Apple’s $2,000 foldable phone is a surprisingly good replacement for a $20 laptop.
Believe me; nothing gets me going like a new notebook. This one will be different, I think. This time I will really take it everywhere. Inspiration can strike at any time, and you have to be ready, explains David Sedaris in this MasterClass that I watched during a flight. With this special new notebook, I will see the world differently. I’m going to steal moments to write, rather than pulling out my phone to scroll at every opportunity like a trained monkey. And a few weeks, a month or maybe a year later, I will admit that it didn’t change everything and I will add it to the graveyard of my notebooks. At least they all look pretty on the corner of my desk?
The iPhone Duo is not a laptop, although it is the first iPhone to support the Apple Pencil. Despite this, I see the new notebook effect in the eyes of the people I talk to about the Duo. “Is this the new iPhone?” the conversation begins. I pass the phone over and give them the short version of our 26-minute test: It’s nice, it’s a bit heavy and chunky, you’ll have to wait for the second generation. They nod, but I can tell they still want one anyway. They are fed up with their big, aging, boring phone, they tell me. And This we would be different.
It is difficult to object to this. It really is a different phone. Its new format allows you to use it in significantly different ways. The Duo can act like a vintage Hasselblad with a waist-level viewfinder. It can be a book-shaped e-reader. And with this week’s iOS 27.2 update officially adding support for the Apple Pencil, it could be a laptop too.
Notebooks are pretty and help you express your creativity. Phones are bad attention-stealing machines or something.
This is the Apple Pencil USB-C, to be precise, so there’s no pressure sensitivity. You still have the option to “scribble” handwriting that automatically turns into text in apps like Messages or Safari, just like you can on the iPad. But even with the basic stylus, it’s a lot of fun to doodle and write notes by hand. I asked for suggestions for Pencil-compatible apps and downloaded a handful. I used the native Notes app to scribble down some article ideas. I let my five-year-old loose on a clean bill, much to his delight (the phone also survived the encounter). But having the stylus in hand led me to an unexpected side quest: turning all the phone in a notebook.
Why not? It is shaped like a notebook. Notebooks are pretty and help you express your creativity. Phones are bad attention-stealing machines or something. Maybe I could coax the Duo into being something less distracting, more user-friendly. I put together a minimalist home and lock screen designed around this theory. I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty cool. But I don’t think I managed to escape the new laptop trap, even though it was a fun exercise.
There aren’t many apps ready to take advantage of the new pen support. Unsurprisingly, it is in notes that the pencil is at its best. When you use the pen for handwriting in the app, you can enable the auto-refine handwriting feature that refines your handwriting while keeping its unique characteristics intact. This has been available on the iPad since 2024 and is particularly useful on the Duo’s relatively small screens.
He sometimes gets confused by some of my scribbles that he doesn’t know what to do with or misinterprets – he kept insisting on changing a ‘u’ to an ‘o’ in one case. And it works after a small delay when you pause your writing, which I can see being distracting if I really want to get into a flow state. But it’s a nice compromise between my messy scribbles and full conversion of handwriting to text and very handy for something like a grocery list.
The Notes app also has a large home screen widget that sort of turns the phone into a laptop, but isn’t easy on the eyes. After some more searching, I found almost exactly what I was looking for: TypeDraw.
This is a one-time purchase of $4.99 and is optimized for the Duo. When you launch the app, the cover screen turns to the front of your laptop. To access a page, you can either swipe on the cover screen or open the entire phone. It’s a delight.
TypeDraw isn’t really aimed at power note-takers, like other apps like Bear are. You cannot add tags or links between notes and you are limited to a single notebook. But it automatically creates a table of contents at the beginning based on the titles of your notes, so you can jump straight to the section you’re looking for. Plus, if you slide your finger along the “elastic” of the cover, it will stretch and close, with satisfying haptics. I have no regrets about the five dollars I spent on this app.
Using the Apple Pencil with the Duo gave me yet another reason to love the matte finish of the inner screen. There’s just a bit of resistance when moving the pen across the screen, which is more satisfying than the lifeless plastic-on-glass effect of the writing on the cover screen. It won’t feel like you’re using a Remarkable tablet or anything, but it’s nice.
The Pencil has another neat trick: it can magnetically stick to the Duo’s hinge when the phone is closed. The pencil is longer than the phone, so it’s a tricky adjustment, but it’s a convenient way to carry both around the house when I’m moving throughout the day.
I was only about 60% serious when I decided to turn the Duo into a laptop, but I actually liked the idea the more I got into it. Reimagining my home screen around creation rather than consumption seems like a worthy cause, and I plan to live with it for a while to see if it inspires any changes in my phone habits. To this end, I also set up a shortcut to launch TypeDraw every time I open the inner screen.
But I think the most useful part of this exercise was examining, once again, how many elements I actually needed on my home screen. I can do most things with a Spotlight search or a click in the Control Center. Siri is also a lot more helpful now, and she’s always lurking nearby to help you. The grid of apps I’m so accustomed to is mostly for emotional support at this point. I didn’t need a foldable phone to learn this, but it helped.
Above all, the new portable effect proved to be as strong as ever. The shiny novelty eventually fades into the background. You definitely don’t need a $2,000 phone to reevaluate your home screen. You can – and I will continue to do this – simply carry a small notebook with your regular phone. A fun new gadget is delicious, don’t get me wrong. But don’t hang all your hopes and dreams of a new you on one of them.
Photography by Allison Johnson/The Verge
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