It’s hard not to smile. Foldable phones have been around for an awfully long time, yet until 2026, they’ve remained a peripheral tech product for most people.

“Ooh, is that one of those foldable phones? What’s it like?”

I’d occasionally get questions like that if I whipped out a bendy review unit in front of someone (stop laughing at the back). And my response was always the same.

“Oh, yeah. It’s really interesting. Not for everyone, but a very cool piece of tech. Here, have a go.”

Cue wide eyes, raised eyebrows, and mutterings of “oh, wow, that is cool”, before the device was handed back and it was made abundantly clear that the conversation had finished.

I’m a foldable fan. I’m a foldable user; quite often, my secondary SIM card sits in a foldable device while my main eSIM remains in an iPhone. And you know what? I reach for the foldable far more than I do the iPhone. That has particularly been the case with Samsung’s Z Fold8 this year. It’s a beautifully engaging and extremely useful squat little phone that takes me back to my BlackBerry days. Albeit a BlackBerry with a hinge and a massive internal display. And no physical keyboard.

There's a question that lands in my inbox more than almost any other right now, and it goes something like this: "Mark, I've outgrown my Bluetooth speaker. I want proper sound in my home. What do I actually buy?"

For a long time, my honest answer was "it depends" - which is reviewer-speak for "I don't love any of the options enough to commit." But I've had the Denon Home range sitting in my living room for the past few weeks, and I think I finally have a real answer.

There are three speakers in the range. The Home 200 is the entry point (£299 / $399 / €349) - a genuinely solid starting point if you want to get into the ecosystem without committing to the bigger outlay. The Home 400 (£449 / $599 / €499) is the one I've been living with, and honestly, I think it's the sweet spot for most people - it's where upfiring drivers come in for spatial audio, with six drivers total doing proper physical work. Then there's the Home 600 (£599 / $799 / €699), which adds dedicated subwoofers and eight drivers in total if you want the largest, more powerful sound.

If you want to find out more check our my video, or pick one up at DENON.com.

Then, along comes Apple with the iPhone Duo - its first foldable smartphone. Suddenly, everyone is talking about foldables. Everyone wants foldables. Everyone doesn’t want foldables. Left-handed folk are complaining (that’s a new one). It’s too expensive. It’s less expensive than people thought. It’s going to be too heavy. It’ll replace the iPad. It is an iPad. It’s not an iPad. Or an iPhone. Apple is late to the game. Apple has done it at just the right time. Apple copied Samsung. Samsung copied Apple. What about Honor?

Etc.

Without sounding like a know-it-all, I knew this was going to happen. It always does. Apple isn’t late to the game - they’ve just chosen 2026 as the year to enter the foldable smartphone market. Which is absolutely fine. Whether or not they’ll make this form factor more widely adopted remains to be seen.

They have had a little bit of help along the way with this one, though. The aforementioned Z Fold8 marked Samsung’s first major step-change in foldable smartphone design, and it has garnered a lot of interest - deservedly. It paved the way not only for a new class of Samsung Z Fold customer, but also for Apple’s iPhone Duo, which sports the same form factor. It looks like bendy phones might finally become more acceptable and more lusted-after.

I have two warnings for anyone considering the iPhone Duo, though. Firstly, foldables remain an edge case for most people, and you need a specific reason to spend all of that hard-earned money. Try one. Think about your current tech set-up - do you really need it? Secondly, please do not focus on - or worry about - the crease. It remains the least interesting element of any foldable smartphone release, and the iPhone Duo will have one. To what degree remains to be seen (it needs assessing first-hand), but if Apple, Samsung, Oppo, Huawei, Motorola, and Xiaomi have been unable to get rid of the crease entirely in 2026, it’s here to stay for quite a while. It doesn’t matter. Move on. Let it go.

Who am I kidding? You really want an iPhone Duo, don’t you? Well, good news: I will, of course, be reviewing and comparing it in great detail 😉

~ Mark