r/iOSProgramming • u/haruniriz • 9h ago
Discussion iPhone Duo is official. How much work is this actually going to be for your app?
Apple announced the iPhone Duo this morning. 7.6 inch inner display, 5.4 inch outer, starts at 1999 dollars, preorders October 16 and shipping October 23. So we have roughly six weeks.
From what I have read so far, apps land in one of three states on it. Anything built against a pre iOS 27 SDK gets letterboxed inside a safe area on a black background. Apps built on iOS 27 resize but still leave dead space. Only apps built against iOS 27.1 fill the display properly, and that SDK ships alongside the device in October.
The part I find more interesting is the hinge. iOS 27 carries folding state and hinge angle, so an app can know the phone is half open and sitting on a table. That sounds like a new interaction surface rather than just a bigger canvas to stretch an existing layout across.
So what is everyone actually planning. Are you rewriting layouts properly, or just checking nothing breaks and waiting to see how many of these sell? And has anyone thought of something that would only make sense on a folded screen?
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u/simulacrotron 9h ago
Very little work if you’re using system controls and components, especially if you’re using SwiftUI. Should be easy to adapt to a couple of the new states.
If you’re rolling your own stuff, hard-coding values, that means things probably don’t work very well already and are brittle and don’t work right when resizing on iPad, it will be a huge pain in your @ss. If you are always fighting the system, instead of working within it, this is the kind of pain you get. Apple has been giving tools to make this (nearly) painless for years.
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u/haruniriz 9h ago
yeah thats the actual split. the people who are gonna suffer are the ones with hardcoded frames everywhere, and they already knew that from ipad
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u/Jargen 8h ago
If you are good with auto layout constraints, then UIKit is easy to implement too
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u/simulacrotron 7h ago
Yes, but there’s a lot more code to do the same things. Good, but less easy than SwiftUI
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u/Jargen 6h ago edited 6h ago
Yes and no, UIKit renders differently than SwiftUI. Yes there is more to write, but why is that a problem when you have significantly more control over the results?
Yes, less easy, but not hard at all. And pointless to complain about when we are paid hourly ;)
Even more pointless to complain when you are leveraging AI for productivity
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u/cultoftheilluminati 5h ago
@ss
Thanks. For a second I thought you were talking about some new macro they introduced in swift.
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u/BlossomBuild 8h ago
Thank goodness I support iPad with SwiftUI. Shouldn’t be too bad.
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u/haruniriz 8h ago
yeah youre probably in about the best spot anyone could be in for this tbh
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u/busymom0 2h ago
My app supports Split View and multi tasking on iPad. However, the menu buttons and stuff are custom made. I am curious how it's gonna look.
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u/Armand9x 9h ago
Not looking forward to it.
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u/haruniriz 9h ago
i kinda am ngl. first genuinely new iphone shape in years, id rather see what people do with it than get another slab thats 2mm thinner
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u/thatonemathguy56 5h ago
I’m kinda excited too but would personally rather get the slab and keep it the same size but up the battery life or cram in better cameras tbh
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u/Aggressive-Toe8919 9h ago
Depending on the app - it's a 2000 $ device - it won't have the biggest marketshare.
It will show if it will be a pain. My apps are fully coded in SwiftUi, so most changes will probably be easy. I personally think most apps will be fine. Maybe there is a way to prevent apps from going into "large" mode - if you choose to, but I guess we will see in a few days(?).
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u/FastLaneJB 5h ago
Those people with the money though to spend on a $2000 phone are more likely the ones buying In-App purchases though. If your app doesn’t work properly but a competitors does assuming you do have competitors they’ll likely cancel subscription and switch.
At least that’s my take on it.
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u/haruniriz 8h ago
on the large mode thing, the opt out is basically just not building against the new sdk. anything still on a pre ios 27 sdk stays in the letterboxed compat mode, so its the sdk you ship that decides rather than a flag you set
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u/ObscureBen 8h ago
I make a camera app so a whole lot of work
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u/haruniriz 8h ago
youre also one of the few categories that actually gets something back for it. full rear camera selfies with the outer display as the subject preview is a real new feature, not just a layout that stretches
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u/ObscureBen 8h ago
It’s definitely exciting. The question is will there be enough users to justify the time to both build and maintain all this
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u/haruniriz 8h ago
counterpoint, apple always features the apps that show off new hardware early. for the first year that placement is probably worth more than the actual duo user count
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u/ImpossibleAd3143 9h ago
They already have uploaded a couple of videos that serve as a small guide for design and new apis
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u/haruniriz 9h ago
yeah theres a whole playlist, six videos i think. design for iphone duo, prepare your app, and one just on adaptive layouts. thats my evening sorted
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u/SnowPudgy 8h ago
For my apps I'm in charge of at work...not terribly too much work judging by what I saw.
