Apple made fun of Android apps on foldables, but iPhone Duo has the same problem [Gallery]

Ben Schoon | Sep 9 2026 - 5:15 pm PT

Apps have always been a problem for foldable displays and, while they’ve gotten a lot better, there’s always room for improvement. Apple was already going to hold an advantage here, as we’ve previously discussed, but a moment during the iPhone Duo’s unveiling sticks out – Apple made fun of how Android foldables sometimes letterbox apps on the inner display, but it turns out that iOS does exactly the same thing.

In the early moments of the iPhone Duo’s announcement, new Apple CEO John Ternus called out “others” who have already launched foldables, with a background video showing the age-old problem – letterboxed apps.

To quote new Apple CEO John Ternus:

Others have created foldables that just feel like two phones awkwardly stuck together. This results in a square screen that’s poorly suited for the way people use them. Scrolling through vertical content feels compromised, and movies are boxed in by oversized black bars, making a larger screen feel much smaller.

Here’s the clip:

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This was a pretty major problem in the early days of Android foldables. While Android apps have always been good at scaling, the unique form factors of those early days often found weird middle grounds or, even more frequently, apps just hadn’t been updated to be viewed on anything other than an ordinary smartphone display aspect ratio. At the time, it was a wise move on Google’s part, but the problem has been going away thanks to a push on Google’s part as well as the wider adoption of these form factors. Heck, Android foldables got a tablet layout for Instagram before the iPad did.

So, while watching today’s event, my reaction to that little dig was that Apple is just finding old problems to make Android look bad, again – not exactly new behavior.

But then our sister site 9to5Mac dug up Apple’s own documentation of how iOS 27.1 will handle apps on the foldable display and, lo and behold, Apple is doing the same thing.

If an app isn’t updated to support iOS 27, it gets boxed in with black bars on either side, showing a portrait view of the app instead. If it isn’t ready for iOS 27.1, it still can’t take up the display area off to the side where the sidebar is.

This was my actual reaction.

As mentioned, Apple has an app advantage in that iOS developers will likely be much quicker to adopt this new form factor. I’m already jealous of that Slack app Apple briefly showed; Slack, you literally had that on Android half a decade ago, bring it back.

Thoughts?