This iPhone Duo Concept Turns Apple’s Foldable Into a Sony Walkman

Image credit: @viditb

A new concept shows how Apple’s foldable iPhone Duo could inspire apps built around the hinge itself, turning the device into a retro Sony Walkman-style cassette player.

Creative technologist Vidit Bhargava built “Duo-Man” at a @bitrig hackathon, designing the entire experience around opening and closing the phone. He also recorded button clicks and static from a real Walkman to make the concept feel more authentic.

Open the Duo and an Albums library appears on one half of the display, with a cassette shown on the other. The demo uses Michael Jackson’s Thriller. After choosing a tape, closing the phone starts playback, while chunky on-screen transport controls mimic the look of iconic 1980s cassette hardware.

Bhargava posted the concept on September 26, and it quickly drew attention online.

Duo-Man is only a concept for now, but it offers an early look at the kinds of software the iPhone Duo’s form factor could encourage. Instead of treating the unfolded screen as simply a larger canvas, the idea uses the physical act of opening and closing the device as part of the interface.

Seeing such a cool concept reminds us of when the App Store first launched in 2008, and we saw some really neat apps such as iBeer (which ended up making the developer $20,000 per day).

Apple is already leaning into that behaviour with its own software. The iPhone Duo supports split-screen multitasking and a StandBy mode that works without charging, giving developers more ways to think about how apps behave across folded and unfolded states.

Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone, on September 9. It opens to a 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR display, runs on the A20 Pro chip and starts at a tantalizing $2,999 CAD in Canada ahead of its October 23 launch. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has also floated the possibility of a larger iPhone Duo Max further down the road.