Kerry Wan/ZDNETZDNET’s key takeaways
- The 2TB iPhone Duo costs a whopping $3,199.
- Apple’s foldable phone is pricey, but not the most expensive on the market.
- A MacBook Pro may be a smarter $3,200 buy.
“Even if I were an Apple fan, my answer would be ‘Hell, no.’”
That’s what my ZDNET colleague Steven Vaughan-Nichols said when I told him I was planning to write an article tentatively titled, “Would you spend $3,200 on an iPhone?”
After Apple revealed its new $1,999 foldable iPhone Duo at yesterday’s Apple Event, I noticed something troubling. That hefty $1,999 was for a 256GB version.
Also: 5 biggest Apple announcements from the iPhone Duo event
256 gigabytes is not a lot of storage for a phone where the “iPhone Duo gives the camera system you love delightful new features,” including the ability to “capture dazzling 48MP photos and 4K 120 fps videos.”
I once had a 256GB iPhone. I used it to shoot a lot of 4K iPhone video. Even though I used the Optimize iPhone Storage option to keep much of that video in iCloud, I found my phone so jammed full that I couldn’t upgrade the OS. I eventually wound up disconnecting it completely from iCloud, pretty much zeroing the device, and then upgrading.
Also: Why your RAM options cost 4X more now than last year – even legacy tech prices aren’t immune
When I upgraded to my current iPhone 16 Pro Max, I ordered it with 1TB of storage. That was $1,599 when I bought it. Prices jumped, presumably due to the AI-driven RAM shortage and the overall state of our troublesome economy. The newly announced iPhone 18 Pro Max with 1TB is $1,899. For that same 1TB, the new iPhone Duo is $2,599.
That’s $100 more than the most expensive iPhone Pro Max, with 2TB. That one costs $2,499.
So how much is the hot little iPhone Duo with the folding hinge, the satisfying magnetic snap when the leaves come together, and the not-quite-an-iPad mini-sized screen?
Also: iPhone Duo or 18 Pro? 8 reasons why I’m skipping Apple’s first foldable
$3,199. Three thousand. One hundred. And ninety-nine George Washingtons. I asked Gemini how thick a stack of 3,199 dollar bills would be. It told me, “A stack of 3,199 brand-new US dollar bills would be about 13.76 inches (or roughly 1.15 feet / 34.9 centimeters) thick.”
You’d need a stack of dollar bills more than a foot high to buy a sweet little iPhone Duo with 2 TB of storage.
What about the competition?
Let’s look at the top-of-the-line Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. This is a powerful phone that can hold its own against the iPhone 18 Pro series. It maxes out at 1TB, for a mere $1,549 (but is listed as “was $1,799”).
But that’s not really a fair comparison. Let’s compare apples to, well, Apple’s fold to Samsung’s foldables. At the top end is/was the Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold. This was announced in January with a 512GB model for US consumers. It’s no longer available (Samsung says it’s “sold out”). When it was available, it cost $2,900.
Granted, the Galaxy Z Trifold had one more hinge, but it was also considerably more expensive, memory-to-memory, compared to the iPhone Duo. The iPhone Duo, at 512GB, is a mere unhinged $2,199.
Also: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra vs. Motorola Razr Fold: Which premium foldable should you get?
Samsung does have a bunch of shipping foldables. The one most comparable to the iPhone Duo is the Galaxy Z Fold8. Its base price is $2,099 for 256GB. It goes up to $2,699 for 1TB. That’s a hundred bucks more than the iPhone Duo with the same memory capacity.
The Galaxy Z Fold8 doesn’t have a 2TB option.
So far, feature-for-feature, the iPhone Duo isn’t quite as bad as I expected it to be, at least in comparison to Samsung’s devices. But Samsung doesn’t appear to have a phone above $3,000.
OK, what about Google? The Google Pixel is another flagship phone. The model closest to the iPhone Duo is the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold. Pricing for this is a bit convoluted because it’s only available online with an “instant trade-in.”
So we need to do a bit of math. The base device before trade-in is listed at $1,899 for a 256GB model. The trade-in price is $1,269, $630 less. This is important for our comparison because Google’s configuration page only shows memory after trade-in. A 1TB device is $1,619 after trade-in. Without trade-in, adding back that $630, puts the 1TB Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold at $2,249.
For this Apples to Pixels comparison, the iPhone Duo with the same 1TB storage capacity is $2,599 versus the derived $2,249 for the Pixel. The foldable iPhone is $350 more than the foldable Pixel.
What about that $3,200 iPhone?
Let’s recap. At 1TB, you have the $2,699 Galaxy X Fold8. Then you have the $2,599 iPhone Duo. And then you have the probably $2,249 Pixel 11 Pro Fold.
The iPhone Duo, even at its eye-watering price, isn’t the most expensive of the flagship phones. That honor goes to Samsung.
But then we get to 2TB, and that brain-bleeding $3,200 price. Here’s the thing. Outside of Apple, there are no flagship US phones with 2TB of fast internal storage. I checked all the major Android vendors, and they all top off at 1TB.
So, yes, $3,200 for a phone is insane. But it’s certainly not the most expensive phone out there.
However, that’s only because some people have way more money than sense. Although I guess if you’re going to pay $48.5 million dollars for an iPhone made of gold and a giant diamond, money probably isn’t an issue.
I can’t think about it. It hurts my soul.
Also: Is an M5 MacBook Pro worth upgrading from an M1 model? What the numbers tell us
Instead, let’s compare that $3,200 iPhone to another, more practical expense. It is possible to spend more than $5,000 on a MacBook Pro. But you can get a normal, M5 MacBook Pro with 1TB of storage for $1,999. That’s right. You can get a MacBook Pro with four times the storage of the iPhone Duo, for the same $1,999.
As for $3,200, I can get you close. Upgrade from an M5 to an M5 Pro. Jump internal unified RAM from 16GB to 48GB. And boost storage from 1TB to 2TB. That brings the MacBook Pro to $3,100, still a hundred bucks less than an iPhone Duo with similar storage.
So there’s your trade-off. Do you want a cute little first-generation foldable iPhone with a good amount of storage, or a well-equipped MacBook Pro for a little less cash?
It’s a first version
It’s your wallet. You have to make the decision. But before you do, consider these words from our colleague Steven Vaughan-Nichols, whose “hell, no” we shared at the beginning of this article. In our conversation, he told me, “That’s too much money for a version 1 foldable. No one seems to get a foldable right the first time out of the gate.”
He has a point. The first iPhone wasn’t even close to what it became a few iterations later. The first Apple Watch was really nothing more than a concept prototype. And the first Apple Vision Pro, well, yeah, that’s still more of a prototype than a viable product for most users.
I won’t tell you not to buy the iPhone Duo. I can hear it calling to me, too. The animation that matches the outer screen to the inner screen as it opens and closes gives me shivers.
I’m not getting one. Not only is it pretty pricey, but it also doesn’t have the same camera system, and particularly the telephoto camera, that the traditional iPhone Pro devices offer. I rely on that much more than I need a slightly smaller foldable wannabe iPad mini in my pocket.
Also: I’m skipping the iPhone 18 this year, but the foldable Duo? I want it real bad
But hey, you be you. If you’re one of those folks who can’t resist the fold, go for it.
Are you getting one? Let us know in the comments below.
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