Apple ended today's hardware event with one of its classic "One more thing" reveals. Some smartphone makers have been offering foldable phones for the better part of a decade, but Apple has now joined the fray with the iPhone Duo after years of speculation.

This device is undeniably the most capable iPhone ever, as well as the most expensive. It's not as spendy as many expected, though, starting at $1,999. That's in the same range as foldables from Google and Samsung.

An iPad in your pocket

The iPhone Duo would have looked like a totally fresh take on the foldable design a few months ago, but Samsung has made waves with the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Like that phone, the iPhone Duo has a wider, shorter chassis. Apple prefaced its reveal with a denunciation of foldables that open into a square aspect ratio. While that shape can accommodate two portrait apps side by side pretty well, it's bad at almost everything else, stretching single apps awkwardly and leaving videos with gargantuan black bars.

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Samsung has largely defined the foldable phone category, but it's no longer alone in releasing flexible devices. Google, Motorola, and a raft of Chinese OEMs have their own take on this form factor. Is the new Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra really "ultra" enough to remain on top?

This phone doesn't have the wide frame of the new Z Fold 8, instead matching the approximate size and shape of the company’s last few tablet-style foldables. The Z Fold 8 Ultra is not a big leap, but it continues Samsung's pattern of iterative foldable improvements. At this point, there's very little left to improve. The compromises of going with a foldable over a regular flat phone have largely been erased with the Z Fold 8 Ultra. Well, except for the price.

Flatter and a little better

Foldables used to be real pocket-busters, almost like carrying two phones glued together. Samsung has successively shaved a few millimeters off every year, taking a leap last year with the Z Fold 7. The Z Fold 8 Ultra is even a bit slimmer than that phone, but the difference is basically imperceptible. It still has the same buttons in the same places, including a fingerprint sensor in the power button.

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The rumors haven't left much to the imagination, but Samsung has unfurled its 2026 foldable lineup today. There are three models for the first time in Samsung's eight-gen foldable family, including the top-of-the-line Z Fold 8 Ultra. That phone is the successor to last year's Galaxy Z Fold 7, but the Z Fold 8 is new—the company's first wide-body foldable designed for media over multitasking. And then there's a new, thinner flip phone, plus a pair of smartwatches.

You can preorder Samsung's new hardware today, but the component shortage has made these already spendy product lines more expensive this year. Even the Z Flip 8 is now well over a grand, and the Ultra costs almost twice as much.

The Z Fold 8 Ultra has the same basic form factor as the last few Samsung tablet-style foldables. A 6.5-inch OLED on the outside is about the same ratio as a standard smartphone screen. Open it up, and you get an 8-inch display that's roughly twice as wide. That makes the main display close to square.

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