iPhone Duo against Fold 8: seven years of foldables, still no Siri AI

Apple presented the first folding iPhone on 9 September, and the most interesting number is not the price. The iPhone Duo goes on sale in Austria only on October 30, one week after Germany and the first 70 markets. The second interesting number: the new Siri AI, the completely rebuilt assistant, is missing in the EU. The most expensive iPhone ever is sold in Europe without the new assistant, in the middle of the running regulatory dispute with Brussels.

Presented on 9 September 2026, open for preorders from 16 October. Sales in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and 25 further markets start on October 30. (Quelle: Apple Newsroom)

The hardware: Apple solves the two old folding problems cleanly

Inside, a 7.6-inch display folds open with 50 percent more area than the iPhone 18 Pro Max, while the outside keeps a 5.4-inch screen with 90 percent of the area of an iPhone 18 Pro. Both panels carry the same aspect ratio, ProMotion, Always On and up to 3,000 nits, so content scales proportionally when you open the device. That is the answer to the argument Android foldables have been carrying since 2019: apps break, because the outer format differs from the inner one.

Apple's answer to the crease, the most visible argument against the format, reaches beyond mechanics. Over 100 parts sit in the hinge, titanium in grade 5, among them carrier plates of carbon fibre, a titanium plate and a lamination with viscoelastic adhesives that lets the layers slide against each other while folding. On top comes a nanostructure with a microlens surface that makes the kink less visible. Ceramic Shield on the back, Ceramic Shield 2 on the outer display, IP68. An A20 Pro with a vapor chamber drives it, one battery per housing half, both counted as a single unit: 31 hours of video on the inner screen, 44 hours on the outer one, 24 in mixed use. A SIM slot no longer exists; the Duo is an eSIM-only device worldwide. Pencil support should still follow this year, which makes it the first iPhone of any kind that takes a pen.

The software side shows what Apple intends with the second display: Split View was not possible on an iPhone before, now it runs, including two windows of the same app, app pairs can be saved, and Netflix, Zoom and Slack are already adapted. Duo Preview puts the live image on the outer screen for the people in front of the camera, Smart Take fires once everyone is in pose, and Kid Cue plays Peanuts outward so children look into the camera. Both cameras shoot with 48 megapixels, Touch ID moves to the side button, and the FaceTime camera disappears under the inner display.

Mrwhosetheboss, two weeks after the presentation, with the device in hand, video titled I wasn't ready. 16 million views by the end of September.

The foldable market: 3.4 million devices, minus two percent

Samsung has been in this category since 2019, with more than a year of field testing ahead of Apple. The Z Fold 8 cost 1,999 euros list at market launch and two months later was quoted well below that on the street. (Quelle: File via Wikimedia Commons)

The category has not grown in seven years. Roughly 3.4 million folding phones shipped worldwide in the second quarter of 2026, two percent fewer than in the previous year. Huawei holds 48 percent of that, Samsung 15, Motorola 13, Honor 12. The market hangs on China, where Apple stands under pressure, and Apple enters at the upper edge of a segment that Samsung defines with a list price of 1,999 euros for the Fold 8, the Ultra at 2,199 and the Flip8 from 1,299 euros.

In Austria the market counts, not the list price

The real difference between the two devices shows up in the street price, not the data sheet. On Idealo.at, the Fold 8 was listed from around 1,329 euros on 24 September, two months after market launch and under half the list price of the Duo. The Fold 8 Ultra is quoted at Geizhals from 1,433 euros. Samsung's retail partners accept discounts on folding phones, because otherwise the devices sit on the shelf: minus two percent a year is the receipt for that. Apple pushes into a shrinking segment at 2,319 euros, and the times suit whoever dictates the prices: the memory crisis is pulling every list price upward anyway, Apple's own included. The post on the memory crisis shows how far that goes.

List price against street price, end of September. Apple's calculation carries the premise that the list price stays the price. (Quelle: Apple Store Austria, Idealo.at, Geizhals.at, retrieved 24 September 2026)

Siri AI: the regulatory dispute sticks to the device

The strangest footnote comes free in Europe: Siri AI, the heart of the new Apple intelligence, is struck from the EU for the time being. Apple's reasoning: the Digital Markets Act gives AI providers access to the device that Apple is not willing to answer for, and the EU Commission rejected Apple's own counterproposal of a sealed-off Trusted System Agent. In the US, Siri has daily usage limits and sits partly behind a paywall, as Trending Topics reports, which leaves open whether an EU version ever arrives or whether the regulation was only the most visible reason. For the buyers in Austria who pay 2,319 euros without a contract, what remains is a device carrying the promise of an assistant that elsewhere soon comes with a meter on it.

Who buys this, who does not

The Duo is Apple's attempt to resell the niche as a productivity device between iPhone and iPad: Pencil, Split View, saved app pairs. That is not a device for the price. It is a device for people who need two screens and still want to carry only one. Everyone else, and that is the plain answer before October 30, has been getting the better price-to-performance ratio for years: the Fold 8 has been in stores since July, the street prices have their two months of experience, and what a folding iPhone is worth in everyday use will first be measured by the users rather than by keynotes. For hardware where we measure the numbers ourselves instead of adopting them, we point to our own test bench.