This week, Apple announced its first foldable: the iPhone Duo. It’s launching into a mature market with lots of competition, though it adopts the still relatively rare passport form factor. This means it’s designed to be short and wide, rather than tall and thin, a decision with relatively fundamental implications on the aspect ratio of its interior screen.

While there are plenty of options to compare it with, we’re choosing some of the more established competitors: the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 series (both the passport style phone and the boxier Ultra variant) and the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold. However, we will bring up some of the other foldables on the market at points where they’re relevant.

Cameras

One of the areas folding phones differ the most is in their camera layouts. Some opt for a three camera array, while others opt for two (usually, it’s the telephoto option that gets the axe). But different phones will make different compromises, so it’s up to you to decide what parts of the camera experience you value.

Comparing the options across the foldables from Apple, Samsung and Google to a standard slab phone – in this case the iPhone 18 Pro – a few things become clear. Both Apple and Samsung decided that there just wasn’t room in a passport-style phone for a three camera array (though, notably, Xiaomi managed it).

However, while the larger foldables offer telephoto cameras, they’re usually very compromised compared to what you’d typically get on a standard phone. Samsung’s “Ultra” foldable, the most expensive in this roundup, is also the only one that has what we’d consider to be a flagship-class main camera, though Motorola’s new Razr Fold has a comprable camera layout, albeit with an slightly worse ultrawide and substantially nicer telephoto.

Samsung

As for how the iPhone Duo compares: it’s very similar to the Z Fold 8, and Apple has made a different trade-off than Google, opting for a better ultra-wide with no telephoto rather than relatively poor versions of both. But like the rest of the phones, it’s pretty much no contest between it and the Z Fold 8 Ultra, or the iPhone 18 Pro it launched alongside.

Screens

Apple

Of course, the main reason to get a folding phone is that they come close to the pocketability of a standard phone, will unfurling to give you a large display that lets you run multiple apps at once, or view videos and photos on a much larger canvas. (But while the iPhone Fold is IMAX-shaped, we suspect Christopher Nolan still wouldn’t approve of watching movies on one.)

Your choice of form factor will largely dictate what kind of screen you get, with the passport-style phones offering slightly smaller displays with aspect ratios more suited to viewing content, but not quite as ideal for running apps side-by-side (though both the iPhone Duo and Galaxy Z Fold 8 can). Meanwhile, the more traditional folding phones offer nearly square screens, which offer a multitasking experience that’s almost like having two standard phones next to each other.

Samsung

While you may need to compromise on cameras to get a folding phone, you’re not compromising on screen specs. All the phones in our roundup have incredibly bright displays – Apple and Samsung* offer 3000 nits peak brightness on bother inner and outer screens, while Google ratchets that up to 3600 – with variable refresh rates that go from 1 to 120Hz.

The one place Apple has thought different is in the finish of its inner display; it has a matte “nano-texture” coating, where its competitors have glossy displays. Apple says this does a better job of hiding the crease in the middle – though it’s barely noticeable on the Samsungs either, according to most reviewers – and makes it less prone to scratches. We’ll see what happens when JerryRigEverything does his durability tests on it, though.

Size and Weight

There’s no getting around it: the iPhone Duo is hefty, especially given its size. Despite Apple’s use of titanium in its construction – typically a material that offers incredible strength for its size – it winds up being substantially heavier than even the larger Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold.

To us, this comparison illustrates Samsung’s experience as the company that’s been making foldables the longest. Its models are substantially thinner and lighter than their Apple and Google counterparts, while having roughly similar battery capacities. Of course, Apple is known to let its devices be a bit heavier to give them a premium feel, but it’s up to you whether the feel in your hand is worth the heft in the pocket.

The rest of the experience

Each brand, will, of course, have its own take on what the foldable experience should be like. These range from macro-level decisions, like how the transition from folded to unfolded should work and how multitasking is handled, to smaller quality-of-life features like Google and Apple’s inclusion of camera features made to make kids smile as you’re taking their picture, and automatically capture group photos when you have your phone set up on a flat surface.

Google

While we won’t know the full scope of those usability differences until all the phones are available, there are a few things we can glean from what we know so far. While all the phones can be stood up on a table in the a-frame-like tent mode for watching video, the Galaxy Z Fold 8’s hinge design means it can’t be used half-unfolded (in a way that makes the phone sort of like a laptop). This is an ability the Ultra version, as well as the Pixel and iPhone, have.

While none of the selfie cameras on the inner screens will be great – they’re designed mostly for video calls – Apple goes the extra step of hiding its one under the display when it’s not in use, so you can get a truly full-screen experience when watching video, without the hole-punch you’ll get in the Galaxies and Pixel. Ironically, this was something Samsung used to do with its foldables, but has dropped in recent years.

The iPhone Duo and Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold both offer dust and water ingress protection that’s equivalent to a standard cell phone (which is important given their oh-so-complex hinges and display mechanisms), with an IP68 rating. The Samsung models fall a bit short on the dust protection, only boasting IP48.

If you want to see how the iPhone 18 Pro compares to its traditional smartphone competitors, check out our story below.

* – It’s also no secret that Samsung, innovator in the foldable space, provides the panel for Apple’s foldable; no wonder it has similar performance.

