iPhone Duo has been out for about 3 weeks now, and I’ve happily been using mine since launch day. Many people have made a big deal about the app situation, but I’d largely say most apps I rely on are updated for iOS 27.0 at least.
That said, a fair number of apps are still from iOS 26 and earlier, and those apps have letterboxing. In my time since trying the phone, I feel one quick adjustment could make the letterboxing a lot less of an issue.
Right now, on the home screen, iPhone Duo allows you to long press an app and open it in Split View. All iPhone Duo apps allow Split View, even if the developer hasn’t compiled it for iOS 27 or 27.1.
One of the beautiful things about iPhone Duo Split View is the fact that you don’t have to decide what you’re splitting right away. On the other half of the display, you’ll see your home screen, and you can later decide what app to open.
iPhone Duo apps should have a default ‘open in split view’ option
So, given the fact that a non iOS 27 app will only occupy around half of the inner display anyways, I feel like it’d make sense to have an option to open every non-optimized app in Split View by default – rather than needing to select it every time. Or, better yet, toggle certain apps to always open in Split View.
Certain apps, even if they’re optimized for iOS 27, don’t quite feel right spread across the wider inner display of iPhone Duo – so it’d be nice to always have them in a half split without needing to think about it.
This would be a small UX improvement that I feel would go a long way, so if Apple could implement this on iPhone Duo – it’d certainly help out the app situation. While they’re at it, it’d be nice to have Slide Overon the iPhone Duo, for when you want to quickly see a smaller app on top of your full screen app.
Some of my favorite Apple accessory recommendations:
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