Apple finally did it. At its “Surprise and Shine” event, new CEO John Ternus unveiled the iPhone Duo, Apple’s first foldable, with a 5.4-inch outer screen opening to a 7.6-inch inner display, a near-invisible crease and a properly slim design. It starts at $2,000 for 256GB and climbs to $3,000 fully loaded. The obvious question for most people is not “is it lovely” (it is) but “is it worth two grand”, and a big part of that answer is what the AI inside can actually do.
The chip and the AI story
The new phones run Apple’s A20 Pro with dual neural engines and a vapour chamber for cooling, hardware clearly built with on-device AI in mind. The headline software pitch is a smarter, more conversational Siri as part of Apple’s ongoing Apple Intelligence push. That is the bit to watch sceptically: Apple has promised a genuinely capable Siri before and underdelivered, so treat “more conversational” as a claim to verify, not a fact, until it is in hands.
Who it’s actually for
Let us be honest about the price. At $2,000 to $3,000, the iPhone Duo is a status object and an early-adopter toy first, and a practical AI device second. The foldable form factor is genuinely useful for anyone who wants a tablet-ish screen in a pocket, and the dual neural engines mean on-device AI features should run fast and privately. But if your interest is purely the AI, you do not need a $2,000 folding phone to get Apple Intelligence; the cheaper iPhone 18 Pro will run most of the same tricks.
Our take: buy the Duo if you want the foldable and can absorb the price, not because of the AI, which will land on cheaper models too. The interesting long game is Apple putting serious neural hardware in everyone’s pocket. Whether the software finally lives up to it is the question that has dogged Apple Intelligence from day one, and the Duo does not answer it, it just wraps it in a gorgeous, expensive hinge.