Apple's $2,000 iPhone Duo has drawn early interest less from its hardware than from a wave of apps built specifically for its foldable design, according to a review of the device. The phone, Apple's first entry into the foldable market, starts at $2,000 and has been criticized in initial reviews because many mainstream iOS apps were not ready for it at launch. Those apps display with black bars, misplaced controls or the need to be enlarged with a tap, similar to early iPhone apps running on iPad.
The apps that were built for the Duo take advantage of its two different screen sizes rather than simply stretching to fill them. Netflix, one of Apple's hand-picked Duo launch partners alongside the MLB app, NYT Cooking, Slack and the calendar app Fantastical, lets users scroll short-form Clips on the outer screen and then open the device to keep watching on the larger matte inner display. The content adapts automatically to the new screen size as the device unfolds.
Deck-Man, a music player designed by indie developer Vidit Bhargava at a hackathon and previously known as Duo-Man, recreates the operation of a Walkman cassette player. Users browse albums presented as cassettes and load them into the player, then control playback with play, pause, fast-forward and rewind, complete with clicks and cassette sounds recorded from a real portable cassette player. With the Duo open, the cassette plays on one side of the screen next to album imagery; when closed, the interface resembles the front of a Walkman.
TypeDraw functions as a personal notebook styled like a virtual Moleskine, complete with an elastic closure band. Users can type in their own handwriting or choose from a dozen fonts designed by creator Phil Traut, select lined, grid or dotted paper and pick an ink color, and they can also draw and sketch. Pages curl when flipped, and the elastic band produces a twang animation when pulled.
Wakeout, a former Apple App of the Year winner, offers short movement breaks that play more like games than exercise. It has been optimized with separate interfaces for each position the Duo can take: closed, open, tent mode or sitting open like a laptop.
The enthusiasm for such apps reflects the broader software development community that has kept users tied to the iPhone, with developers remaining active, creative and often building for iOS first. The Duo's appeal appears to rest on apps that could only exist on a hinged, foldable device, including Deck-Man's nod to growing consumer demand for retro technology.
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