The iPhone Duo is doing what I wish the Apple Vision Pro had done

As an avid proponent of XR (Extended Reality), I can’t help but feel a slight twinge of envy on behalf of the Apple Vision Pro, however. For all intents and purposes, it really feels like that the iPhone Duo is doing everything that I had wished for the Vision Pro to do when it launched in 2024.

Everyone’s talking about the iPhone Duo

I’ve said it before and I still believe it to be a true fact that whenever Apple enters an industry, it changes it completely. Now that the company has finally made a foldable iPhone, it’s literally everywhere you turn.

The iPhone Duo isn’t just populating the front pages of tech sites, it’s plastered all over mainstream media as well. Reporters are going on and on about how Apple has revolutionized the very concept of a smartphone. It hasn’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that many believe it has.

The iPhone Duo has also infiltrated meme culture. People are joking about being able to engage in twice the amount of “doomscrolling” by having two different social media apps open on each side of the Duo’s internal display.

Is this the first time that you’ve been able to do such a thing on a phone? Of course not. But that’s the thing, Apple rules the narrative because of just how big it is.

For people in the United States in particular, where Apple reigns supreme, this might be the first time they’ve even considered what a foldable phone can do. Apple has brought foldables into the eyes of the general public because the general public could not care less that others have made foldable phones prior to the iPhone Duo.



The Galaxy Z Fold 8 didn’t get even a fraction of the attention that the iPhone Duo has gotten, despite having the same form factor. Simply put, people care a lot more about something when Apple does it. That’s when that particular thing becomes worth paying attention to.

Apple plays heavily into this, of course. The company very cleverly always markets its products in layman terms. You don’t get milliamp-hours measured in numbers or details on display resolutions, you get “all-day battery life” and “Retina Display”. There are no 120 Hz screens, they’re called “ProMotion” displays instead.

Apple breaks tech down into terms the general public can understand. In return, it gets rewarded with enough attention to make its biggest rivals red in the face. Seriously, Samsung, stop it with the Twitter posts.

This is where the Apple Vision Pro failed

Granted, when the Vision Pro first came out, it was all over the news as well. Like the Duo, Apple’s MR (Mixed Reality) headset was for many people their first introduction to this world.

In addition, other manufacturers rushed to release rival products of their own. Famously, Samsung announced the Galaxy XR headset, which looks awfully familiar to the Vision Pro.

Unfortunately, given how small the market for VR is and just how much the Vision Pro costs — $3,500 in the U.S. and more in other regions — the headset never took off. Apple hasn’t abandoned it completely, yet, but for all intents and purposes, it is dead.

It was most likely the cost that did it in, at least that’s what it seems like to me. The important thing is that the Vision Pro did not achieve the fame that the iPhone Duo is getting nowadays. It failed to bring about a renaissance of VR.

And as someone who desperately, desperately wanted to see that happen, I can’t help but feel a little let down. Apple, just drop the price on the headset. Come on.

How and why did the iPhone Duo finally come to be?

• Apple believed it could do foldables better
• The moment Apple knew it was time for the iPhone Duo