iPhone Duo will ship without Apple Pencil support on October 23, even though Apple designed the foldable to work with a Pencil from the start. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, reporting via 9to5Mac, says Apple scrapped a custom Pencil built specifically for the device. It ran into technical problems ahead of mass production.
That custom accessory was reportedly smaller than Apple’s existing Pencils. It was designed to attach magnetically to the hinge side of iPhone Duo. Apple pulled it before production and pivoted to supporting the existing USB-C Apple Pencil instead — the same one already sold for iPad.
The catch is that support isn’t ready yet. Apple’s own website already shows Apple Pencil listed as unavailable for iPhone Duo at launch, according to 9to5Mac. The reason traces back to how the phone was built. iPhone Duo wasn’t originally designed around the USB-C Pencil. So Apple now has to write new software and run internal testing before it can turn support on. Apple said at the Duo’s unveiling that this should be ready by the end of the year. But 9to5Mac’s own reporting suggests that timeline lands closer to “fairly late” in 2026, not to an early fix.
It’s also not fully clear where the original custom Pencil’s technical problems actually sat. They could be in the accessory itself, or in iPhone Duo’s magnetic charging for it. If the fault was with the pencil rather than the charging mechanism, Apple could still bring that design back later. 9to5Mac notes it wouldn’t necessarily be abandoned outright.
For buyers, this means paying $1,999 on Oct 23 for a device that was pitched with Pencil support as part of the sell. They won’t be able to actually use one until Apple ships the software, months later. Apple hasn’t given a firmer date than “by the end of the year.” That leaves a real gap between what Apple has already promised about iPhone Duo’s hardware and what the phone can actually do on day one.
Source: Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, via 9to5Mac
