The iPhone Duo starts at $1,999 and ships October 23. The reviews are in, and the loudest complaint is not the price. It is that Apple put everything on the right side and left-handed people cannot move it.
What you get for $1,999
- A20 Pro chip, iOS 27, dual-battery setup
- 5.4-inch outer screen, 7.6-inch inner screen, both AMOLED at 120Hz and up to 3000 nits
- 48MP Dual Fusion camera system
- IP68 water and dust rating
- Over 250 grams, which is heavy
- No dedicated telephoto camera
Reviewers agree on two things: the crease is genuinely hard to see, and the hinge is good. Those are the hard parts of a foldable and Apple got them right.
The left-handed problem
This is the complaint that keeps coming up, and it is not a nitpick.
Apple dropped Face ID for this phone and put Touch ID in the right-side button. Camera Control is also on the right edge. The dock runs along the right side of the screen, on both the inner and outer display. The toolbars and controls sit there too.
You cannot flip it. There is no setting that moves the interface to the other side.
Face ID never asked anything of your hands. A button on the right edge does. For the roughly 10% of people whose good hand is the left one, every unlock is now a small adjustment.
One user on Reddit put it this way: having the unlock sensor and key controls stacked entirely on the right edge “feels like a direct personal attack on the 10% of us who are left-handed.”
The foldable body makes it worse. It is wider than any iPhone before it, so every reach across the screen is longer.
The rest of the honest criticism
The weight. Over 250 grams is a lot of phone in a pocket. People who carry it all day notice.
No telephoto. At two thousand dollars, a missing zoom lens is a real omission. The iPhone 18 Pro has better camera hardware for less money.
The unknowns. Nobody knows how this hinge holds up in year three, because year three has not happened. Every foldable buyer is volunteering for that experiment. Phone launches lean hard on the pitch, which we got into when Google put Trevor Noah and Steph Curry behind an $899 handset.
Apple is not the only company making expensive bets on hardware people did not ask for. Rockstar is pressing the GTA 6 soundtrack to vinyl while refusing to ship the game on disc. The most common verdict from reviewers who are not selling anything: if you want performance and a camera, buy the 18 Pro and save $800. If you specifically want a phone that opens into a small tablet, this is the best one Apple has made, because it is the only one.
The BeezLoop Take
It is not a ripoff. It is an expensive first-generation product, which is a different thing, and people who buy first-generation hardware are paying to be early. That has always been the deal.
The left-handed thing is the part that should actually bother people, and not because of the hardware. Buttons have to go somewhere. But the dock, the toolbars and the controls are software, and software can move. Android foldables let you shift the interface. Apple shipped a $1,999 phone where one in ten buyers cannot put the controls on their side of the screen, and that is a choice somebody made in a meeting.
Dropping Face ID makes it sharper. Face ID worked for everyone, including people with limited hand use. Replacing it with a right-edge button is a step backward on accessibility, sold as a step forward on design.
The fix is a software update, and Apple has done exactly this before when enough people complained. Whether they bother depends on whether the 10% make enough noise before the news cycle moves on.
The question
Two grand for a phone that will not let a tenth of its buyers move the buttons. Is that a design decision or a shrug? And would you still buy it?
Sources: Geeky Gadgets · NeoTeo hands-on · Yahoo Tech · Gadget Review
