Abstract:
At the Apple autumn conference in the early morning of September 10th, Beijing time, there were two "firsts": John Ternus's CEO debut after taking over from Cook, and the debut of Apple's first foldable screen phone, iPhone Duo - at this time, a full 7 years have passed since Huawei and Samsung's first foldable screens.
A product that was 7 years late was placed by Apple as one more thing. Ternus called it "the most significant experience innovation since the birth of the iPhone."
Here comes the question: Apple is late, why do you think it's your turn now?
01
Duo’s hard work
The crease, the under-screen camera and the “strictest father”
Let’s look at the product itself first.
When the iPhone Duo is closed, the outer screen is 5.4 inches, the size of a passport, and when unfolded is a 7.6-inch inner screen, with an unfolded thickness of 5.2 mm - the thinnest iPhone currently. Judging from the actual machine on site, its creases are less obvious than most folding screens on the market.
The solution is also very Apple: Instead of just making a fuss about the hinge, the inner screen is made into a ten-layer ultra-thin structure. The optical bonding material between the layers causes slight sliding when folding to offset the stress, and a layer of nano-texture technology is added to reduce reflection.
The folding screen has been arguing about the crease problem for seven years, and Apple has given its own answer with the most complex screen.
The other two firsts illustrate the problem even more.
The inner screen is directly equipped with a 12-megapixel under-screen camera, which is usually integrated with the screen. Previously, only Samsung tried a 4-megapixel solution on a folding screen, but later gave up. There is no Face ID on the body, and Touch ID is integrated into the side buttons. This is the first time fingerprints have returned to a flagship phone after the iPhone X.
Another detail comes from the news: Duo's motherboard is highly similar to last year's iPhone Air. That Air, which focuses on thinness and lightness, is essentially Apple's technical pathfinder for folding screens.
But what really separates the gap is software.
For this new proportion of the internal screen, Apple has almost restructured iOS: the system menu bar and the dock have been moved from the bottom to the right, all applications - including third-party apps - must follow the new layout, the controls remain in the same position when switching between internal and external screens, and Safari can also open dual windows on the same page.
Apple’s approach is to directly establish rules for the ecological adaptation of Android folding screens that has not been solved for so many years.
Some media described it wonderfully: The strictest father of the folding screen ecosystem is here.
02
Back hair is an old skill of Apple
Harvesting late is a craft that Apple has been doing for more than 20 years.
The iPod is not the first MP3 player, the iPhone is not the first smart phone, AirPods is not the first pair of true wireless headphones, and the Apple Watch is not the first smart watch - it is never the first to eat crabs, only the last to collect money.
On the folding screen, the rhythm is exactly the same: in seven years, it watched Huawei iterate the hinge for three generations, watched Samsung try the under-screen camera and then gave up, watched domestic manufacturers roll up the thinness to the limit, and then in 2026, when all the pitfalls were eliminated, a Duo was launched in one step.
The pricing of this machine is also written with calculation.
The starting price of the National Bank is 15,999 yuan, and the top version is 26,499 yuan - more than the price of an iPhone 18 standard version of Pro Max, directly entering the range of luxury electronics; during the same period, the starting prices of the iPhone 18 Pro series increased by 100 US dollars each, and the National Bank 9,999 yuan and 10,999 yuan, while the prices of watches and headphones remained unchanged.
A price list has three layers of thinking: Duo is responsible for testing the ultra-high-end ceiling, Pro is responsible for increasing prices along the way, and entry-level models are responsible for holding on to the market. Apple has even built an iPhone relay function for dual-phone users, so that the same number can be switched between two phones - don't worry about which one to buy, buy both.
03
Pro’s hidden line is a tutorial to Android
The folding screen steals all the spotlight, but the signal hidden in the iPhone 18 Pro series is equally important. The key word for this generation of Pro is the basic experience: the area of the vapor chamber has been expanded to three times that of the previous generation, and the continuous performance has increased by 40%; video playback can last up to 45 hours; the 60W charger can charge to 50% in 15 minutes; for the first time, the main camera uses a physical variable aperture, which is adjustable in four levels. Heat dissipation, battery life, fast charging, variable aperture - these are all projects that the Android camp has been involved in for many years, and Apple has completed them one by one this time.
This change should be included in the CEO replacement process.
Cook came from a supply chain and operations background, and his era was about ecology and service income; Ternus came from a hardware engineer background, and in the first press conference he put unsexy things like heat sinks on the table.
With the A20 Pro’s 2nm process, doubled neural network engine and 50% increase in memory bandwidth, Apple is talking about another thing: laying the groundwork for device-side AI.
Its AI layout is the division of labor between three entrances - iPhone understands your digital world, Apple Watch reads your heart rate every five seconds to understand your body, and AirPods is responsible for natural voice input and output. Together they are called a personal intelligence center.
Of course, there are also two glasses of cold water.
The true look and feel of the crease and the long-term reliability of the hinge have to be verified by mass production machines; the first batch of Siri AI is only available in English, and Apple’s official website’s description of China still stops at “ready for Apple smarts”—the part that domestic users are most concerned about is still absent. Duo also only supports eSIM, and it depends on the operator's face in the country.
But at the end of the press conference, social media was flooded with the idea that the Digital Spring Festival Gala was back on the throne. In the first exam of the new CEO, the answer given by Apple was: wait for a category to mature for seven years, and then use the ecosystem and supply chain to take it away.
History has proven it many times - Apple does not need to be the first to arrive, it just needs to win in the end.
Whether it is still alive this time, the sales list after its release on October 23 will give the answer.
Comments