5 features the iPhone Duo shamelessly copied from Android foldables

It’s been more than eight years since Samsung kicked off the foldable phone era, and a lot has happened since. Motorola, Google, OnePlus, Xiaomi, vivo, OPPO — you name it — almost everyone has had a go at making a foldable. Apple, meanwhile, has spent all these years sitting on the sidelines. But then again, that’s very Apple; it rarely wants to be first. It would rather wait, watch everyone else figure things out, and eventually show up with its own take.

And after seeing the iPhone Duo for the first time, it feels like Apple was taking notes the entire time. Credit where it’s due, because there’s a lot here that I already love. The Duo looks ridiculously compact and adorable, a lot like the Galaxy Z Fold 8. The software optimization Apple showed during the event impressed me, and that barely-there display crease might be one of its biggest wins.

Still, I couldn’t shake this feeling throughout the announcement that I’d seen a lot of this somewhere before. And, well, I had. Apple had eight years’ worth of Android foldables to cherry-pick ideas from, and it definitely did some cherry-picking with the iPhone Duo.

Stylus support on a foldable

When Samsung dropped S Pen support from its latest foldables this year, I was genuinely surprised. If there’s one type of phone where a stylus makes perfect sense, surely it’s a foldable. Give me that huge inner display, and I immediately want to sketch on it, scribble down notes, annotate something, or just use the stylus instead of my finger whenever I can. That extra screen space is practically begging for it.

Thankfully, Apple seems to understand that too. The iPhone Duo supports the Apple Pencil, which means I can actually use that big inner display instead of treating it like an oversized screen for watching videos and scrolling through apps.

Of course, Apple isn’t breaking new ground here. Samsung has already shown us how useful a stylus can be on a foldable with the Galaxy Z Fold 3, Fold 4, Fold 5, and Fold 6, and the Motorola Razr Fold also supports stylus input. Apple simply took an idea that already worked and, thankfully, kept it.

An under-display camera

Open up the iPhone Duo and that gorgeous 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR display has something I immediately appreciate: there’s no notch, hole-punch, or camera cutout staring back at you. Instead, Apple has tucked the camera underneath the display, leaving the entire inner screen uninterrupted. I love the idea, especially for watching movies and series, though I’m curious how invisible that camera actually looks once I have the phone in front of me.

The funny thing is, Samsung has already been here, done that, and moved on. The Galaxy Z Fold 3 through the Fold 6 all used under-display cameras, before Samsung eventually ditched the idea with the Fold 7. And there was a pretty good reason for that. Hiding a camera underneath a display looks fantastic, but image quality has traditionally been the compromise. Samsung’s under-display cameras were never exactly known for taking great photos, which makes it even more interesting that Apple hasn’t revealed the megapixel count of the Duo’s inner camera.

Samsung has also spent its last couple of Fold generations chasing thinner designs, which makes squeezing in all the extra layers and hardware required for an under-display camera even trickier. Apple, meanwhile, is picking up the idea just as Samsung has moved on.

That’s what makes this one particularly interesting to me. Usually, Apple waits for everyone else to experiment with a technology before swooping in once it has matured. This time, it has adopted something one of its biggest foldable rivals already decided wasn’t worth keeping. Maybe Apple has finally figured out how to make an under-display camera work without the usual compromises, or maybe we’re about to rediscover why Samsung got rid of it. Either way, I really want to test it myself.

Using AI to take photos for you

Speaking of cameras, the iPhone Duo also gets a bunch of new software tricks, including Kid Cue, Duo Preview, Duo FaceTime, and Smart Take. Smart Take is the one I can actually see myself using quite a lot, especially for group photos where someone inevitably has to stay behind and press the shutter.

With Smart Take, you can prop up the Duo, get everyone into the frame, and let the phone handle the rest. Its on-device AI watches the scene and waits until everyone is actually posing before automatically taking the photo. So, if five friends are standing in front of the camera and one person is still fixing their hair or looking somewhere else, the Duo can wait until everyone is ready before clicking the shot.

And the moment Apple showed Smart Take, my mind immediately went to Google’s Magic Capture feature on the Pixel 11 series. The idea behind the two is almost the same: use AI to make sure you don’t miss the moment just because you didn’t press the shutter at exactly the right time. But they do it slightly differently. Magic Capture records video and then pulls out sharp 12MP HDR photos of moments you might otherwise miss, while Apple does almost the opposite. The Duo waits until it thinks everyone is ready and takes the photo for you. I love the idea of setting up the phone, getting into the frame with everyone else, and letting the camera figure out the rest.

Getting your kids’ attention with the cover screen

Kid Cue is another feature that immediately felt familiar, and this time my mind went straight to Google’s Made You Look. If you’ve ever tried taking a photo of a child, you probably know the struggle. You point the camera at them, call their name five times, and somehow they’ll look everywhere except at the lens.

Apple’s solution is honestly pretty adorable. Kid Cue plays Peanuts animations on the iPhone Duo’s cover display while you’re taking a photo, giving the child something to actually look at. Instead of desperately trying to get their attention from behind the phone, you can basically let Snoopy do the hard work for you.

But Google has been doing something very similar with Made You Look on its Pixel foldables since the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. It uses animations on the outer display to grab children’s and even pets’ attention while you take their photo. Apple has essentially taken the same clever idea and given it a Peanuts makeover.

Running two instances of the same app

If I’m carrying a foldable, you can bet I’ll have two apps open side by side. That huge inner screen is practically made for it. I’ll have a browser open while replying to a message, watch a video while scrolling through something else, or drag in another app whenever I need it. Once you get used to doing that on a foldable, going back to constantly jumping between apps on a regular phone feels extremely annoying.

Apple obviously gets that, because multitasking is a big part of the iPhone Duo as well. You can put two apps side by side, bring up Siri AI on one side while keeping what you were looking at on the other, and even save app pairs so your favorite combinations are ready to open again. But the feature that immediately caught my attention was the ability to open two windows of the same app. You could, for example, have two Safari windows sitting next to each other and compare two pages without constantly switching tabs.

Apple’s eight years of research has paid off

I could probably keep going, because these are far from the only ideas Apple has borrowed from Android foldables. But honestly, I don’t have a problem with that. Apple isn’t the first company to look at what its rivals are doing, pick the ideas that work, and then put its own spin on them. Samsung, Google, Motorola, and pretty much everyone else does the same thing. That’s just how smartphones evolve.

What matters to me now is what Apple has actually done with those ideas. I really want to get the iPhone Duo in my hands, put it next to my Galaxy Z Fold 8, and see just how similar the two feel in everyday use. More importantly, I want to find out whether those eight years of watching Android foldables gave Apple enough time to actually improve these ideas.

And knowing how this industry works, the copying probably won’t stop with Apple. If the iPhone Duo gets some of these things right, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Android foldables borrowing a few ideas back very soon.