It’s been a week packed full of launches and announcements, so we thought: what better time to bring back our DPReview Discussions podcast series, where we get the editors together to discuss the latest cameras, lenses and more? This episode is a bit wider-ranging than usual. Of course, we cover the new OM System PEN and iPhones 18 Pro and Duo, as well as our audiences’s reactions to them, but we also touch on the new Sigma lenses and the news that Ricoh has discontinued the remaining K-mount Pentax DSLRs.

We hope to make these discussions a more regular thing going forward, so let us know what you think. Do you prefer the longerform conversations, where we cover most of our thoughts in full, or do you prefer tighter episodes focused on just a single topic or two? Sound off in the comments below. 

Earlier this week, Sigma announced the 20-60mm F2.8-4 DG Contemporary, a surprisingly small full-frame lens that offers better range and a faster aperture than most full-frame kit lenses, in a package that’s smaller than any of its immediate rivals.

It arrived just before a planned trip to the UK, so I got to test my theory that it’d be an excellent replacement for most kit zooms, with the size and flexibility that would work well for travel.

This is my initial response, as I unboxed it:

And below are the samples Mitchell and I shot in both Seattle and London.

Sample gallery

Please do not reproduce any of these images on a website or any newsletter/magazine without prior permission (see our copyright page). We make the originals available for private users to download to their own machines for personal examination or printing; we do so in good faith, so please don’t abuse it. 

Thanks to Panasonic for the loan of an S1RII to shoot this gallery. All images were processed using our standard lens workflow in Capture One, with the manufacturer’s distortion correction applied but no correction of vignetting. The profile corrects a large amount of barrel distortion at the wide end and a minor amount of pincushion distortion at the long end. We’d consider it an essential part of the lens’ optical design.

It’s difficult to believe that 9/11 happened 25 years ago this week. It’s equally difficult to think that day helped shape the photographer I became. Both are true, and as the anniversary news coverage unfolds while I write this, I’ve found myself reflecting on those 25 years.

This article isn’t about what happened that day – there’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know – but suffice it to say that it was a tough day to be an American, and an even tougher day to be a New Yorker.

When you’re in the middle of an event like that, it’s easy to feel helpless, and it doesn’t take long for that to evolve into a need to do something, to regain some control over the situation in whatever way you can. I think that’s part of why first responders drove fire trucks from across the US and Canada to help; New York needed them, but I believe it also answered a need to do something.

Copyright Dale Baskin

For me, that something was photography.

I wasn’t a working photographer then. I had never even sold a photo. I was just the guy who always carried a camera. I’d always aspired to do something meaningful with photography, but hadn’t figured out how. Sure, I could take good photos, but that was about the extent of it.

In the days that followed, we were exposed to a lot of photos. It was overwhelming. But it didn’t take long to realize I wasn’t overwhelmed by photos; I was overwhelmed by photos of destruction. I needed to find something else.

And so I set off into the streets of New York with my camera and several rolls of film in search of something hopeful, and it didn’t take long to find it. Everywhere I looked, I saw American flags. And wherever I saw a flag, I saw people expressing hope.

Copyright Dale Baskin

We Americans have a complicated relationship with our flag, but in September of 2001, it was the one thing none of us needed to argue about. It was a symbol that we were in this together, and that we’d dig our way out together.

I latched onto that, and for the next several days I made it my mission to photograph flags in New York City. In the process, I found my voice as a photographer, though I wouldn’t realize it until later.

What I took from that experience is that photography isn’t just about taking pictures, it’s about telling a story. And at times, not the obvious one. I was surrounded by people using cameras to document devastation; I wanted to document for history that there was another story to be told.

I’m not naive enough to think I was the only person in New York who figured this out. But it was a lightbulb moment for me. The kind of thing you can read in a book or hear from a more experienced photographer, but still not understand until you’ve lived it.

Copyright Dale Baskin

Fast forward a few years, after I’d relocated to the West Coast. I happened to mention this collection of photos to an acquaintance, along with the fact that no one but me had ever seen them. Intrigued, he invited me to share my story and my photos with a local civic group.

The next thing I knew, I was getting invited to speak to all kinds of groups. It was the story of an event still visceral in people’s memories – but not the story they were used to hearing. I distinctly remember one man who had been living in New York at the time telling me that while he recognized many of the places in my photos, my photos told a story he’d never seen before.

Talks became exhibits, and exhibits became a book, coauthored by someone I met at one of those talks. Flags Across America grew well beyond our original vision and includes works from many other people, but it still has a section dedicated to my flag photos from New York.

Copyright Dale Baskin

What started as a project to cope with feeling helpless eventually reached more people than I can count, and taught me to appreciate the power of storytelling through photos.

To this day, I have hundreds of photos from that project, shot on slide film, that I’ve never taken the time to scan. I don’t even remember what’s in most of them. But I know I should do something with them, because history matters.

A few years ago, I wrote an article called “What is your digital shoebox?” and asked readers what would happen to their photos when they were gone. I’ve thought about that a lot in the past couple of days, and about the fact that photos taken contemporaneously with important historical events often have real value to future historians. My collection needs to find a home. If you have suggestions, let me know.

25 years is a significant slice of a life, and this anniversary makes me feel a little older today than I did yesterday. But I’d like to think I learned something important from the experience, and that I’ve touched a few people positively along the way with my photography.