The iPhone Duo – Apple’s first foldable phone – was unveiled to great acclaim on September 9 with plans for it to go on sale next month.
However, as impressive as the presentation during the keynote address may have been, Apple believes that once third-party developers get ahold of the device the true potential of the pocket-friendly device will further shine. In an interview with GQ, Apple’s top brass weighed in on the hopes for the iPhone Duo.
The quote from the piece that spoke to me was from Steve Lemay, VP of Human Interface Design at Apple.
“There are so many things the developers will come up with that we’ve never anticipated. Some of those will become big ideas that take over the industry and change the product in interesting ways.”
Throughout the iPhone and iPad’s history, it has been the third-party apps that have set the trends. Apple has often responded by working those features into its own core operating system, or buying those apps and doing them that way. This acknowledgement certainly raises the expectations the same will follow with the iPhone Duo.
Moving on, there’s plenty of interesting quotes from the GQ piece. “This is why we do what we do,” said Apple CEO, John Ternus. “It’s really special because it provided an opportunity to just think all-new.”
Speaking with publications like GQ and taking the iPhone Duo to the Emmys red carpet already suggests we have a different kind of leader at Apple, who might embrace some of the more stylish elements of Apple’s hardware moving forward.
Meanwhile, Molly Anderson, Apple’s VP of industrial design traces the iPhone Duo’s inspiration back to the humble paper notebook.
She says: “Everyone knows what a notebook feels like in the pocket and what it feels like to carry around. So that was a big part of the inspiration: ‘How do you get to something that gives you space but also feels compact?’
“We really obsessed about how it feels when you open it – it’s incredibly smooth,” she adds. “The hinge is defined by a custom variable torque profile, so it’s easy to open, and then it’s actually biased so that it holds itself open and lays flat.”
Later, Lemay adds: “There was this concept the whole time, ‘How do you feel like you’re expanding the device?’” says Steve Lemay, VP of Human Interface Design at Apple. “We didn’t want it to feel like you’re starting a different operating system when you unfold it. And you’re never searching for the button you were just looking at.”
“It was really important to us from the beginning that iPhone Duo feels like one cohesive experience, not two different products awkwardly fused together…You basically feel like you’re peeking through to the inner display, and it just grows underneath you.”
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