The Most Expensive iPhone
Amara Apple's first foldable, the iPhone Duo, goes up for pre-order tomorrow morning, and it starts at nineteen hundred and ninety-nine dollars. That's the most expensive iPhone Apple has ever sold, and it gets the whole episode today.
Jonas Welcome back, everyone. Plainly, then: pre-orders open Friday, October sixteenth, phones ship October twenty-third, and the price runs from $1,999 up to $3,199 for the two-terabyte model.
Amara Three thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine dollars. For a phone. Jonas, I keep trying to picture the person carrying that around. You're standing on a train platform, and there's a three-grand object in your back pocket.
Jonas Well, it is more complicated than that, but the precedent helps. In 2017 the iPhone X launched at $999, and that was a record. People treated it like a scandal. The base Duo costs twice that.
Amara And the X was the anniversary phone. It reset what people would pay.
Jonas Exactly. Apple skipped the name iPhone 9, launched the X next to the iPhone 8, and a thousand dollars stopped sounding crazy within about two years. My honest view is the Duo is trying to do that again, one tier higher.
Amara But a thousand dollars was a stretch for lots of people. Two thousand is a different kind of buyer. Who is it, really? Early adopters with money, people who write it off for work?
Jonas Both, I'd guess. And here's what it actually is: a 5.4-inch cover screen on the outside that opens into a 7.6-inch inner display. It runs the 2-nanometer A20 Pro, the same chip as the iPhone 18 Pro. Apple says the CPU is up to 20 percent faster and the GPU up to 40 percent faster than last year's.
Amara So you're not buying a slower phone for the novelty. It's the flagship chip.
Jonas Right. A Geekbench listing showed 3986 single-core and 11067 multi-core, in line with the 18 Pro, slightly below the best of those. One score, though. Heat and two screens could change real-world behavior, so I wouldn't lean on it.
The Repair Bill
Amara Okay, but this is the part I actually wanted to get to. The sticker price isn't the price. Apple's out-of-warranty repair list reads like a horror story, and I'm going to take you through it.
Jonas Please. I love a price list.
Amara Fix just the cover layer, $49. Back glass, $199. Battery, $229. Rear camera, same. Outer display is $379. And then the inner display, the big folding one, is $999.
Jonas So half the price of the phone, to fix the screen that makes it a foldable in the first place.
Amara And it gets worse! Anything Apple files under "other damage" is $1,499. That's three-quarters of the cost of the phone. You drop it badly once and you've basically bought a second one.
Jonas Though Apple does note that authorized service providers can set their own prices, so those numbers aren't universal.
Amara Fine, but then there's AppleCare+, at $19.99 a month. With it, that $999 inner display drops to $99. Battery service is free, the outer screen is $29, and theft or loss is $149 a claim.
Jonas Which is where I'll plant a flag. Twenty dollars a month is about $240 a year. For this product, it's close to mandatory. The repair price is part of the real price, and Apple is selling a fragile object alongside the insurance for it.
Amara Honestly, I think that's the cynical read, but I can't argue with it. You'd be nuts to buy this without the plan. And think about how that feels to the person who's stretching for it. You've spent two grand and then you sign up for a subscription so you can relax about your pocket.
Jonas There's already an accessory market, too. A Nomad leather folio at $129, a tempered-glass protector at $34.99, and a $9.89 three-pack for screens and cameras. Two screens means twice as much to protect.
Amara That three-pack is the best deal in the whole story.
The Crease and the Yields
Jonas Now to what's unknown. The big worry with any foldable is the crease, that line down the middle of the screen. Apple used a matte nano-texture display, partly to cut glare and make the crease harder to see.
Amara And Tom Marieb, Apple's VP of hardware engineering, did an interview with TechRadar that MacRumors headlined "Hold Us Accountable." Which is a striking thing for Apple to say.
Jonas It is. I haven't seen his full answer, so I won't put words in his mouth. But the headline is an invitation, and the claim underneath is that this crease stays hidden better than others. Other foldables are known to show more crease over time.
Amara So what does holding Apple accountable even look like? You've spent $2,000. Are you supposed to take photos of it at month six, send them to Cupertino, and wait?
Jonas Ha. Realistically it looks like long-term tests and teardowns after October twenty-third. Reviewers will use these phones for weeks, and the first honest answers will come from them, not from the keynote.
