It's safe to say that the iPhone 18 Pro Max is proving quite popular. At the time of writing, delivery estimates for the cheapest model are two to three weeks away — compared to one to two weeks for the iPhone 18 Pro. However the popularity seems to pale in comparison to iPhone Duo, whose delivery estimates were pushed into next year after only an hour of pre-orders being open.
My iPhone 18 Pro Max arrived yesterday, after almost a month of waiting for Apple to actually dispatch the thing. The problem was that as soon as it was set up, my mind was immediately stumped on what I should be doing with it. More so after I'd played with the variable aperture, and watched the blades move over the camera lens.
In contrast the iPhone Duo is something that a lot of people are eagerly anticipating, even if you're accepting some compromises in the process. Why? Because it's something brand new that Apple has never done before, even if the first foldable phones are now old enough to be in second grade.
What does the iPhone 18 Pro Max actually have to offer?
I know that on a technical level the iPhone 18 Pro Max is a better phone than the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Our testing shows that the A20 Pro chip makes it significantly more powerful, and the battery life is half an hour longer than you'd get on last year's flagship. Charging time is noticeably faster too, aided by the speedier 60W wired charging capabilities.
But those aren't the kind of upgrades you can consciously feel. They make the overall experience of using the iPhone 18 Pro Max better, even if you don't actually notice what's going on, but they aren't the kind of things that make you physically excited to hold and enjoy the phone for yourself.
Those gears didn't actually shift into place until I held the iPhone 18 Pro Max in my hand, and I felt like the aquarium fish at the very end of Finding Nemo. I have an iPhone 17 Pro Max already, and aside from some obvious difference in the weight of the two phones (8.78 ounces versus 8.22 ounces) I couldn't really differentiate the two phones.
I tinkered with the variable aperture camera system, and it was rather fun to watch the blades move across the lens the way that they do. But that is an activity that gets old very quickly, and once you've exhausted what little enjoyment that brings, the reality sets in that upgrading your phone every year is rather a pointless endeavour.
Apple may have made some significant improvements to the iPhone 18 Pro Max, and added the fancy new camera features, but it doesn't change the fact that this feels more like an iPhone 17S than an iPhone 18 Pro. It makes the 18 Pro Max feel like another iteration of the same old things, and the honest truth is that it's an extremely boring upgrade. To the point that it barely feels like an upgrade at all.
I'll admit that the software changes do play a big impact in what the 18 Pro Max can do. But when you remember that iOS 27 is not exclusive to the newest iPhones, and has been available on older models for a good few weeks (or months if you downloaded the beta), it isn't really a selling point.
The iPhone Duo, on the other hand, is a totally new kind of device that Apple has never made before. Sure, it's not going to impress foldable phone enthusiasts for the same reason the iPhone 18 Pro Max isn't impressing me now. But for those people that have never left the Apple ecosystem before, it's a totally novel kind of device.
iPhone Duo has change that you can feel and experience in your hands
You only need to look at the iPhone Duo to know that it's going to offer a very different user experience than the iPhone 18 Pro Max. It's a foldable phone that opens up to reveal a large tablet-sized display that is noticeably larger than that on a traditional phone.
A whole new form factor and method of operation means that the iPhone Duo is something that you're going to have to get to grips with. Even if you have extensively used foldable phones in the past, the fact that this is a foldable iPhone means it's going to offer a slightly different experience to that of an Android model. Both in terms of the software side of things and how Apple actually makes the foldable experience work compared to the likes of Samsung or Google.
Heck, the fact that Apple has tweaked the UI to put a taskbar on the side of the iPhone Duo means that every user will need to spend some amount of time acclimatizing to the new way of doing things.
The iPhone Duo goes beyond just being a foldable iPhone too. Apple seems to have put a lot of effort into making it something different and unique compared to its usual yearly releases. The use of titanium means it's more durable than the the last two Pro Max iPhones, and under-display camera is a feature that we don't really see on phones anymore.
Even if Apple doesn't solve the myriad of problems hidden cameras have, it's something different that users can experience. Plus it means you have an uninterrupted display, which is not something you see very much of anymore.
Apple has made something different with the iPhone Duo, and expensive as it may be, it's offering something that most iPhone owners haven't been able to experience before now. In a world where new phones have been feeling increasingly boring and barely different from what came before, that's a very desirable trait to have.
Whether Apple can maintain that excitement with future foldable iPhones is unclear, though I suspect that people will lose that sense of excitement very quickly. After all, all other foldables have just become part of the annual release cycle, and there will be a point where the iPhone Duo falls in line with them.
Bottom line
Phone launches have been dull and stale for a long time now. As much as the companies behind them try to drum up excitement and act as though what they're offering is revolutionary, the truth is that 90% of the time they're not. Even new kinds of phone can get old very quickly, especially when you have a release as spectacularly bad as that of the original Samsung Galaxy Fold.
I've never picked up a new phone and struggled to know what to do with it, though. It's not a fun experience to hold a $1,200 phone and wonder what the point of it all is — which makes a very strong argument against upgrading your old handsets too quickly. Though at the same time, I have to wonder whether the impending iPhone Duo release is affecting things. Both in terms of user attitudes, and the resources Apple put into developing its new phone lines.
You can feel the anticipation for the iPhone Duo right now, and the fact that the delivery estimates were pushed back to 2027 suggests that demand is likely much higher than Apple actually anticipated. That's not something you see every year, and it's nice that people can actually be genuinely excited for a brand new phone. It's just a shame that the iPhone 18 Pro Max feels like such a nothingburger.