iPhone Duo’s photos could pass for Microsoft’s Surface Duo ads from 2020

The name Duo

I totally understand that Apple can’t name it Fold, because that’s what every other manufacturer calls their version. Apple’s “crack marketing team” had to use the ever-so-iconic Duo from Microsoft!

The Surface Duo is a Duo because it has two identical screens, working like you have a secondary monitor. Perfect name.

iPhone Duo has one large inner screen and a smaller outer screen, but the folding OLED can act like two separate screens, with the multitasking setup (more on that later). And there are many functionalities where the one inner screen acts as two screens, while also using the front screen, such as the Kid Cue. So, doesn’t that make it a Trio, and not a Duo?

To some, the iPhone Duo may sound perfect, but to me, it’s not.

Apple didn’t invent the passport-sized dual-screen productivity device

On April 27, 2020, a bunch of YouTube creators posted a “first impressions” video of the Surface Duo, but weren’t allowed to show the software (yes, I’m foreshadowing here). Watch any of those videos, and you’ll see them raving about its hardware, especially the hinge.

MKBHD said: “I think this is the nicest hinge I’ve ever used in a piece of tech.”

He was reacting to a 4.8mm-per-side open, 9.9mm-closed device weighing 250g, with two 5.6-inch AMOLED panels joined by a 360-degree hinge, a fingerprint reader built into the side button, no outer display, Surface Pen support, and the ability to stand at almost any angle.

It’s the passport-style form factor the Surface Duo used. Apple even describes the new iPhone as similar in size to a passport. Apart from the silhouette, the designs aren’t identical: Surface Duo used two separate rigid displays with no external display, folding a full 360 degrees so one panel faces outward, while iPhone Duo uses one flexible inner display plus a 5.4-inch outer display with a conventional book-style fold. But fold the Surface Duo all the way around so only one display faces out, and you get a strikingly close, thin, flat, passport-like slab to Apple’s closed Duo.

Personally, I don’t like the asymmetric look when closed on the iPhone Duo, but it’s what the Surface Duo had too. At least there, there wasn’t anything on the front except Microsoft’s logo under glass. I loved it back then, and I wish it was still available.

Then there’s the side-mounted Touch ID. Apple spent years making Face ID central to the iPhone, and its foldable drops that for a side-button Touch ID sensor. The original Surface Duo had a fingerprint reader in its power button back in 2020, another strange moment where a 2026 iPhone goes back to an obvious solution Microsoft was already using six years earlier.

Surface Duo supported the Surface Pen and Slim Pen, and Microsoft marketed the device as a digital notebook. Samsung’s foldables still don’t offer S Pen support on the base Fold line, so Apple did clear a bar Samsung hasn’t, though stylus support on a foldable isn’t unique to Microsoft either; Lenovo and others got there too. But the fact is that there was the Surface Pro, and its pen could be used with the Surface Duo; then there’s the iPad, and its pen can be used with the Surface Duo.

Then there’s the price. Microsoft wanted $1,399 for the original Duo in 2020. Adjust for inflation, and it’s around $1,700 today. Apple wants $1,999.

You can argue the Surface Duo has no front screen while the iPhone Duo does, but you can pay extra for Apple’s expensive folio case that hides that front display, and it matches the Surface Duo perfectly. Of course, I’m being facetious.

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