-inch MacBook Pro. I think that's maybe the part that is killing me here.

So, the sane thing, of course, is to just not buy the iPhone Duo. And currently, that's where I'm at.

But I would also like to point out...

It's so small

My iPhone 17 is not a small phone. And, as I highlighted in my initial piece about switching from the iPhone 13 mini to the iPhone 17, it doesn't fit in my pants.

A while back I had to go to a semi-formal event, which required me to throw on a pair of slacks. I tossed my phone in my pocket, not thinking about how it didn't fit.

I realized I'd forgotten something upstairs, took up over the steps, and about three-quarters of the way up my iPhone 17 pressed eject on the whole situation. My reward for stowing my iPhone in the pocket of my dress pants was a brand-new crack in my screen protector when my phone caught the doorjamb at the bottom.

My iPhone 17 takes tumbles. I knew it would. I'm a clumsy person, almost comically so. It happens, and I really can't place any fault on anyone but myself.

But for years, my iPhone 13 did not swan dive out of my pockets. If I dropped my iPhone 13, it was because I was doing something wrong.

And I could return to that life. An iPhone Duo would fix me.

Okay, it wouldn't fix me, but it would be, if nothing else, spatially convenient. If you haven't caught on, a lot of this is being written tongue-in-cheek.

Pocketgate aside, it would be nice to have a phone I could use one-handed again. I'm not sure an iPhone Duo is a one-hand phone, though.

It really is the small things you miss the most. One-handed operation is the main thing I miss about my iPhone 13 mini, and I especially miss about my iPhone 5c, which I still think is the best iPhone ever invented.

If you've got normal-sized hands, this probably isn't a concern for you. But for someone whose hands run small, even compared against the average U.S. female's hands, it's just a little convenience that I miss.

And I am far from alone.

Sending a quick text while I drink coffee at the kitchen window, navigating Maps while carrying a shopping bag, or even just playing Solitaire while I stood on a cramped bus. Those are things that I haven't been able to do since making the switch.

Are they life-changing? Have I been mortally inconvenienced by their absence?

Absolutely not. But I'm still allowed to miss them.

But it's also a small iPad, sort of

I know I've been talking a lot about using the iPhone Duo in the closed orientation. Which, to be clear, is probably how I'd use it most of the time.

But it is a foldable, and it would be dishonest of me to pretend like that aspect also didn't appeal to me. It absolutely does.

I love my iPad. My iPad also happens to be an iPad mini.

Some of you may remember that I used to have an iPad Air, but after years of heavy use and abuse, I had to send it to an upstate farm to run free with other iPads. That is to say, it went the way of my iPhone 13 mini.

The battery was bad. It was struggling to keep up with modern apps. The jump from iPadOS 18 to iPadOS 26 was especially unkind to it.

Procreate didn't work, Hearthstone didn't work, and it wasn't even a particularly great device to use Freeform on anymore. Coupled with a shot battery, I felt justified in trading it in.

And I traded it in for an iPad mini, which I absolutely love. Using Procreate is a bit more cramped, sure, but it's not as big of an adjustment as you'd think.

And its ultra-portable size means I'm more likely to take it to the coffee shop, library, or park. It fits in my smallest purse, which is novel. I can put both my phone and a tablet in my purse now, and that loadout has served me well.

If an iPhone can also be an iPad, why have two separate devices?

And if that were the case, dear reader, I would probably just trade in both my iPad mini and my iPhone 17, and you wouldn't be reading this.

But the iPhone can't also be an iPad. At least not yet.

There are two big caveats to why I can't fully endorse switching from the iPad mini + iPhone 17 combination to solely the iPhone Duo. Oliver has also talked about this.

The first is that the iPhone unfolding isn't going to magically make iPad-only apps work on the iPhone. I'm looking at you, Procreate.

Yes, Procreate Pocket exists. No, it's not the same thing.

And even if Procreate brought its full-sized app to the iPhone, that doesn't fix the second problem for me. The iPhone Duo only supports the Apple Pencil USB-C.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy that the iPhone Duo will support an Apple Pencil. I've long bemoaned the fact that the Apple Pencil doesn't work with the iPhone.

But if you're going to suggest that the iPhone Duo is at least tablet-adjacent, it should support the Apple Pencil Pro. Or an Apple Pencil that features pressure sensitivity.

And I know it's partially a charging thing. The Apple Pencil USB-C can charge via USB-C, while the Apple Pencil second generation onward and Apple Pencil Pro require a magnetic connection. I understand that.

But Apple, please. Please just release some sort of weird magnetic bar that charges the Apple Pencil separately. They've existed separately for a while, but there's no reason Apple couldn't make one.

As an artist, as a person who loves the iPad, and as a person who you could easily beat $2,000 out of: I am begging you, Apple, just make it work with the Apple Pencil Pro.

So should you buy the iPhone Duo?

The better question is: do I think Apple has unfairly targeted me, specifically, by releasing a tiny iPhone that is almost a tiny iPad?

Yes, absolutely.

Ultimately, like everything in life, it really comes down to use case. If you live on your phone, it's probably an easy buy.

I could see this being an easy sell for someone who travels for work a lot and is heavily reliant on iOS apps and wants a bit of breathing room on screen. I could see it being an easy sell for someone who plays a lot of games on their iPhone over their Mac or a dedicated console.

I could see it being an easy sell for people who have been iPad-curious but never saw the point in owning both an iPad and an iPhone. I mean, I can't relate; I think the iPad is the best product Apple makes, but I do understand those people exist.

The iPhone Duo is going to be an interesting product one way or another.

Gut feeling, and at least Mike says that I tend to be right on these as it pertains to Apple's entire audience. I think it's going to be massively successful in ways that other foldables haven't.

I think a big part of it is going to be that there are a lot of people who are Apple loyalists who were going to pick up whatever it was Apple released because they were early adopters. These will be the people who bought the first Pro Max, the iPhone Air — you know the type.

But I think there will be a significant number of people from my demographic. That demo includes people who don't live on their phones, people who miss the iPhone mini form factor, people who would like the option of both a small and a medium-screen without needing to carry two devices.

All of this people will at least take a look at financing options and try to make the math add up. You could always use Apple Upgrade, too, though I'm personally against leasing anything, especially a smartphone.

Now, I'm not sure what the conversion rate between "interested" and "oops, now I'm relegated to six months of eating beans-and-rice, but look at my iPhone, it folds in the middle" is going to be. Again, gut feeling, I think it's going to be higher than one would expect.

As it stands, right now, I'm still mostly sure that I won't be getting an iPhone Duo. $2,000 is a lot.

But I wouldn't rule it out entirely.