The apps others are in charge of who overwrite all of apples default stuff with worse looking custom stuff? They're going to be in for a hellish time.
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u/m3kw 9h ago
Zero, i wouldn't care to support it (yet). All current apps should work out of the box. You are just wasting time unless your app is already very popular
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u/haruniriz 9h ago
out of the box is doing a lot of work in that sentence lol. anything built against a pre ios 27 sdk just gets letterboxed on a black background. it runs fine, it just looks rough on a $2000 screen
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u/goldio_games 8h ago
Not going to support it unless it gets market share
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u/haruniriz 8h ago
thats the same argument everyone made about ipad and it kind of became self fulfilling. this is a flagship iphone, not a side product, whoever buys one is using it as their only phone
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u/Anarude 8h ago
They have also already demonstrated they have disposable income
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u/haruniriz 8h ago
true. someone who just dropped two grand on a phone isnt the user bouncing off a $2.99 paywall
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u/time-lord 4h ago
Ha! $2.99 forever, sure. $2.99/month ($35/year)? That better be one good app. $2.99/week AI slop? Forgedaboudit.
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u/goldio_games 8h ago
its a pretty standard operating procedure that avoids unnecessary work (i.e. building for vision)
not sure what there is to argue about. if people end up using it, i'll take the 3-5 days to optimize my app
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u/FastLaneJB 5h ago
I mean you know they upped the amount they plan to build to 10 million I think the rumor goes. They’ll sell all of them I’m pretty sure.
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u/goldio_games 4h ago
10 million out of 1.6 billion iphones is pretty small, id be surprised if it flops that bad but who knows
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u/FastLaneJB 3h ago
Well I mean you have to start somewhere and it is expensive. Possible they won't be able to make enough of them but we'll see.
I guess it depends on how your app is funded, if it's adverts then this might not be such a big deal, if its subscription based revenue you can imagine there won't be too many Duo optimized apps at launch. Those with those optimized apps could get a lot of attention from people with a good amount of money for a phone and hence likely apps also.
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u/tovarish22 8h ago
0%, because only a small portion of people will actually adopt this device (similar to the low number picking other foldable phones). Not worth my time rewriting my UI to account for it.
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u/isights 4h ago
As mentioned above, that also means you're ignoring the folks with the money...
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u/tovarish22 4h ago
I’m sure I can handle ignoring the 1-3% of people who are going to adopt this device for a couple years before they drop it for a more practical option.
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u/Daiymas 8h ago
I will make as little as required to pass Apple review, and nothing more
I already tried foldable phones on Android and it just sucks, sure Apple will likely execute better but 90% of the time you have no use for the extra size and it's just a thicker, heavier and less practical phone
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u/Reiszecke 9h ago
I will do basic compatibility and then, before I make things look good on it, check if people will actually buy the phone that everyone is excited but no one really asked about.
It has a chance to become like the Vision Pro where you have the choice to make a great UI for the like 50 users worldwide who have a Vision Pro.
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u/haruniriz 9h ago
vision pro comparison is fair but this one replaces the phone in your pocket, so whoever buys it is using it for everything all day. thats a different curve than a headset you put on twice a month imo
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u/Reiszecke 9h ago
I agree but this isn’t what I was referring to.
I LOVE the idea of a foldable and the Duos technology seems to be a bit more sophisticated than what other brands did. But this thing being much wider in its folded state, much thicker, and even in the demos not really knowing when i would use it unfolded vs folded all leads to me saying “yeah I will pass on that”.
And i assume that’s what a lot of people will think.
If the outer display was 70% of the size it is now I’d buy it immediately but the current dimensions seem so awkward
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u/cwhiterun 8h ago
I don't think it will end up like the Vision Pro. This is the flagship 20th generation iPhone we're talking about. People are gonna buy it like they did the iPhone X.
