Apple Debuts Foldable iPhone Duo at $1,999 Under New CEO Ternus

John Ternus walked onto the stage at Apple's biggest launch event of the year on Wednesday and received a standing ovation that lasted at least thirty seconds. It was his first appearance as the company's new chief executive, and he had come to announce something Apple had never made before: a foldable iPhone.

Ternus opened by making the case for why the iPhone is the ideal device for artificial intelligence. He described what a perfect hub would need—something always with you, deeply personal, able to bring intelligence to the moments that matter most—then said Apple was about to take those experiences further with the next generation of iPhone. It was a rhetorical move that echoed Steve Jobs' original iPhone launch, and it set the tone for what would follow: a presentation that positioned AI not as a separate feature but as the reason for everything Apple was about to show.

The company unveiled the iPhone Duo, a device roughly the size of a passport with an internal screen measuring 7.6 inches and an outer display that covers 90 percent of the screen area of the iPhone 18 Pro. The phone's case is titanium. It will unlock via a fingerprint sensor built into the side button. The price: $1,999, which Apple said was in line with competitors and lower than much of what Wall Street had been expecting. It arrives in stores on October 23. The company also introduced the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max in two new colors—glacier and burgundy—but these phones came with a different kind of announcement: a $100 price increase over last year's models. The iPhone 18 Pro now starts at $1,199, and the Max at $1,299. Both phones will ship on September 18.

Apple justified the price hikes by pointing to a global shortage of memory and other components. The company had already raised prices on Macs and iPads over the summer for the same reason. The new phones run on the A20 Pro chip, Apple's first smartphone processor built on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's 2-nanometer technology. The chip includes a six-core CPU that runs up to 20 percent faster, a seven-core GPU with up to 40 percent more performance, and a 50 percent increase in memory bandwidth. Apple redesigned the chip to place the core logic silicon side-by-side with the memory chips themselves, a move meant to optimize performance during a time when memory supply is constrained. The company also unveiled a new C2 modem, the second-generation modem Apple has manufactured in-house. It is 50 percent faster than Apple's previous modem, supports 5G millimeter wave in the U.S., and runs at 15 percent lower energy. Chip analyst Ben Bajarin told CNBC that Apple will likely eliminate Qualcomm chips altogether in next year's iPhone 19 line.

For the Duo specifically, Apple redesigned much of iOS to take advantage of the two screens. Craig Federighi, the company's senior vice president of software engineering, said the team had examined every aspect of the operating system to make it more useful on a device with dual displays. Users can now multitask with two apps at the same time and use Apple's stylus, called Pencil. Ternus said other foldables feel like "two phones awkwardly stuck together," implying that Apple's approach was fundamentally different.

Beyond the phones, Apple introduced a suite of AI-powered features across its other devices. The Apple Watch Series 12 gained a feature called Audio Intelligence, which uses the watch's microphone to record conversations and allow users to review what was said. A feature called live rewind lets users go back fifteen seconds to catch something they missed. Another feature, Siri Recap, uses ambient listening to take high-level notes of conversations—extracting takeaways from a team meeting or a parent-teacher conference—and generates an Apple Intelligence-created title, summary, and key points. Apple said the feature would be private and would not store audio recordings or share them with the company. These features will be available in beta later this year. The Apple Watch Series 12 will cost $399 and up, with no price increase from the previous generation. The company also announced AirPods 5, which include active noise cancellation and longer battery life, starting at $129 for the standard version and $149 for the version with wireless charging.

Apple also introduced Apple Reference Image, a feature that allows users to prove a photo was taken by an iPhone camera rather than generated by AI. The feature works by having the new main camera securely sign photo data at a pixel level at the moment of capture. It will not be available in the European Union or China. Additionally, the iPhone 18 Pro now features a physical shutter controlled by six laser-cut blades, each thinner than a human hair, which allows photographers to control depth of field, focus, and bokeh. Battery life improved significantly: the smaller iPhone 18 Pro gets 24 hours of battery life, while the Max version manages 30 hours on a single charge.

During the nearly eighty-minute presentation, Apple's stock price remained down for almost the entire duration. The company's shares opened at $315.49 and briefly popped to $318 before dropping again. Analysts had warned that the event could be a negative catalyst for the stock, with KeyBanc Capital Markets noting that large price increases would hurt volume sales while minimal changes would amplify focus on gross margins. Yet Apple's foldable phone is expected to energize an entire category that remains niche. Foldable phones account for only about 2.2 percent of unit shipments so far this year, according to market researcher IDC. Huawei currently dominates the market, controlling nearly 80 percent of foldable sales in China. But Apple's entry into the space—and the company's ability to deliver a premium device at a competitive price—could shift the entire landscape.