Apple debuts $1,999 passport-shaped foldable phone called Duo

Apple on Wednesday unveiled a $1,999 foldable phone called Duo, introducing the biggest change in years in the company’s flagship product.

The Duo is sized and shaped like a passport, with rounded edges.

It opens into a horizontal, 7.6-inch-wide (19 cm) screen that also can be viewed vertically.

There is a smaller single screen on the front, when the phone is folded.

When open, it is Apple’s thinnest phone, the company said.

The folding phone event, the first with new CEO John Ternus at the helm, is the most noticeable overhaul of Apple’s flagship product since it removed the physical home button from the iPhone X in 2017.

The iPhone brought in $209.6 billion, or just over half of Apple’s sales, in its most recent fiscal year.

Apple positioned the iPhone Duo as a business productivity device, showing how it would manage Zoom calls with multiple participants and a broader view of the Slack messaging app.

The Duo’s larger screen will support multiple app windows at once, a move aimed at productivity that Apple has made with some of its iPads.

Ternus criticized existing foldables as awkward and poorly suited for common tasks such as scrolling and video viewing, saying the Duo was designed to deliver an iPad-like experience in a pocket-sized device through a custom hinge, dual displays with a consistent aspect ratio, and a new titanium body.

“It’s entirely new and at the same time remarkably familiar.

A similar size to your passport, it feels familiar to hold and comfortable to use with one hand,” Ternus said.

Apple said the iPhone Duo will feature the A20 chip to drive its displays and also a new C2 modem chip designed by Apple, part of its move away from Qualcomm’s wireless data chips.

“Apple has created a new premium growth opportunity, opened up another revenue stream and injected fresh momentum into the iPhone business,” PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore said.