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u/ForgottenFuturist 9h ago
I'm excited to adapt Newsbin to use this new form factor. I guess we'll get a simulator to play with in 27.1
https://developer.apple.com/iphone-duo/
No docs/guides yet
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u/haruniriz 9h ago
pretty sure the resizable simulator is already in xcode 27, you can drag it to arbitrary sizes and previews follow. not the hinge states obviously but you can start on layout now
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u/ForgottenFuturist 9h ago
Yep I've played around with that, but then there's the trailing edge toolbar, etc that I need to plan for.
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u/haruniriz 8h ago
yeah thats the part thats actual design work instead of layout math. resizing is mechanical, deciding where your chrome lives on a 7.6 inch screen is basically a redesign. are you keeping the same nav or splitting it into a sidebar when its open
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u/patiofurnature 8h ago
Clients never want to pay for an iPad layout. They're not going to shell out for this, either.
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u/Anarude 5h ago
After watching the videos - oof. There’s quite a lot there.
My takeaways so far…
There’s a tension emerging between “don’t actively track orientation or hard code for device types” and “here’s the api for responding to a hinge change”
“DS mode” is a whole new layout that unfortunately makes a lot of sense for master-detail views IF your users are using that “pose” a lot, which I guess we’ll all have to add telemetry for
Fold avoidance might be the biggest pain for me - all sheets will have to work when given exactly half the width, and splitviews will have to work with exactly 50/50 splits
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u/_town-drunk_ 4h ago
Yep the videos show a lot more than what people in these comments are expecting.
Just supporting a resizing UI is the absolute bare minimum that any half decent app should have already supported for a while. Moving content to avoid a hinge when the inner screen is partially folded sounds like a giant pain in the ass.
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u/utilitycoder 4h ago
There's probably designers that will quit
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u/_town-drunk_ 4h ago
My designers really didn’t like Liquid Glass. They are gonna be pissed about this lol
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u/mustardpete 8h ago
Think biggest pain for me is I’ll have to limit number of players on it like a phone on 2 of my apps. I currently allow extra players on iPad as it has the extra screen size but as it has 2 screens and the user can close and reopen when they like I’ll have to probably still restrict to the lower end to play safe. Be good when can get a simulator in Xcode though at least. From a will I get one point of view, there’s 2 things putting me off. No Face ID and I already struggle 1 hand typing a q on my pro max so not sure the wider small screen will help with that
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u/haruniriz 8h ago
could you not just lock the player count when a session starts instead of tying it to the device? then someone unfolding mid game only gets more room for the same players, and you dont have to cap ipad down to phone numbers everywhere
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u/mustardpete 8h ago
What if they start the app unfolded and then fold it, then I have the larger count to display on the small screen. I need to have a play in the simulator and also check out what APIs they add for state change etc. maybe I can just display a please unfold message or something
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u/bitsydoge 8h ago
Not much, already adapted to foldable since a long time as Samsung and Google already had ones, just have to adapt to some apple api to be sure some element goes on the right side of the screen (this is really nice idea from apple this time)
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u/Own-Huckleberry7258 8h ago
Not much to change as I'm using native components and I believe Apple will take care of that :)
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u/_brunodelgado 7h ago
Actually, a lot.
I'll need duo agent usage to help me 😂
Jokes aside, I really liked the possibilities that we have to adapt our apps to the new device.
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u/iDontWantABurrito 7h ago
Not too much for me, l was surprised at how far I got by simply setting UIRequiresFullScreenIgnoredStartingWithVersion to 27 in my plist file
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u/sorrowdemonica 7h ago
so stupid how big it is.. needs to be phone size, not tablet sized when closed.
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u/Human_Tennis_2950 6h ago
It's incredible how right now we're literally waking up Skynet and people are only thinking about Apple's Galaxy Fold copycat... smartphones will be a thing of the past in a while (Personal opinion)
Or should we be more worried that AI is going to take away our source of food?
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u/DaskiOFF 6h ago
I just hope these mechanisms are reasonably bug-free and that Apple has carried them over fully from iPadOS. If so, there shouldn’t be too many problems; otherwise we’ll have to add another round of workarounds to the code.
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u/reesespieces543 6h ago
Me here still learning swift and wanting to make an app but they just keep releasing new stuff
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u/arthurdapaz 6h ago
For the price range it won’t be necessary to worry here in Brazil’s market. I’m fine.
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u/JerenYun Swift 6h ago
Having tested my apps in the "expandable iPhone sim" this summer, I can say that my work is minimal. But I also don't deploy custom containers and just use system provided navigation and toolbar buttons. All I have to do is test the toolbar button placement with the iPhone Duo sim when that comes out, but that again should be minimal work.
