Could Apple‘s newest iPhone spark a premium video renaissance?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but the iPhone Duo, which was released Friday, may very well be the best friend to streaming platforms from the likes of Netflix, Skydance, NBCUniversal and Disney.
The last few years have seen the world of video turned upside down … or rather, 90 degrees. Vertical video has flourished, thanks to apps like TikTok and new products like YouTube Shorts and Meta’s Reels.
Short-form content and other vertical formats like microdramas have proliferated as apps adapted to the candy bar shape of iPhones, and with users ever so reticent to turn their devices horizontal. The result has been premium services like Netflix, Peacock and HBO Max launching more vertical content to get more of that share of time.
But the iPhone Duo, which The Hollywood Reporter attended a preview of earlier this week, could be a device that flips the script. It can handle vertical video just fine on its outer 5.4 inch screen, but when users unfold it to reveal its 7.6 inch display, it takes full advantage of that extra real estate.
Movies and TV shows are bigger and more immersive than any other device that fits into your pocket, and many app developers, including Netflix and Major League Baseball, have optimized for it. MLB, for example, pairs live game video with immersive data, letting hardcore fans view box scores as they watch the action.
They have also optimized for the iPhone Duo’s other parlor trick: It works even when only partially opened, allowing for a laptop-esque form factor for airplane tray tables, commuters, or on the kitchen counter while cooking.
Netflix, for example, puts the TV show or movie on the top half, and video controls on the bottom half when folded in that position.
“Because it has so many different poses, there’s so much flexibility,” says Adam Bell, a software engineer for Netflix, demoing the streamer’s app for THR. “There’s so many different configurations. It’s like, do you want to prop it up on a table and fold it like a book? Do you want to have it in a little small tent mode on there? Do you want to have it flipped up like this tabletop mode? Or you can just hold it in your hand. So it’s really meeting our members where they’re at and having controls that follow them however they use it, so they don’t feel like they’re relearning the interface every time they switch the pose of the device.”
The New York Times meanwhile optimized its cooking app, putting video of a recipe on the top half, with the recipe itself on the bottom half (if a user opens it up to the full inside screen, the recipe becomes much more visible, with the ingredients pinned to the side for easy viewing).
The Apple TV app also gives extra detail about a film or series as people watch, and users can even run two apps at once, with one in each half of the display.
If users flip it over like a tent, it functions almost like a kickstand, displaying video on the outer display in widescreen.
It’s a device that fully embraces screen real estate, at a moment when videos on phones had been shifting toward vertical formats.
Of course, the iPhone Duo is a more niche device than the iPhone. It starts at $1,999, a premium to standard phones, and availability remains limited for now. And yet it presents a compelling form factor for something that we all spend so much time with: Video, and in a way that lets premium, longer-form video shine.
At a moment where long-form and short-form content are colliding, and where the line between premium and creator content is blurry, it’s a device that lives in both worlds. And Hollywood, as long as it is in the premium video business, may want to hope for its success.
