The iPhone Duo Costs More Than a Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra And a MacBook Neo Combined

Apple has launched the iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone, and the India price starts at Rs 2,99,900 for the 256GB model. It goes up to 2TB for Rs 4,49,900, comes in star white and night sky, and pre-orders open on Friday, October 16 with the sale starting Friday, October 23.

India is in the first launch wave alongside the US, UK, China, Japan and about 70 other markets, which is not something Apple has always done with a brand new product line.

That price needs a moment. The Galaxy Z Fold8 starts at Rs 1,79,999 and the Fold8 Ultra at Rs 1,99,999. Apple has walked into India's foldable market and priced its first attempt a full lakh above Samsung's most expensive book-style foldable, and I am not even mentioning the 2TB variant.

What Apple actually built

Opened, the iPhone Duo is thinner than the iPhone Air, which makes it the thinnest iPhone Apple has made, with a 7.6-inch inner Super Retina XDR display that is 50 per cent larger than the iPhone 18 Pro Max screen. Closed, the 5.4-inch outer display gives you 90 per cent of the screen area of an iPhone 18 Pro.

The detail that matters more than either number is that both displays share the same aspect ratio, so content scales proportionally instead of jumping around when you open the phone. But Apple isn’t the first one to solve this problem.

The inner display gets a nano-texture finish, which cuts glare. And Apple says it also minimises how visible the crease is. Both panels have ProMotion, Always On and 3000 nits peak brightness. The FaceTime camera under the inner display stays hidden when it is not in use.

Touch ID is in the side button, which is the first time Apple has shipped Touch ID on a flagship iPhone in years. But note that there’s no Face ID - which we’re used to over the years.

The build

Apple says the Duo is made of Grade 5 titanium with a mirror-polished enclosure and a 3D-printed hinge cover. Ceramic Shield on the back, Ceramic Shield 2 on the front with three times better scratch resistance than the last generation IP68.

Whether all of that survives two years in an Indian pocket is a question that will be answered over time, and we will only know when review units have been folded a few thousand times.

The cameras do things no other iPhone can

There is a 48MP Fusion Main camera with an integrated 2x optical-quality telephoto, and a 48MP Fusion Ultra Wide that is the same unit as the iPhone 18 Pro models. Video goes up to 4K120 in Dolby Vision, Cinematic effects can now be applied after capture at up to 60fps, and Audio Mix can isolate music.

iOS 27 has been rebuilt for it

Split View lets you run two apps side by side on an iPhone for the first time. You can open two windows of the same app, save app pairs, and talk to Siri AI on one half while reading on the other. These are features you have seen on the iPad in the past.

Lock Screen controls, the Dock and app navigation have moved to the side to free up vertical space, and the Dynamic Island has been redesigned to sit vertically along the edge of both displays. Netflix, Zoom and Slack are already optimised. Apple Pencil with USB-C support arrives later this year.

Performance and Battery

The A20 Pro is the same chip as the iPhone 18 Pro, built on a 2nm process, connected directly to a custom vapour chamber through a chip package Apple says is inspired by its M-series design. It claims up to 35 per cent better sustained performance than the iPhone 17 Pro, a CPU 20 per cent faster than the A19 Pro and a GPU 40 per cent faster.

There is one battery on each side, working as a single unit. Apple rates it at 31 hours of video on the inner display, 44 hours on the outer, and 24 hours of mixed use. Fifty per cent charge takes around 20 minutes wired or 30 minutes on MagSafe.

The iPhone Duo is eSIM-only worldwide. There is no physical SIM tray, in any market, including India. Apple points out that Airtel, Jio and Vi all support eSIM, which is true.

iOS 27 does add iPhone Handoff, which lets you move the same number between two iPhones on supported carriers, but it’s not in India as of now.

So who is this for?

Not the person cross-shopping a Fold8. At Rs 2,99,900 the iPhone Duo is not competing with Samsung on price, it is asking whether the form factor plus iOS is worth a one lakh premium to people who were never going to leave Apple anyway. The novelty of owning an Apple device that once used to be a thing in India wore off over the last few years due to easy ownership options - this one seems to bring that divide back. There will be iPhone owners and then there will be iPhone Duo owners.

Jokes aside, this will definitely find its users once it hits the market. It will serve the same crowd that Samsung’s folds have been serving since the last eight years.