The iPhone Duo officially started shipping this Friday. Apple has warned that there will be limited in-store inventory and online purchases are facing long waiting times. Apple is working on building more units, but that will take some time.
Here’s a look at Apple’s first foldable – it starts at $2,000 for the base 256GB model and goes all the way up to $3,200 for the 2TB model. For comparison, the base iPhone 18 Pro Max (256GB) is $700 cheaper and if portability is a concern, there is the smaller iPhone 18 Pro for $100 less than that.
Now, let’s look at the competition. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 is the only other wide foldable in the US market. With a $200 discount and a lower starting price, it costs $300 less than the iPhone. The Galaxy is thinner (9.7mm vs. 11.3mm) and much lighter (201g vs. 254g) while offering a similar cover display (5.5” vs. 5.4”) and inner display (both 7.6” with similar aspect ratios).
They have nearly identical battery capacities too (4,800mAh vs. 4,883mAh), so endurance will depend on chipset efficiency – it’s a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for the Galaxy and an Apple A20 Pro for the Duo. Both phones lack dedicated telephoto cameras, offering only dual 50MP and dual 48MP modules, respectively.
Samsung also has a larger book-style foldable, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra. Despite having a larger 6.5” cover display (a tall and narrow 21:9 panel) and an 8.0” inner display, the Ultra remains thin and light – 8.9mm and 215g (that is 39g less than the Duo). This one packs a 200MP 1/1.3” sensor in the main camera and does have a telephoto lens, even if it’s only a 10MP 3x/69mm module. Here is a more in-depth comparison between the Z Fold8 and the Z Fold8 Ultra.
Last year’s Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 is $1,350 on Amazon – we saw a similar offer a couple of weeks ago. Now Walmart throws its hat in the ring with a $1,300 price tag. Despite the naming, the sequel to the Z Fold7 is the Z Fold8 Ultra and not the Z Fold8. Why does the new model deserve the “Ultra” moniker? You can read more about that in our versus article. Long story short, there are key improvements to the inner display, battery life, charging and performance.
Google still can’t manage a good discount for its foldable, so we turn to the Motorola Razr Fold as an alternative. This phone is not as thin or light (it measures 10.1mm and weighs 243g), but it has a large 6,000mAh battery with fast 80W wired and 50W wireless charging (vs. 5,000mAh 45W/20W for the Z Fold8 Ultra). It uses the non-Elite Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset and promises 7 OS updates, the same as the Galaxy. The phone has a 50MP main with a 1/1.28” sensor, a higher resolution 50MP 3x/71mm telephoto and a 50MP ultra-wide camera.
While we’re in the mood for foldables, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip8 is still at $1,050 – we’ve seen it at under $1,000 and we think that is the better price for it.
In the meantime, last year’s Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 is back down to $700. The phone has its flaws – we nod towards the old Snapdragon 8 Elite as we say that – but it’s cheaper than the Z Flip8 while offering more RAM and storage. It has a bigger battery with faster charging too.
Samsung.com is selling the new Galaxy Tab S12+ and Tab S12 Ultra with a $100 discount available via code PYPL100. These tablets have 12.6” and 14.6” screens (120Hz OLED), respectively, and 10,600mAh and 11,600mAh batteries. Both run on last year’s Dimensity 9500 and have full DeX support.
In the comments under a recent poll, someone made an interesting observation – why buy a Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra when you can have a MacBook for the same amount of money? Well, the new MacBook Air 13” is actually cheaper than the Ultra tablet, unless you do a trade-in for the Galaxy slate. It’s powered by the Apple M5 chip (it was announced in March, before the M6 came out). The base 16/512GB model launched at $1,100, but that was before a recent price hike added $200 to that number.
For desk work, the latest Apple Mac mini comes with the M6 chipset and saves a few hundred bucks by not having a screen, battery or keyboard. Plus, you get more I/O – three Thunderbolt 4 ports (vs. two), a full-size HDMI and a 2.5Gb Ethernet port.
By the way, Apple recently refreshed its Apple TV 4K streaming device. The 4th gen model costs double what the 3rd gen did at launch (though that too was hit by the price hike). It has last year’s Apple A19 chipset (the GPU is 2x faster than the A15 in the old model), plus 128GB storage and gigabit Ethernet as standard.
We may get a commission from qualifying sales.