The iPhone Duo brings back three things I miss on the Galaxy Z Fold 8

iPhone Duo arrived today as Apple's first foldable, and its spec sheet reads like a checklist of everything Samsung has removed from the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the two generations before it. Apple Pencil support, a camera hidden under the inner display and a hinge that holds an angle all ship with the phone, starting at $1,999.

Apple Pencil, a hidden camera, and a hinge that holds its angle

Apple announced the iPhone Duo today with a 7.6-inch inner display, a 5.4-inch outer display and the A20 Pro chip driving both at once. Pricing starts at $1,999 for 256GB, with pre-orders opening October 16 and the phone reaching buyers a week later on October 23.



Three things stood out to me in the announcement, and they happen to be the same three things Samsung has been taking away. Apple put a FaceTime camera beneath the inner display that stays hidden when it is not in use, engineered the hinge from more than 100 components so the phone can be propped up without a tripod and confirmed that Apple Pencil with USB-C support is coming to both displays later this year.



Both displays share the same aspect ratio, so content scales between them without reflowing awkwardly, and the whole phone carries an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance. That last detail matters more than it sounds, and I will come back to it.

Samsung spent two generations subtracting from the Galaxy Z Fold

Samsung did not remove all of this at once. The S Pen and the under-display camera both disappeared with the Galaxy Z Fold 7 in 2025, which makes the Galaxy Z Fold 6 the last Fold to have either one, and we covered the switch to a punch-hole cutout when it was still a rumor.

The reason given was thickness. The digitizer layer that makes stylus input work adds height to the display stack, so cutting it helped Samsung get the Fold 7 down to 8.99mm folded, and the company has not put it back since.

It should be noted that Apple is not simply restoring something Samsung once had. The S Pen only ever worked on the Fold's inner display, while Apple Pencil with USB-C is set to work on either of the Duo's screens.



Flex Mode is the newer loss, and it is the one that needs a caveat. Samsung removed it from the standard Galaxy Z Fold 8 this July but kept it on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Flip 8, so the claim going around today is right about the wide Fold 8 specifically rather than the whole 2026 lineup.



Our own numbers suggest readers are not fine with any of it. We asked you back in July whether the S Pen was worth paying extra for, and roughly three in four of you said yes, which is not a narrow result.

At the same time, the Fold 8 line has been selling around 30 percent ahead of the record-setting Fold 7 in the US a month after launch, according to Samsung's own figures. So the uncomfortable read is that people say they want these features back while buying the phones that do not have them, and from Samsung's side there is no commercial pressure to reverse course. An executive telling reporters the company is "exploring" an S Pen return is not the same as committing to one.

Still, our reviews have been circling this for two generations now. Our Galaxy Z Fold 8 review flagged the Flex Mode removal as odd given the wider screen, and pointed out something else worth knowing: the Fold 8 carries an IP48 rating, which protects it from larger particles but not from fine dust. The iPhone Duo is IP68.

Our Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra review called the missing stylus a missed opportunity on an 8-inch panel with almost no crease, and Samsung is not only behind Apple here. Google's Pixel 10 Pro Fold already has full IP68 protection, and Motorola's Razr Fold ships with a working stylus.

More on the iPhone Duo and the Galaxy Z Fold 8:

• Read our full iPhone Duo announcement coverage
• Galaxy Z Fold 8: everything you need to know
• Apple iPhone Duo

What this actually changes for Galaxy Z Fold 8 owners

The practical picture for anyone shopping right now is narrower than the feature list makes it look. Apple Pencil support is not there on day one, it is coming later this year, so the iPhone Duo goes on sale October 23 without the single feature Fold owners have missed the longest.



The hinge and the hidden camera are there from the start, though, and at $1,999 the Duo costs exactly $100 more than the $1,899 Galaxy Z Fold 8 while adding dust resistance the Fold 8 does not have. For a first-generation product going up against a seventh-generation one, that is a strange position for Samsung to be in.

Competition like this is exactly what foldables needed

Samsung's US account spent the afternoon on X joking about Apple reheating its leftovers, and the post had already passed 3.3 million views by the time I sat down to write this. It is a fair enough jab from a company that has been shipping foldables since 2019 while Apple stayed out of the category entirely.



I'm sorry, Sammy, but Apple cooked. Reheating leftovers is a fair description of a company copying your features, and it is a strange thing to say about a phone that arrived with three things you removed.

I am not about to argue that the iPhone Duo is the better foldable, because nobody outside Apple has lived with one yet, and Apple's first attempt at any piece of hardware tends to have rough edges that only turn up after a few weeks. What I do think is that Samsung needed this to happen.

Hopefully the Fold 9 is where Samsung acts on that. I would personally love to see Samsung treat the S Pen as the thing that makes a Fold a Fold again, rather than the thing it trades away for another fraction of a millimeter.

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