# The iPhone Duo splits its keyboard under both thumbs

Source: https://idevice.com/the-iphone-duo-splits-its-keyboard-under-both-thumbs
Published: 2026-09-18

> Hands-on clips from three early testers cover typing, landscape multitasking and the camera, a month before the phone goes on sale.

Hold the [iPhone Duo](https://idevice.com/phones/iphone-fold/roadmap) open in landscape and the keyboard splits in two, with half of it under each thumb. That is one of the first things you see in a reel posted by Flourish Planner, who has been typing on the phone ahead of its October release and filming the results. She found the outer display easier to type on than she expected, and that is the screen most people will use one-handed on a train or in a queue. Held upright and unfolded, she rates the typing as good.

The iPhone Duo folds out from a small outer screen to a much larger inner one, reported at about 5.4 inches closed and 7.6 inches open, so the same phone asks you to type on two very different shapes. A layout tuned for one of them is wrong for the other. Splitting the keys in half and pushing each side under a thumb is the oldest answer to that problem, and iPad owners have had it for years.

Rich DeMuro filmed what happens when you use two things at once. Turn the phone into landscape and your content sits on the right with a sidebar on the left, the same shape an iPad has used for years, and system apps get their own landscape views. If you have used an iPad, there is nothing here to learn.

The same account also filmed reading on it, held partly folded, with a page-flip animation that copies a real book turning. GadgetMatch went wider and ran through camera features, gaming and StandBy mode. The camera tools that only work on this model are the part early testers keep coming back to.

None of the clips carry a battery figure, a word on how the crease holds up after a month, or anything about what you pay. The phone is reported at $1,999, with Touch ID in place of Face ID. These videos are about using it, not buying it.

None of this is Apple's doing and none of it is a review. These are people with early units posting to Instagram and YouTube, gathered up by 9to5Mac on the morning the [iPhone 18 Pro](https://idevice.com/phones/iphone-pro/roadmap) went on sale in shops. Two new Apple phones a month apart is unusual by itself. The one still to come is answering questions about its software through other people's Instagram reels.