I’ve had the Samsung Galaxy Fold 8 since it launched, and I chose to buy it even though I knew Apple was going to launch a similar form factor foldable phone soon. The announcement of Apple’s new iPhone Duo was expected, but it made it clear to me that Apple has taken advantage of its control over both hardware and software. As a result, I immediately saw 5 things the iPhone Duo does better than the Fold 8. And no, these aren’t just obvious spec differences like a more powerful chip or better battery life. These are design decisions that could really make a big difference in the day-to-day usage experience.
Under Display Camera
The first major improvement has to do with the cameras. No, I’m not going to talk about or compare image quality. And it’s not about the rear cameras either, where the iPhone Duo features 48 megapixel main and ultrawide cameras, a similar configuration to the Fold 8’s dual 50 MP cameras. Nor is it the cover screen’s camera, which is 12 MP on the iPhone Duo and 10 MP on the Fold 8, although one difference here is that the Fold 8 has the camera in the top center of the screen, whereas the iPhone Duo has it in the top right corner.
The camera I’m talking about is the one on the inside of the phone when it is unfolded. On the Fold 8, there’s a similar camera here as on the cover screen, in the top center of the right side of the folding screen. Unfortunately, that means that it can and does get in the way of viewing various types of content, and more than once I’ve wished it wasn’t there at all, since a folding phone means you can use the main camera to take selfies anyway, so the main use of this camera would be for video conferencing, which I don’t typically do on my phone.
By the way, the iPhone Duo makes it easier to take pictures of kids in this unfolded mode as well with its Kid Cue feature, which shows some animations on the screen to get their attention, but the usefulness will depend on the kid in question.
Now, the iPhone Duo solves this camera problem by having an under-display camera here that should be mostly invisible until you actually need to use it. When you aren’t using the camera, the content covers it up. And when you do use the camera, there’s a black border around it so you know where it is. Simple and brilliant solution.
Speakers
Improvement number 2 is audio, and in particular, how the speakers are set up. The Samsung Fold 8 has both of its speakers on the top and bottom of the front or left slab of the phone. What that means is when the phone is closed, you can get stereo sound when viewing in landscape. However, when the phone is open and in landscape mode, which is the best way to view wide videos, the sound is entirely on the left side of the screen and quite unbalanced.
Furthermore, the Fold 8 only has 1 real media speaker, the one on the bottom, since the one on the top is the in-call speaker you would use for phone calls, so it’s both quieter and the quality is worse than the media speaker. This leads to sound being even more unbalanced.
The Fold 8 Ultra doesn’t suffer from this issue because you need to rotate it to maximize viewing space in landscape mode, so the speakers naturally get put on the left and right side of the phone. And although I don’t have one to verify, I read that it has 2 media-quality speakers as well.
The iPhone Duo not only has 3 speakers, but it also does a better job balancing things out by placing 2 smaller speakers on the opposite side and slab, meaning there’s one larger speaker on the top left and 2 on the bottom right when unfolded in landscape mode, the best orientation for videos. That’s even better than the situation on the Fold 8 Ultra, where the two speakers are both on the same slab side, so half the orientations still means the sound tilts to one side. With the iPhone Duo’s speaker configuration, you can get mostly balanced sound no matter if you’re in landscape or portrait orientation, and Apple even says they tried to optimize the sound to smartly balance itself depending on how you position it.
Hopefully Samsung will take some notes from this for the Fold 9.
Unfolding Experience
The 3rd improvement is all about the unfolding experience, which is something you should be doing frequently with a foldable phone. And there are a few different things here.
First of all, when you unfold the Samsung Fold 8, the screen is dark and remains so until about the halfway point, when it then turns on. On the iPhone Duo, Apple used a clever software trick to have the inner screen turn on immediately and the contents of the cover screen and left side seem to have this blurry swipe-in effect so it seems like the content is un-moving while the phone is opening. Same thing in reverse when closing. This is a small thing, but it shows how Apple is trying to improve the feel and coolness of the folding experience.
A more substantial difference is in using the phone partially folded. One of the features Samsung removed from the Fold 8 is the ability to use the phone half-open and sitting like a laptop, called Flex Mode. You can still get it to fold mostly half-way, but it is more difficult to do, and is easy to fall open if you go just a little bit too far. In addition, the software no longer adapts to support Flex Mode, so there’s not much benefit to doing this, and you might as well just use Tent Mode, where you have the cover screen facing out instead, which is a more sturdy way to use it. The reason Samsung did this is supposedly to have a stronger opening on the hinge to reduce visibility of the screen crease.
However, Apple has employed other techniques to hide the crease, including their nano-texture display, and instead decided to allow the hinge to be easy to prop open at seemingly any angle, or at least more angles than the Fold 8. That means the iPhone Duo has much better support for partially folded modes, including the laptop mode, but even a “book mode” where you just use it slightly folded while holding it like a book. The software will recognize how much of the phone is folded and adapt accordingly, which is smart.
Auto Changing States
Speaking of smart software, the fourth major improvement is automatically changing phone states. When you fold and unfold the Samsung Fold 8, it basically just makes the screen larger or smaller. Applications can use the larger screen, but that’s about it.
On the iPhone Duo, going from fully open to partially folded slides the content away from the folding area since the phone recognizes you probably want to do that if you are using it that way. Putting down the phone in tent mode can automatically enter stand-by mode and show you the clock, the weather, or other widgets, because it recognizes you might want to use it like a digital hub in that mode, at least if you aren’t watching a video. It seems like there’s even dual screen stand-by mode that lets you see multiple things at once.
And if you are watching videos, switching to laptop mode or the Fold 8’s missing “Flex Mode”, where the video goes on the top and the controls go on the bottom, is precisely the type of smart switching that Samsung seems to be missing. In summary, this 4th improvement is more about Apple’s consideration in all the different modes you can use a foldable phone in, and trying to optimize the use cases for each one, which is something Samsung can benefit from paying more attention to.
Pen Support
And finally, the 5th and final way the iPhone Duo beats the Fold 8 is in pen support. The Fold 8 does NOT support a pen. However, the iPhone Duo will be getting Apple Pencil support sometime after its release, making it even more like an iPad mini when unfolded. Although I don’t personally find much use for pen support, I know this is a big deal to some.
Summary
So with these 5 big improvements, the question is: will I be trading in my Samsung Galaxy Fold 8 for an iPhone Duo? Probably not, and not because I prefer one operating system over the other. As with all announcements, we’ve only seen the good things about the iPhone Duo currently, and how well these features and the phone overall will work is something that remains to be seen. Plus, as a first-generation product, adopting early could mean a more buggy experience than normal.
Also, the iPhone Duo is more expensive at $2000. While the Fold 8 retail price is not much cheaper at $1900, realistically you could get one for around $1200 after all the rebate deals around launch, even without entering a carrier contract. Being an iPhone, the Duo probably won’t have such good non-carrier deals. So even if the iPhone Duo is better than the Galaxy Fold 8, is it 60% better?
