SYDNEY — The queue formed before the doors opened. At 8 a.m. on Friday, outside the first Apple Store in the world to start the day, customers waited to buy something Apple had never sold before: a folding iPhone.
The iPhone Duo, Apple’s first foldable phone, went on sale Friday in the United States and more than 70 other countries. It starts at $1,999 — and if you don’t already have a pre-order, you probably can’t get one. Within minutes of pre-orders opening last Friday, Apple’s estimated delivery dates had slipped to late January 2027.
Simon Krishnan, a 48-year-old engineer, was among the first through the door in Sydney. He paid A$3,899 — about $2,734 — for a 512GB model. “This is a bit of a luxury item for me, because it’s so expensive, but I just think, you know what? Life’s too short,” he said.
In Shanghai, 26-year-old Liu Wei queued outside a central Apple store from 6 a.m. He already owns a foldable phone from Xiaomi. “I’ve used Apple products for many years and I have more trust (in the brand), so I bought one on launch day to try it out,” he said.
The device itself is Apple’s thinnest iPhone ever when unfolded, with a 7.6-inch inner display and a 5.4-inch outer screen. Both screens run ProMotion with 3,000-nit outdoor brightness, and a nano-texture layer is meant to cut glare and hide the crease. The enclosure is titanium, the front screen gets Ceramic Shield 2, and fingerprint authentication — Touch ID — is built into the side button, a return for a feature Apple dropped from its flagships years ago.
Inside is the A20 Pro chip, which Apple says delivers up to 20 percent faster CPU performance and 40 percent faster GPU performance than the A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 Pro models. There are two 48MP rear cameras, an under-display FaceTime camera, and 4K120 Dolby Vision video. Prices run from $1,999 for 256GB to $3,199 for 2TB, in two colors: Star White and Night Sky. Full specifications are on Apple’s official iPhone Duo page.
Getting one on launch day, though, was close to impossible without planning ahead. Some Apple retail staff were told to warn customers against visiting stores without a pre-order on Friday, with walk-in stock expected to be essentially nonexistent. Reports pointed to manufacturing partners struggling to meet Apple’s quality standards, and the company set a two-per-customer order limit in the US.
The Duo arrives just ten days after Apple’s ‘Welcome Home’ event, where the company unveiled the HomePad, a new HomePod mini and a new Apple TV 4K — but the foldable is by far the bigger bet.
The launch is also the first major test for John Ternus, Apple’s new chief executive. Ternus, the former hardware chief, took charge in September — and unveiled the Duo barely a week later. The device’s reception will be read as an early verdict on his leadership.
It also lands at a delicate moment in China, the world’s largest smartphone market. The country has logged six straight quarters of declining smartphone shipments, squeezed by soft consumer spending and rising memory costs. Apple’s market share there has nevertheless rebounded, as some buyers trade up to premium devices while others hunt value at the low end — squeezing mid-range brands. The Duo is a bet that the premium trade-up has further to run.
Why this matters: Samsung and Huawei have sold premium foldables for several years, but the category never broke out of its niche. Apple has a habit of arriving late and then defining the category — it did it with tablets and smartwatches. If the Duo succeeds, the folding phone stops being an experiment and becomes the industry’s next mainstream form factor, with consequences that ripple outward: display and hinge supply chains, app developers who must now design for a 7.6-inch unfolding canvas, and rivals forced to justify their own prices. CNN’s week-long review of the device offers the counterweight: many apps are still built for “that little rectangle,” and several of the Duo’s headline features have existed on Samsung and Google phones for years. At $1,999 — as expensive as Apple’s latest 14-inch MacBook Pro — this is a luxury wager in a world still squeezed by the cost of living. Whether enough buyers agree will decide whether foldables finally go mainstream.
The phone reaches 28 more countries and regions on October 30.
