The iPhone Duo does not offer Face ID, a telephoto lens, or an action bar. You might already be aware of the unavailability of these three features if you have been following our coverage of Apple's first foldable. Shockingly, the device has one more compromise that is going to affect your FaceTime experience on it.
The iPhone Duo doesn't have the FaceTime Eye Contact setting
Apple offers a FaceTime-related setting called Eye Contact that uses machine learning to adjust your eyes subtly during a video call in real time so that it appears you are looking directly into the other person's eyes, instead of at their face. It was introduced with iOS 14, meaning the iPhone XS and all later devices, including the 7-year-old iPhone 11 up to the latest iPhone 18 Pro, are compatible with it.
Interestingly, the feature is missing on the iPhone Duo. A MacRumors reader was the first to spot that the toggle is not present on the foldable iPhone when they noticed that their eyes were looking "a little off" during a FaceTime call. We can also confirm that the toggle is not present in the FaceTime setting page of the foldable.
FaceTime setting page in the Settings app. | Image by PhoneArena
Which of the following compromises is most shocking to you in the iPhone Duo?
3 Votes
Why is the setting absent from the iPhone Duo?
You might think that the lack of Face ID and a TrueDepth sensor is the culprit here, but that's likely not the case, as the feature is available on my iPhone SE 2, which, like the iPhone Duo, lacks Face ID. The unavailability might instead be related to the position of the under-display camera on the inner display. You see, it is located in the right corner, which is generally not where the other person's face appears during a FaceTime call.
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It would be really challenging for the Eye Contact setting to correct such a massive sideways offset compared with correcting the gaze on a normal-sized iPhone like the iPhone 18 Pro Max. It's also worth pointing out that on the foldable iPhone, the camera position changes depending on whether the device is folded or unfolded. Apple also mentions on its support page that "On iPhone Duo, Eye Tracking works only when the device is fully open. It isn't available when the iPhone Duo is partially folded."
The under-display camera is "trash"
As mentioned above, the position of the under-display camera is likely the reason why the FaceTime Eye Contact setting is missing from the iPhone Duo. But early users of the foldable appear to have issues with the camera as a whole. Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, mentioned in his review video of the foldable iPhone that the photo quality from this particular camera is really "trash."
A similar sentiment can be found on online community forums like Reddit as well. Replying under a post that basically talks about the user's initial experience with the Duo, a user commented that the FaceTime camera is bad. Most of us are likely not going to take selfies from the inner display camera, but its quality will likely affect how we appear on video calls.
Comment about poor performance of FaceTime camera. | Image by Reddit
It's worth noting that Samsung also used to offer an under-display camera in its devices like the Galaxy Z Fold 6, but due to its poor performance, the company decided to abandon it in the Galaxy Z Fold 7. It will be interesting to see if Apple also takes a similar step in the future.
Could the Eye Contact setting be added with a software update?
If you regularly use FaceTime, then the unavailability of the Eye Contact toggle is likely going to bother you. The only good thing here is that, unlike Face ID and the telephoto lens, it is a software-based capability. That means Apple could introduce it to the iPhone Duo with a future iOS update.
Until the feature is added, it is surely going to remain another reason for me not to pick the iPhone Duo, along with its other concerns like high repair costs and the ongoing screen-cracking problem.
Aman Kumar is a news writer at PhoneArena covering Google Pixel phones, Android features, AI-powered smartphone tools, and mobile tech news. Before joining PhoneArena, he spent over five years writing about consumer technology for publications like MakeUseOf, How-To Geek, and Guiding Tech. His current daily drivers are the Pixel 10 and Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus, while his red iPhone SE (2nd gen) remains a personal favorite. Aman also appreciates bold smartphone experiments and still considers the Nokia N-Gage one of the industry’s most iconic designs.
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