Gurman Says Apple May Add iPhone Duo Max as Foldable Line Grows After First Launch

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple may follow its first foldable iPhone with a larger "iPhone Duo Max" and, later, cheaper or smaller variants, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman wrote days after the company unveiled the $1,999 iPhone Duo.

In his Power On newsletter, Gurman said the three-letter "Duo" name, rather than "Ultra," was chosen in part because it matches Air and Pro and leaves room for extra suffixes. Before Wednesday's event, some Apple employees had called the project iPhone Ultra, a label that leaked into coverage. Ultra would have made "Ultra Max" awkward. Duo Max, Duo SE or Duo Mini does not.

Gurman said a Duo Max would likely have a bigger display. A Duo SE would strip features for a lower price. A Duo Mini would use a clamshell fold instead of the book-style hinge on the first model. He also said a third-generation Duo is the more realistic home for Face ID and a telephoto lens, which the first unit omitted because of thickness. He wrote that miniaturization and on-device AI could let Apple "use smaller, less sophisticated depth-sensing and camera hardware while making up some of the difference computationally."

He expects the current Duo to become the "predominant foldable phone on the market" on software, build quality and durability. The device is "so impressive," he wrote, that it will "turn foldables into the new normal." That is a columnist's forecast, not an Apple product roadmap. Apple has announced only one foldable.

The phone CEO John Ternus introduced on Sept. 9 is a book-style handset with a 5.4-inch outer Super Retina XDR display and a 7.6-inch inner panel, the largest screen Apple has put on an iPhone. Closed, the cover is about 90 percent of the iPhone 18 Pro's screen area. Open, the inner sheet is about 50 percent larger than the iPhone 18 Pro Max. Both panels share the same aspect ratio so apps scale without a layout jump. Opened, Apple calls it the thinnest iPhone it has shipped.

"iPhone Duo is the most transformational change to iPhone since the original," Ternus said in Apple's release. "With an entirely new design and intuitive experiences, it shows what's possible when hardware and software are engineered together and redefines what it means to use a foldable phone." At the event he mocked rival foldables as "two phones awkwardly stuck together."

Hardware: A20 Pro chip, 12GB of memory, 256GB to 2TB of storage, dual 48-megapixel rear cameras, Touch ID in the side button, Ceramic Shield, an IP68 rating, titanium frame with ceramic-fiber reinforcement. Apple Pencil support is coming on both screens later this year. Colors are Night Sky and Star White. Peak brightness is listed at 3,000 nits. The inner display uses a nano-texture finish meant to cut glare and hide the crease. Weight is 254 grams. Open thickness is 5.2 millimeters.

Price starts at $1,999 for 256GB and reaches $3,199 for 2TB. Preorders open Oct. 16 in more than 70 countries. Ship date is Oct. 23.

Samsung has sold book-style foldables since 2019. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 sits near $1,899. Apple's bet is that iOS continuity and a stiffer hinge will move foldables out of a niche. Gurman's Max/SE/Mini sketch is how Apple usually fills a new chassis: one expensive halo, then size and price cuts. None of those extra models have a date. The only SKU that exists is the first Duo, still six weeks from stores.