We unfolded the iPhone Duo

On a recent episode of The Vergecast, staffers parsed Apple’s latest launch event and the company’s new hardware lineup. The show framed the rollout as notable partly because it included Apple’s first folding phone, the iPhone Duo, introduced during John Ternus’s first appearance as CEO. Hosts and guests examined how Apple approached the foldable form factor and which design choices borrow from established Android foldables.

The conversation also dug into the iPhone 18 Pro’s camera changes. Both Jacob Kastrenakes and Allison Johnson, who had hands-on time in Cupertino, raised questions about the new variable aperture system and whether the real improvement may be the wider aperture rather than the phone’s ability to stop it down. That technical debate was presented as a central point in assessing the 18 Pro’s photographic upgrades.

Apple’s new Watch models were another major topic. Victoria Song, who also tested the watches in Cupertino, joined the discussion about the updated sensor array and whether it will deliver genuinely new health metrics or mainly more subjective data. The episode additionally flagged Apple’s introduction of an always-on microphone feature that can summarize conversations on-device, prompting concerns about whether those AI features push the company into risky privacy territory.

Rounding out the episode, Nilay Patel and David Imel spoke with AI researcher CJ Trowbridge about running local large language models on the Mac, and the show closed with a fast-paced Thunder Round of short stories — including items on OpenAI math controversies and digital ocarinas — so Allison could make an airport flight.