I’ve reviewed almost every Android foldable this year — here’s how the iPhone Duo compares

The Verge · Dominic Preston ·

Apple’s first foldable matches its Android rivals in a few key areas, but it falls short in others.

When I first read Allison and Nilay’s Verge review of the iPhone Duo, I was immediately struck by one of their complaints: that the cover display is too small. That’s not how the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 feels, I thought. Had they got it wrong?

After a week and a half using the Duo, I know exactly what they mean — and it’s not the screen’s fault at all. Apps that feel comfortable on Samsung’s short foldable and the similarly sized Xiaomi 18 Fold are often cramped and compact on the Duo’s cover screen, robbed of screen space by a right-hand rail that most apps don’t make use of anyway.

That’s just one of the ways that Apple’s first foldable feels fundamentally different from the Android alternatives. I’ve reviewed almost every Android foldable that was released this year, from Samsung and Google to Honor and Oppo, and I’ve been surprised to realize that the Duo holds its own against them all on hardware, but is let down by iOS itself. For now at least, Android is slicker for folding phones — though I don’t know how long that will last.

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