Why I'm Returning the iPhone Duo

I know this isn't an airport, and I don't need to announce my departure. But we need to talk. I'm returning the iPhone Duo. And the frustrating part is that I genuinely want Apple to keep making phones like this.

There's something wonderfully exciting about Apple stepping into a new kind of smartphone experience. For years, the safe choice has been obvious: buy the latest Pro, enjoy the camera upgrades, appreciate the speed, repeat. The Duo challenges that routine. It makes the idea of owning a new iPhone feel interesting again. Unfortunately, being the most interesting iPhone doesn't automatically make it the one I'd recommend buying.

The most exciting iPhone in years

The entire appeal of the Duo is the possibility of carrying a larger canvas in your pocket. A conventional smartphone is excellent at quick tasks, but more room changes the way you approach reading, watching videos, browsing the web, and juggling everyday activities. That sense of possibility is the Duo's strongest selling point. It's the sort of product that makes you rethink what a phone can be rather than simply asking whether the camera is marginally better this year.

And that matters. Apple doesn't often take a risk that feels this visible to the person actually buying the hardware. I want ambitious first-generation products to succeed. I want competitors to respond. Most of all, I want a Duo 2 that takes the brilliant idea and makes fewer compromises to deliver it.

A big screen comes with a big physical cost

Here's where the romance starts to fade. The Duo is heavy. Not just in the abstract, specification-sheet sense, but in the very practical sense that weight matters when the device you carry is also the device you use dozens of times a day. A phone has to be comfortable for a quick reply, a long call, a photo, or ten minutes of scrolling on the sofa. A larger, heavier design asks you to accept a trade-off every single time you pick it up.

The expanded screen is fantastic when you actually need it. The problem is that plenty of ordinary phone tasks don't need that extra space at all. For those moments, the extra bulk doesn't feel like a benefit. It feels like the price of admission to a feature you're not currently using. The iPhone 18 Pro, and even the older 17 Pro, make a compelling argument simply by being more straightforward everyday companions.

The camera compromise is difficult to forgive

If I'm spending flagship money on an iPhone, I expect a flagship camera experience. This is where the Duo's proposition becomes particularly hard to defend against the Pro models. The camera system is a meaningful step down from what I'd want in an iPhone 18 Pro, and that matters more to me than having a spectacularly large display for occasional use.

A phone camera isn't just about taking pretty photos in perfect light. It's the device you reach for when something happens unexpectedly, when you want flexibility in framing, or when you need to trust the result without thinking too hard. That's why I'd rather carry a more conventional Pro model with stronger photographic versatility than compromise on the camera just to get the Duo's form factor. The fact that the iPhone 17 Pro remains a serious alternative only makes the value equation worse.

Battery life: the screen changes the equation

There's also a trap in judging battery life as a single number. The Duo's larger screen is the reason to buy it, so naturally you're going to use that screen. And when you spend more time driving a larger display, energy consumption can rise. Depending on how you use the device, the very feature that makes it exciting can also make its endurance less reassuring than a conventional Pro iPhone.

That doesn't mean every Duo owner will see worse battery life every day. Workloads, brightness, connectivity, and how often the expanded display is active all matter. But this is exactly why I don't find broad all-day-battery promises especially useful here. If I'm paying a premium for a bigger screen, I shouldn't have to feel guilty about actually using it.

27,000 kronor. Seriously?

And then we reach the number that makes the whole conversation borderline ridiculous: around SEK 27,000 in Sweden, based on the price I'm using for this review. That's roughly US$2,900 at an illustrative exchange rate of SEK 9.3 per dollar, not an official US retail price. Swedish consumer prices include VAT, so the conversion isn't a fair like-for-like comparison with American sticker prices. Even with that caveat, twenty-seven thousand kronor is an extraordinary amount of money for a phone.

At that price, I don't want to make excuses for weight, cameras, or battery compromises. I want the expensive new form factor to feel like an upgrade to my everyday life, not an exciting alternative that quietly takes away things the Pro line already gets right. The Duo has the wow factor. The iPhone 18 Pro has the more convincing balance.

Why I am returning it — and why I still want a Duo 2

I don't regret being excited about the Duo. In fact, I'm more excited about Apple's future in this category than I was before. There is a genuinely appealing product here, and the larger-screen concept deserves to become a permanent part of the lineup. But enthusiasm for an idea is not the same as satisfaction with the compromises of the current hardware.

For my money, the iPhone 18 Pro is still the smarter choice, and I wouldn't tell someone with an iPhone 17 Pro to abandon it just for the novelty of the Duo. Better camera flexibility, more manageable everyday handling, and a more predictable battery experience matter far more than the occasional thrill of unfolding extra screen space.

So yes, I'm returning the iPhone Duo. Not because it's a bad phone, but because it's a very good and genuinely exciting phone that asks far too much in return. My score is a strong 7/10. I hope Apple takes every one of these compromises seriously, because I already can't wait to see what the Duo 2 gets right.