Amara Okay, and supply. There's a report that this thing is hard to build.
Jonas Yes, and let me separate three things. What's known: the dates. What's claimed: China's Jiemian News quotes a person said to be close to Foxconn's supply chain, saying final assembly yields were only slightly above 60 percent as of September seventeenth, and that early output would be limited. One anonymous source, and Apple hasn't confirmed it.
Amara And what's only likely?
Jonas That stock will be tight at the start. New hinge, new display, a company that never makes a few of anything. Tight supply is the safe bet even if that exact number is off.
Amara So what I'd watch tomorrow isn't just whether it sells out. It's how fast the delivery dates slip. If a pre-order at five a.m. Pacific already says November, that tells you more than any report.
Jonas Agreed, and it connects to what I said yesterday. I still expect the first batch to sell out. A sellout with a thin supply doesn't prove much. The second month is the test.
Samsung Answers Back
Amara Meanwhile, Samsung has been remarkably chatty. You'd think they'd be nervous, and instead they're saying thank you.
Jonas They are. Samsung executive Richard Chang told Forbes, quote, "Customer demand for the Galaxy Z Fold8 family has increased 16% since launch," and that Google searches for Samsung foldables are up 300 percent in the last month alone. He said their market leadership is "stronger than ever."
Amara Sixteen percent! That sounds enormous.
Jonas It sounds enormous because we don't know what it's measured against. "Since launch" has no stated baseline, and the Fold 8 came out in July. An earlier report put the bump at about ten percent after Apple's announcement, perhaps because some buyers had been waiting to see Apple's phone. These are the company's own numbers.
Amara So it's marketing, but maybe not only marketing.
Jonas Possibly. And the phones are close rivals. The standard Fold 8 is the passport-style one, with a 5.5-inch cover screen and the same 7.6-inch inner display as the Duo. Apple's cover screen is 5.4. A tenth of an inch. It's practically a head-to-head.
Amara And Samsung also said foldables have "officially gone mainstream," which is the part I find funny. They're claiming to be the leader and thanking Apple for the validation in the same breath.
Jonas Well, it is more complicated than that, but it's also simple. If you've sold foldables for eight years, a giant competitor telling the public they're worth buying is free advertising. The risk is that Apple takes the premium buyers once the novelty fades.
Amara My view is Samsung comes out fine in the short run. Apple's entry makes people curious, and curious people walk into stores and try the Fold 8. I'm less sure about a year from now.
Jonas I'm slightly more worried for Samsung than you are. When Apple does something, people don't compare it to the category. They compare the category to Apple. But I'd want actual sales figures before saying that with confidence.
The 2027 Question
Amara Last thing, and this is Jonas's moment, because I can feel a history lesson coming. Where does the Duo sit in Apple's bigger story?
Jonas I'll be brief. The original iPhone was previewed in January 2007 and didn't ship until June twenty-ninth. Apple has always staged its big moments. Now there's a twentieth-anniversary iPhone expected around September 2027, rumored to be glass-centric, priced from $1,299 or more, and possibly skipping the name iPhone 19.
Amara That's a lot of "rumored."
Jonas Deliberately. An August Jefferies report said Apple had cancelled the all-glass model, and Bloomberg's Mark Gurman disputed it. So none of it is confirmed. What I'll say is that the pattern from 2017 is back: skip a number, launch two tiers, reset the price ceiling.
Amara Which is where the repair prices matter again. If the Duo is the template, and fragile, expensive, insured-by-subscription becomes how Apple sells its top end, then the thing you're really buying tomorrow morning is a business model.
Jonas That may be too grand for one phone, but I'd watch for it. If the 2027 phone arrives with similar plans and similar fees, you'll know this was the rehearsal.
Amara So what changes for the listener? If you're tempted, decide on the AppleCare+ plan before you decide on the phone, and don't rush the pre-order. Wait for the first teardowns and reviews after the twenty-third.
Jonas And if you're like me, with a four-year-old phone you intend to keep, you can enjoy this one from a safe distance.
Amara Tomorrow, five a.m. Pacific, pre-orders open, and we'll be watching how fast those ship dates move. Thanks for spending the time with us.
Jonas Talk to you soon.