After fifteen years of quiet engineering, Apple has stepped into the public conversation around foldable smartphones — not with a product announcement, but with a judgment. CEO John Ternus called existing foldables cheap and poorly made, positioning the forthcoming iPhone Duo as the answer to a question the industry has been asking impatiently. It is a familiar posture for Apple: to arrive late by the calendar, but to insist that patience is its own form of progress.
Apple CEO Ternus dismisses early foldables as 'cheap and crappy,' touts iPhone Duo
Fifteen years of engineering for a device the market hasn't seen yet
Mark
So Ternus spent fifteen years on this thing. That's a long time to keep a project quiet. Why would Apple sit on foldable technology for that long?
Mimi
Because foldables are genuinely hard. The screen has to bend thousands of times without cracking. The hinge has to be invisible but strong. The software has to know when you're folded and when you're flat. Apple apparently decided none of the existing solutions were good enough.
Luke
But we should be careful here—we're taking Ternus at his word that Apple spent fifteen years specifically on the iPhone Duo. That could mean fifteen years of research into foldable materials, or it could mean something narrower. The reporting doesn't give us the full timeline.
Mark
Fair point. So when he calls other foldables cheap and crappy, is he talking about durability, or design, or both?
Mimi
The reporting doesn't specify. He's making a broad judgment, but we don't have the technical details yet. It could be about the hinge, the screen quality, the build materials—or all of those.
Luke
Exactly. "Cheap and crappy" is a CEO's opinion, not a specification. We don't know yet if the iPhone Duo actually solves the problems he's identifying.
Mark
So this is really just Apple saying "trust us, we've thought about this longer than anyone else"?
Mimi
Yes. It's a positioning statement before the product launches. Ternus is setting expectations—telling people that Apple's foldable will be different because it was built differently.
Luke
And we won't know if that's true until we can actually test it. The fifteen-year claim is interesting, but it's also not independently verified. It's what Ternus said in an interview.
Il Polso
- Apple CEO John Ternus publicly dismissed rivals' foldable phones as cheap and crappy, injecting sharp competitive tension into a category Samsung and Motorola have spent years building.
- The provocation lands just as Apple prepares to enter the foldable market for the first time, raising the stakes for every manufacturer already selling devices Ternus has now called inferior.
- Apple's counter-move is the iPhone Duo — a product the company says required fifteen years of development in materials science, hinge engineering, and software integration before it was ready to ship.
- The strategy deliberately sidesteps the AI arms race dominating Silicon Valley, betting instead that durable, refined hardware will prove more compelling than cloud-deployed software services.
- Whether the iPhone Duo can actually deliver on Ternus's bold framing remains unresolved — pricing, durability, and consumer reception will ultimately determine if the wait was worth it.
After fifteen years of quiet engineering, Apple has stepped into the public conversation around foldable smartphones — not with a product announcement, but with a judgment. CEO John Ternus called existing foldables cheap and poorly made, positioning the forthcoming iPhone Duo as the answer to a question the industry has been asking impatiently. It is a familiar posture for Apple: to arrive late by the calendar, but to insist that patience is its own form of progress.
Apple CEO John Ternus made headlines by publicly dismissing existing foldable smartphones as cheap and poorly made, positioning the company's upcoming iPhone Duo as the product that finally gets the technology right. The remarks arrived as Apple prepares to enter a category that Samsung, Motorola, and others have occupied for years — each iteration chipping away at the engineering challenges of a screen designed to bend.
Ternus's most striking claim was the timeline: fifteen years of internal development. Rather than racing rivals to market, Apple appears to have treated foldables as a long-term research problem, one demanding sustained work in materials science and hinge design before the company was willing to put its name on a shipping product. That patience stands in deliberate contrast to the annual refresh cycles that define most smartphone marketing.
The move also reflects a broader strategic bet. While much of the technology industry has pivoted toward artificial intelligence and large language models, Ternus has kept Apple's public identity anchored in hardware — in physical objects that require sustained investment rather than software services that can be deployed and iterated quickly.
Still, Ternus's confidence is a promise not yet redeemed. The iPhone Duo's real-world durability, pricing, and user experience remain unknown. What his words have established, clearly and deliberately, is Apple's conviction that the foldable market has not yet produced anything worthy of its standards — and that the company intends to change that.
Apple's chief executive John Ternus has taken a public swipe at the foldable phones already on the market, calling them cheap and poorly made. In a recent interview, he positioned Apple's forthcoming iPhone Duo as the product that gets foldable technology right—the result, he emphasized, of fifteen years of internal development and refinement.
The comment arrives as Apple prepares to enter a category that Samsung, Motorola, and others have already claimed. Those competitors have been selling foldable devices for several years now, each iteration attempting to solve the engineering challenges that come with a screen that bends. Ternus's dismissal suggests Apple views the current generation of foldables not as a mature product category, but as a preliminary market that has settled for compromises Apple believes it has overcome.
The fifteen-year timeline Ternus cited is notable. It signals that Apple did not rush into foldables to keep pace with rivals. Instead, the company appears to have treated the category as a long-term research problem—one requiring years of materials science, hinge design, and software integration before the company felt ready to attach its name to a shipping product. This approach contrasts sharply with the annual refresh cycles that dominate smartphone marketing, where new models arrive whether or not they represent genuine innovation.
Ternus's framing also reflects a broader strategic choice. While other technology companies have invested heavily in artificial intelligence models and large language systems, Ternus has kept Apple's public focus trained on hardware. The iPhone Duo represents that commitment made concrete—a physical device that required sustained engineering investment rather than a software service that could be deployed quickly and iterated in the cloud.
The iPhone Duo's actual capabilities and pricing remain to be seen. Ternus's comments do not yet tell us whether Apple's foldable will be meaningfully more durable than existing alternatives, or whether it will command a premium price that reflects those fifteen years of development. What his words do establish is Apple's conviction that the foldable market, as it currently exists, has not yet delivered a product worthy of the company's standards. Whether the market agrees with that assessment will become clear once the iPhone Duo reaches consumers' hands.
Citazioni salienti
Ternus characterized early foldable smartphones as inferior products, suggesting Apple's approach represents a meaningful technological advancement— John Ternus, Apple CEO
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