For seven years, Samsung had one joke. Every September, like clockwork, it would lean over and ask Apple: where’s your folding phone, buddy? It made ads about it. It made fences about it. It made an entire personality about it.
Then Apple actually showed up with one. And Samsung’s big comeback? It cut a piece of fruit in half on Instagram.
Welcome to week one of the iPhone Duo era. It’s already more fun than the last five years of foldables combined.
The ad, in 30 seconds
- What happens: a green apple gets sliced in half, then creaks as it tries to “fold.” Subtle, it is not.
- The claims: the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is 1.6mm thinner and 53g lighter than the iPhone Duo.
- The jab: a nod to the Duo’s hinge and early durability chatter.
- The sign-off: “Years ahead in Foldables.”
- The fine print: it’s a Samsung-sponsored Instagram clip, and it’s not entirely clear whether Samsung’s own team made it or a partner did.
It landed within days of the Duo going on sale on October 23. Timing, as they say, is everything. Desperation, as they also say, is timing.
The slice says more about Samsung than it does about Apple
Here’s the thing about trash talk: nobody wastes it on the irrelevant.
Samsung didn’t make a sliced-pixel ad for Google. It didn’t carve up a Motorola. It went straight for the phone that’s been on shelves for less than a week, which tells you exactly where Samsung thinks the threat is coming from.
And honestly? We’ve seen this movie. Samsung has been throwing shade at Apple since the 2010s: the “wall huggers” battery jab, the “On the Fence” ad that mocked iPhone users for waiting on foldables, the whole long-running “Apple makes you wait” routine. The joke only ever worked because Apple didn’t have a foldable. Now it does. So the punchline had to change from “you don’t have one” to “yours is 53 grams heavier.”
That’s not a roast. That’s a downgrade in ammunition.
Okay, yes — the first week has been bumpy
Let’s not pretend everything’s flawless, because that’s not how first-gen hardware works. Some early buyers have reported cracked inner displays, and a JerryRigEverything durability test showed the hinge struggling once dust and debris got inside. Apple is looking into it, and it may well turn out to be a limited batch.
But if Samsung really wants to talk about foldable launches that didn’t go to plan, we’d gently remind everyone of April 2019, when the original Galaxy Fold’s review units broke so publicly that Samsung had to delay the entire launch by months. Glass houses. Folding glass houses, even.
First-gen products stumble. What matters is what gets fixed, and Apple’s track record on turning v1 into the thing everybody copies is… let’s call it well documented.
What the ad conveniently leaves out
A 30-second Instagram clip is a sales pitch, not a review. So here’s the stuff that didn’t make Samsung’s cut:
- The crease. Apple went all-in on a nano-texture inner display and a titanium support plate to make the fold far less visible. Early hands-on impressions, including the WSJ’s, were struck by how little crease they could see, and the Fold 8’s crease has been the comparison point in nearly every one of them.
- Water and dust. The Duo is rated IP68. That’s fully dust-tight. The ad somehow forgot to mention that.
- The shape. Closed, it’s roughly the size of a passport: shorter, wider and actually comfortable one-handed. Open, it’s a 7.6-inch 4:3 canvas, the biggest display ever on an iPhone, around 50% larger than the 18 Pro Max.
- The battery. Two batteries working as one, rated for up to 31 hours of video on the inner screen and 44 on the outer. Fast charging gets you to 50% in about 20 minutes.
- The brains. It’s running the same A20 Pro as the iPhone 18 Pro, with a vapor chamber to keep it cool and iOS built to handle the dual-screen layout, plus tools for developers to make their apps play nicely with it.
- The hinge. More than 100 components, a 3D-printed titanium hinge cover and a magnet array that snaps it shut. Thicker? A little. Over-engineered? Absolutely. That’s the point.
1.6mm and 53g are real numbers. They’re also the only numbers Samsung picked. Funny how that works.
Apple’s never first. Apple’s usually the one that sticks.
Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player, the smartphone, the smartwatch or wireless earbuds. It just made the versions that everyone else ended up chasing.
The iPhone Duo is following the exact same playbook: let everybody else spend seven years working out what a foldable is, then show up with a take on what it should be. Smaller when closed. Squarer when open. Obsessed with the crease. Built to feel like an iPhone first, a tablet second.
“Years ahead in Foldables” is a great line. It’s also an admission: you had a seven-year head start, and the first thing you did when Apple arrived was check its weight.
iPhone Duo at a glance
| Launch | Announced September 9, on sale October 23, 2026 |
| Price | From $1,999 / AED 8,499 (256GB), up to $3,199 for 2TB |
| Displays | 7.6-inch inner, 5.4-inch outer |
| Chip | A20 Pro |
| Build | Grade 5 titanium, 100+ component hinge |
| Battery | Dual-battery, up to 31 hrs video (inner) / 44 hrs (outer) |
| Durability | IP68 |
| Size & weight | 11.3mm folded, 254g |
| SIM | eSIM only |
| Colors | Star White, Night Sky |
The bottom line
Samsung earned its swagger. It pioneered this category, and the Fold 8 is a genuinely great phone. Nobody’s taking that away.
But there’s a difference between being first and being the one everyone’s watching. For seven years, Samsung’s foldables were the main event. One week into the iPhone Duo’s life, Samsung is making ads about it.
So slice away. Apples grow back. And this one’s just getting started.