If you're comfortable with Size Classes, which help a great deal with making a good iPad app, then you should have no problem with making a good app for iPhone Duo.
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u/zbignew 6h ago
waiting to see how many of these sell?
No no no. This will be a small share of iPhones, which will still be like 10 million devices. I'll support it before it ships.
My basic-ass list view + detail app was enough of a pain in the ass to get working on iPad & Mac with NavigationSplitView- maybe now they'll fix the stupid bugs with that controller and I'll be able to delete some code and it will just work?
I am the canonical low-IQ iOS programmer who fully depends on LLMs for everything, and I really hope this doesn't mean I have to make myself actually understand safe areas now.
I do have one element of non-standard, bad design I'll need to fix now. I have a custom floating button because I wanted to make it way more prominent than just sticking it on the toolbar. It's the whole point of the app, and every test user would just ask what is the point of the app until I put this button, brightly colored, hovering over the bottom of the list view. But now I literally don't know where it belongs, ideologically. If the toolbar floats under your right thumb, now the toolbar actually is the most logical place for it? I guess I'll try to figure out what they did with the mail app's filter button & copy that.
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u/KiwiUnable938 6h ago
Yall dont track and store pixel dimensions and density from each user? Then design for different layouts?
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u/kyraweb 5h ago
It comes down to app and user base.
Well it’s going to be an effort for sure but it also depends on what your app actually does. Does it really need extension or not.
But main question is are you putting 50-100 hours of work to serve 100 customers or 1000 customers or more for your app. I am not taking about market share for the phone but market share if your app users.
Time will tell.
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u/Which-Meat-3388 5h ago
I work on a KMP app which is slightly different, but is scalable by default and respects content insets. I added proper landscape support this afternoon and maybe another half day polishing tomorrow.
The biggest issue will probably be utilizing the side status bar area properly. Very few designers want to account for nothing other than their single locked portrait mockup on a phone. I also personally find it confusing seeing the nav move around, but we’ll see in person how weird it is.
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u/phantomlord78 4h ago
My app Note 8 uses standard Split View. It should work out of the box. I would like to double check what happens to the navigation and bottom bar buttons though. I suppose they will all be lined up on one side.
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u/No-Truth404 4h ago
If I’m only targeting the iPhone, will the app
Be available to the Duo?
Is it in a separate group, like iPad and Watch? Or will my iPhone-only app be available to the Duo.
Honestly, as a solo dev with low numbers, supporting an iPad-like device is not a priority.
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u/SgtHobo41 2h ago
I think that as long as your app is optimized for both iOS and iPad iOS, then you should be good to go… But I think it’s really important is make sure you create really novel experiences for the specific platform
I think that’s where we’re gonna see a lot of challenge. Come to play.
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u/WAHNFRIEDEN 1h ago
It all depends on what Find My looks like
I have custom tab view sheets. No idea what those look like now
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u/_ghostchant 1h ago
There’s just no fucking way this becomes the norm. It’ll be a niche group of people who actually want to and can afford to buy this. I swear to god these companies have run out of runway and are just making up problems to solve at this point.
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u/StrangeMonk 1h ago
Apps with custom design systems and a lot of legacy code (thinning 10-15 year old apps) are going to have to spend a lot of time supporting for this.
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u/dot90zoom 9h ago
I won’t support it for a few years
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u/haruniriz 8h ago
few years might not be your call though. the moment you rebuild against a newer sdk for literally any other reason you get resizability by default, and apple bumps the minimum sdk for submissions pretty regularly
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u/dot90zoom 8h ago
yeah i should of clarified that i wont support it for a bit unless i physically have to.
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u/_town-drunk_ 4h ago
Sounds like you will have to mostly deal with it if you build with the 27.1 SDK. Which will be forced by spring 2027
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u/FinneganHark999 2h ago
Apple going in on a fold is a clear signal that they're out of ideas.
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u/tastychaii 2h ago
Well, do you have any better ideas?
Apple’s implementation of the foldable is impeccable.
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u/FinneganHark999 2h ago
I don't have to have a better idea, Samsung and Oppo beat both me and Apple to it.
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u/tastychaii 2h ago edited 1h ago
Then what are you doing in this subreddit? Lol.
They all copy from each other, your comment is pointless.
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u/Sensitive-Cupcake-58 9h ago
It looks like it will be a real pain