Apple’s marketing chief has now said out loud what Android foldable watchers already knew: the leakers got the iPhone Duo’s aspect ratio right. Greg Joswiak, speaking with Apple CEO John Ternus in a joint interview with Tom’s Guide and TechRadar about the iPhone Duo, was asked about Android foldable rivals and conceded that point.
Joswiak said Apple believes the Duo’s wider 1:1.4 aspect ratio is the answer to foldable designs that resemble two phones awkwardly stuck together. He also said Apple kept the project relatively secret. On the leak itself, he put it this way:
There were a lot of coincidental instances of people finding that an interesting aspect ratio. And this is when we said, okay, we’re going to really keep this one locked down – and it worked.
That is Joswiak describing how Apple handled the aspect ratio after leakers had already landed on it. For Android readers, the admission is the story: Apple is measuring the Duo against existing foldables, and its marketing chief is granting that the 1:1.4 shape was not a surprise to the people watching those phones.
Apple’s cheap-feeling plastic criticism of rival foldables
Asked about Android foldable rivals, Ternus described rival foldable displays as kind of cheap-feeling plastic surfaces that do not feel good to touch and are kind of wavy and wrinkly. He said the Duo’s nano-texture finish is Apple’s answer, calling it beautifully flat. That is Apple’s characterisation of competing foldable screens, not a hands-on verdict from this site.
Ternus also said the inner screen’s top layer is polymer, not glass, which meant devising a new way of making Apple’s nano-texture finish. In other words, Apple is arguing that the inner panel is still a polymer surface — the same class of material it criticises on rivals — and that the nano-texture work is what is supposed to make it feel different. Slack, Netflix and Zoom will be optimized for the Duo at launch.
Price defence and launch dates
The iPhone Duo starts at $1,999. Ternus, asked about that starting price, said yes, it is more expensive than the other phones, but Apple thinks it is great value. Joswiak said it is called iPhone Duo for a reason, describing it as like two products. Those are the executives’ defences of the figure; the figure itself is $1,999.
Pre-orders begin Friday 16 October, ahead of a 23 October launch, at $1,999. Apple said the gap between the Duo’s announcement and launch mirrors the three-month gap the iPad received in 2010, to give third parties time to adapt. That window is the practical timeline for Android users watching the other side: the comparison Apple just made in public is already on the record, and the Duo itself is not buyable until those October dates.
Sources: MacRumors, 9to5Google
