If you miss your Sony Walkman – and I very definitely do – then the first app on this list might make you forget that the iPhone Duo has more cost and fewer cameras than the iPhone 18 Pro which came out a few weeks before.
I'm one of those people who has been sitting, waiting, wondering but for every day I don't buy the new iPhone 18 Pro (as I have every one of its predecessors), I get a little bit better at not buying iPhones.
Rather than worry about that, Apple seems to have been encouraging developers to be creative with the new form factor and – even though they have only been able to use simulators – Duoman is a great example of the kind of thing that has already drawn my attention.
Duo-Man offers the complete walkman experience on the iPhone Duo. Open the Duo to pick and 'insert' the cassette, Close the Duo to start listening. Yes, I actually recorded the button clicks and static noise from a real Walkman! It was fun making this at @bitrig hacks today. https://t.co/juSrLhofrHSeptember 27, 2026
I grew up in the UK and, call me ungrateful, but I never quite overcome the embarrassment of getting a Boots-brand personal stereo first.
Boots is the UK's main high-street pharmacy – think CVS – and back in the late 1980s, as well as being the place to get your film developed, it was also a place to buy home stereos and all sorts of goods.
Eventually, though, I got a Sony Walkman (you know what? It was a lot better), and got used to swapping tapes to change
Potentially of interest to photographers – or their subjects – is the Saura App, a "voice first" beauty app which uses one half of the screen as a mirror and the other half to provide a hands-free vanity assistant.
In other words, in case you don't know what that is (don't worry, I didn't), the phone will tell you what make up to apply where to get the look you're after.
Thanks to the design of the phone, it can become a self standing vanity mirror, as well as one that actually talks back.
It's all a bit "Mirror mirror on the wall" for my liking, but it can remember your personal routine, and the developers have suggested that it is at its most powerful when it helps boost your confidence.
Another app that has been doing the rounds is Accorduon, which uses the hinge of the phone as the bellows. The reed sound is fully synthesized and it's been tested on the iPhone Duo simulator.
MPC fans – might be excited by a music sampler created by Shuhan-Zhang Zhang, Aradhya Mishra and Mahin Bharathwaj which beat the others in a competition on Devpost. Called Crate it is an AI-powered music sampler that splilts the controls across the two halves of the device.
That's great, but sadly this isn't a tech that I have the talent for.
Of course these creative new apps aren't really the big new feature, which is side-by-side use of existing apps.
The thing is I've spoken to plenty of people I know who have Android folding phones (yes, I don't know if you heard, but Apple didn't get here first). All of those people tell me that they very rarely end up using that feature.
So I was hoping that there might be something a bit more special to draw me into the new iPhone – Apple-specific software.
Especially as the iPhone Duo isn't actually that big; it folds small and passport sized so that it opens with a more 4:3 shaped screen; 7.6-inches rather than 6.9-inches of the iPhone 17 or 18 Pro Max. Somehow I doubt that'll make a lot of difference for enjoying 16:9 TV/movie content – it'll have black bars or be cropped.
Perhaps there is TranslateCat to look out for though. Should I be lucky enough to get sent on any international trips where my shameful lack of language skills might be exposed, this app using the dual screen system to present both sides of a conversation with a live conversation looks promising.
I didn't say I'd need a lot of convincing, after all. Now admittedly a fake Walkman is asking a lot of my "nostalgia budget," but altogether these apps do start to show that there is potential in the new form factor.
Perhaps I will get a new iPhone this year after all.
