Apple’s foldable is called the iPhone Duo, and it starts at $2,000

Apple’s first foldable phone will be called the iPhone Duo. And, it will start at about $2,000, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported hours before the company takes the stage in Cupertino. He posted the details on X at 7am Kenyan time on Wednesday. Apple’s keynote starts at 8pm Kenyan time at the Steve Jobs Theater, and it is John Ternus’s first as chief executive. We have a piece on everything you can expect tonight.

No iPhone Ultra

Almost every leak since April said the phone would be the iPhone Ultra. Two Weibo leakers with good Apple records, Digital Chat Station and Instant Digital, both said so, and we wrote it up at the time. Duo points at the hardware instead of the price tier. It is Apple’s first iPhone with two screens: a 5.5-inch cover display, and a 7.8-inch inner one at roughly the shape of an iPad mini.

$2,000 🤯

Gurman gives a starting price of $1,999 for the 256GB model, and about $3,000 for a 2TB version. He says Apple absorbed part of the recent jump in memory prices, driven by AI datacentre demand for RAM, rather than passing all of it to buyers.

That is cheaper than the market expected. Estimates circulating last week ran from $2,099 to $2,299, and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo had put the range at $2,000 to $2,500.

For Kenya, $1,999 is about KES 259,000 and $3,000 is about KES 388,000. Both figures are before shipping, import duty, VAT and reseller margin. VAT alone at 16% takes the entry model past KES 300,000 before anyone adds a margin. Our estimate this morning, working from the pre-name price leaks, put the Kenyan figure at KES 272,000 to KES 297,000 on the converted price, and the real shop price above that.

The Duo is not the only thing on stage tonight. Apple is also expected to show the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max, the Apple Watch Series 12, the Apple Watch Ultra 4 and new AirPods. There is no standard iPhone 18 this September. Apple has pushed the cheaper iPhone 18, the 18e and a second iPhone Air to around March 2027, a split we explained in August. This month’s line-up sits entirely at the premium end.

October, an Apple Pencil, and two colours

The Duo goes on sale “as early as October”, Gurman says, without a firm date. The iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max are still expected to ship this month, so the foldable arrives weeks after the rest of the line-up.

The iPhone Duo also supports Apple Pencil. It’s not clear which version and if there’ll be a tinier Pencil.

The colours are white and dark blue.

Gurman has not addressed biometrics in this latest report. His March reporting said the Duo drops Face ID for a Touch ID power button because the front panel is too thin for the sensor array, which we argued last week is a bad trade at this price.

Apple has confirmed none of this. Gurman’s record on Apple product details is strong, but every number here rests on one reporter’s sourcing until Ternus says it on stage.