456: ‘Lubricate the Inside of the Hinge’, With Joanna Stern

John and Joanna open by joking about their work schedules. John says he nearly had to record on Saturday and that his children barely remember him, while Joanna says she is exhausted from simultaneously covering product launches, maintaining her editorial work, and launching a company. John has also declined what would have been his fifth California trip in eight weeks, even though he feels guilty about missing the launch of a touchscreen Mac he has long wanted to see. Before turning to the iPhone Duo, they discuss the new Siri Remote. Both think its built-in sound and Precision Finding support could make it a sleeper product, perhaps even one of Apple's best releases of 2026. They appreciate that users no longer need to attach an AirTag or buy a special case to locate the remote. However, John argues Apple should have added the feature a generation earlier: AirTags already existed when the previous remote shipped, and the Apple TV was already an expensive product. They then briefly note that the Duo could potentially become a remote-control device through an app, before moving to their reviews.

Joanna says she finally finished reading John's Duo review after repeatedly falling asleep with the device in her hand. She agrees with his central framing: the Duo is not a particularly good conventional phone, but it is an excellent tablet. She says his review helped her recognize points she had been thinking about but had not emphasized strongly enough herself. Both describe the review process as unusually difficult because the software environment changed throughout the review window. They received the devices on Tuesday and had eight days before publication, but third-party app support moved through several distinct stages. At first, many apps looked poor, with black bars or awkward layouts. Apple PR then helped reviewers access TestFlight versions, and by the end of the week major developers, including Google, had updated their apps. Joanna rewrote and reshot sections multiple times because examples that looked bad one day had improved by the next. Google even updated its apps shortly before publication after Joanna had warned its PR team that Maps looked terrible. They agree this made the Duo harder to review than a normal iPhone, whose software landscape is stable during the review period.

The hosts wonder how much their initial anxiety about the Duo's weak app support was shaped by what John calls “post-traumatic Vision Pro disorder.” The Vision Pro had launched at roughly $3,000 after Apple announced its APIs at WWDC, but major apps such as Netflix and YouTube did not provide native experiences, leaving the platform with few compelling applications. They think reviewers and Apple both remembered that failure. Joanna argues Apple handled the Duo more effectively. The company worked directly with developers, held dozens of sessions where developers could test their in-progress apps on actual Duo hardware, and actively co-marketed applications designed for the device. What initially looked like an app disaster became a mixture of acceptable ports and playful, genuinely optimized experiences. They particularly praise Meta's support. Instagram historically lacked even an iPad app until this year, but Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, and other Meta apps arrived in reasonably good form for the Duo. They connect this to a newly friendly Apple–Meta relationship, citing Meta's local AI model running well on Mac Studios with 512 GB of RAM and John Ternus publicly praising Mark Zuckerberg's team. They conclude that Meta users—potentially billions of people—benefit even if they do not care about executive rivalries.

Joanna praises John's review metaphor comparing the Duo to Transformers toys. As a child, John disliked Transformers because they looked compromised in both forms: folded into vehicles, they had visible seams and joints and did not look like convincing cars or aircraft. He had the same reaction to inconsistent Star Wars toys, some of which accurately reproduced the movie designs while others looked as though the manufacturer had merely heard a description of them. His review applies that idea to the Duo: it is neither an ideal phone nor an ideal tablet because combining both forms requires compromises. The metaphor occurred to John almost immediately; an automatic backup of his review from Tuesday morning contained the single word “transformers.” He worried everyone else would use it, but no one did. Joanna says the analogy also made her think about durability, because her children’s Transformers toys frequently break. That led them to discuss the Duo's hinge, which is far more sophisticated than the joints on a $28 plastic robot. Apple claims the hinge is rated for roughly 32,000 folds, and both reviewers found it mechanically impressive and satisfying to operate. They agree the phone is exciting and fun to review, but neither believes foldables will become the default phone for everyone.

Joanna explains how she tested the hinge after deciding that ordinary use and Apple's presentation were not enough. She contacted New Jersey hardware prototyper Aaron Cohen, who built a device called “Hingy.” It used a MagSafe holder, a 3D-printed component, and a servo to repeatedly open and close the Duo. Joanna ran it overnight, monitored it with a Nest camera, and checked it each morning, worrying that either the review phone or the machine would fail first. She powered the phone off and charged it separately so that it would be available for daytime testing, ultimately reaching 32,000 folds. They compare this with a video by Tim Pan, who manually folded a device 500 times and then used a robot for 10,000 cycles. Joanna jokes that having her children perform the test would have been child labor. They also discuss battery testing: it consumes an entire review day, is difficult when reviewers receive only one device, and remains important because Apple’s battery promises need to be verified. John describes using an inexpensive Amazon auto-clicker and a website called “Poke the Pickle” for testing. They agree that the named testing rigs and playful experiments helped make the review process fun while still answering practical durability questions.

The largest practical disagreement concerns authentication. Both wish the Duo had Face ID, at least on the outer screen, but Apple chose Touch ID for consistency between the closed and open states. John says Apple may have wanted to avoid shipping a $2,000 device with a less-secure camera-based facial system, since Apple describes Face ID as substantially more secure than Touch ID. He also notes that Apple has never shipped a platform with both authentication systems. The Apple Watch makes Touch ID less painful because it unlocks the Duo most of the time, but both still find themselves repeatedly locked out and re-entering a passcode. They complain about the side-button layout, awkward screenshot combination, volume controls, and the inability to use the device comfortably one-handed for typing. Joanna says left-handed use is especially uncomfortable because a corner digs into the palm, while John notes that Apple is preparing some left-handed software accommodation despite initially seeming not to recognize the problem. The outer screen is useful for notifications, quick checks, scrolling, dictation, and short messages, but its narrowness pushes users toward opening the tablet. Opening the Duo requires a two-handed “pry,” not a satisfying flip, and the hinge may become stiffer as its internal lubricant wears away. The hosts debate cases: the device feels case-worthy, especially because its camera bump causes table wobble, but Apple's case uses adhesive and can trap hair.

Both reviewers find the Duo most compelling when it remains open as a small tablet. John describes using it on the couch while watching playoff baseball, leaving it open on the coffee table and returning to it without having to unlock or reopen it. That use case makes the missing Face ID feel particularly conspicuous. They agree, however, that the form factor is not universally desirable: even with a lower price and perfect durability, many smartphone owners will not want to carry a phone that is twice as thick when closed. They praise the Duo's split-screen interaction, which is simpler than iPad multitasking: dragging an app from the bottom toward the side quickly creates a useful layout. They think Apple should replace the iPad's more confusing multitasking system with this approach. At the same time, Duo-specific software has many bugs, including apps moving partly off-screen, control center wasting the larger display, messages and links trapping the keyboard, and autocorrect or capitalization unexpectedly stopping until the phone is locked and unlocked. The hosts attribute some of this to the rapidly changing software and expect later releases to fix it. The episode closes with their favorite playful Duo apps: Deckman simulates a Walkman with tape hiss and jammed-tape behavior, Fridge adds a refrigerator hum, Toasty makes virtual toast or grilled cheese, and Duometry turns the hinge into an angle-matching game. These apps, they say, give the Duo early-iPhone-style developer energy.