Apple's design team reveals how notebooks helped inspire the iPhone Duo, along with interface principles and expectations for future features, in a new interview with GQ.
The interview features Apple CEO John Ternus, Vice President of Industrial Design Molly Anderson, and Vice President of Human Interface Design Steve Lemay. In addition to the device's previously announced features, Anderson and Lemay discuss how Apple approached its physical design and the experience of moving between its two displays.
Anderson said familiar notebooks provided a reference for making a device that offers more space while remaining compact enough to carry comfortably.
Everyone knows what a notebook feels like in the pocket and what it feels like to carry around. So that was a big part of the inspiration: 'How do you get to something that gives you space but also feels compact?'"
The iPhone Duo's proportions are derived from the international A-series paper system, allowing the device to retain the same proportions when opened and closed.
Anderson also explained how Apple tuned the hinge's resistance. Its custom variable torque profile makes the device easy to open before biasing it toward remaining open and lying flat.
Lemay said that the guiding idea of the iPhone Duo's software was to make unfolding feel like expanding the device users were already holding. Maintaining the location and recognizability of controls was part of that approach, so users would not have to search again for a button after opening the phone. The transition animation was designed to reveal an inner display that appears to grow beneath the outer one.
It was really important to us from the beginning that iPhone Duo feels like one cohesive experience, not two different products awkwardly fused together.
Lemay explicitly identified the Mac as a key influence on the Duo's interface, alongside the iPad and existing iPhones. He characterized the result as the "greatest hits" of those products.
The interview also questioned how Apple expects the product to develop after launch. Lemay said developers will devise uses that Apple's design team has not anticipated, and suggested that some could influence the wider foldable industry and change the direction of the iPhone Duo itself in the future.
There are so many things the developers will come up with that we've never anticipated. Some of those will become big ideas that take over the industry and change the product in interesting ways.
The iPhone Duo launches on October 23, with pre-orders beginning on October 16. Pricing starts at $1,999.
