Dansday
Apple closed years of speculation on Tuesday, using its "Surprise and shine" event in Cupertino to launch its first foldable phone. The rumours were right about the hardware and right about the name: it is called the iPhone Duo, and it starts at $2,000.
The Duo uses a book-style folding design, opening from a 5.3-inch external screen to a 7.8-inch internal display. Apple says the body measures 4.5mm when unfolded, and the phone runs the new A20 Pro chip with 12GB of memory. Storage starts at 256GB, with higher configurations pushing the price close to $3,000.
That price puts the Duo above every phone Apple has shipped before, and the company is not pretending otherwise. The foldable is positioned as a status device first, the kind of product that argues Apple can still be the company that does something before everyone else does it well.
The second long-running rumour also landed, and it landed bigger than expected. Both iPhone 18 Pro models get a variable aperture main camera, not just the Pro Max as earlier reports had suggested.
The mechanism is genuinely mechanical. Apple built the aperture from six laser-cut blades, each thinner than a human hair, made from a polymer composite chosen for the balance between flexibility and durability. The blades move automatically with the scene, opening to let in roughly 50% more light once the room gets dark.
What that buys you is optical background blur instead of software guessing at it. Depth-of-field comes from the lens rather than a segmentation mask, which is the part phone cameras have been faking for a decade. Video gains from it too, since aperture becomes another exposure control and allows slower shutter speeds outdoors without losing natural motion blur.
The rest of the event filled in the usual slots. Apple Watch Series 12 and updated AirPods shared the stage, but neither was the reason anyone was watching.
Both headline rumours being true on the same day is rare, and the foldable arriving with a name nobody had settled on is the detail that will stick. The iPhone Duo is expected to go on sale as early as October.