Good morning, how did you sleep? Me, I had trouble until I started counting the number of times Apple used the word “AI” in its keynote (it was 41). In my dream, I was inundated with Elizabeth Holmes deepfakes and memes, which startled me awake. As I lay in bed, I calmed down by reading about how AI will “kill us all by the end of the decade,” and then I got up and helped ChatGPT do my kids’ homework. Such a great day.
As a reminder, Inbox is the tech newsletter that goes beyond the news cycle. We cover the most important 9to5Google stories from the last couple of days along with a few highlights from around the web. We publish every Tuesday and Thursday, and if you like what you read, please subscribe.
Inbox is written by Daniel Bader. Read previous issues here, and then catch up with Ben Schoon’s excellent Weekender column.
⭐️ Starred
Today’s main story is, of course, Apple’s “Surprise and Shine” event, which debuted two new iPhone 18 Pros, two new Apple Watches, an updated pair of AirPods at a lower price, and a foldable called the iPhone Duo.
As predicted (and pre-empted), the iPhone Duo is a book-style foldable slightly wider and shorter than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8. Apple uses a combination of flexible plastic and thin layers of titanium sandwiched between the OLED panel, and claims that the crease is basically undetectable, though we’ll have to see how well that claim holds up over time. Curiously, Apple has also resurrected the under-display camera, which was a mainstay of Samsung’s Fold line until it disappeared in the Fold 7, as well as Apple Pencil support, which Samsung also dropped in the same generation.
To the credit of Samsung, Oppo, Honor, and even Google, the iPhone Duo does not appear to be dramatically superior to the latest book-style foldables; it matches the latest Pixel Folds’ IP68 water and dust resistance rating (that degrades over time); it relies on a side-mounted fingerprint sensor for authentication over the more convenient Face ID; it only has two cameras, and they lack the upgraded features of the Pro models; and at 254 grams, it’s heavier than practically any other foldable out there today.
What I find more compelling than the hardware is how Apple designed iOS to ostensibly work better with a foldable. Watching the demos, you can immediately see the care that went into the transitions between main and internal displays, and the changes that make the software easier to use with one hand. And while older apps may look funky until they’re updated, Apple has traditionally had better luck than Google convincing (or forcing) developers to adapt their apps to new form factors.
With iOS 27.1, which will be released alongside the iPhone Duo in October, developers will be able to target the foldable in app updates. Apple is banking on the fact that this larger canvas will tempt developers with new ways to earn money, a flywheel that has rewarded the company handsomely over the past 18 years. And hopefully the new attention paid to Apple’s entry will push reluctant developers to consider doing the same for their Android apps — though I’m not holding my breath.
More from 9to5Mac: Hands-on with the foldable iPhone Duo
✉️ Inbox
- Hands-on: Honor’s Robot Phone is probably the coolest phone you still can’t buy. Straight from the IFA floor, Andrew goes hands-on with the most bizarre phone of 2026.
- Xiaomi 18 Fold goes on sale with full specs and a Galaxy Z Fold 8 comparison. Xiaomi timed its iPhone Duo competitor perfectly or poorly depending on how you look at it. The phone is intriguing in its own right, with Xiaomi’s first home-grown SoC and a huge 200MP main camera.
- Samsung’s Privacy Display and TriFold merge in the Huawei Mate XT2. Samsung may have abandoned the tri-fold category, so Huawei is just stealing its best ideas.
- Oppo confirms Find X10 Pro Max and its triple 200MP camera setup will launch this month. Another big release for massive cameras, the Find X10 Pro Max follows the ridiculously well-endowed Find X9 Ultra, which our Ben Schoon called “simply stunning” in his review.
- Two Galaxy S27 models will get Samsung’s Privacy Display, not just the Ultra. We’re still doing this, huh?
- Hands-on: Orbitkey elevated its time-tested key organizer with a built-in Google Find Hub tracker. As someone who loses his keys all the time, this product just makes sense.
- Boox Picco is exceptionally tiny for an e-reader, but it parts ways with Android and third-party apps. I am an avowed fan of tiny e-readers, and I am also a Boox Palma 2 owner, so I’ll definitely be picking this up when it debuts in November.
- Arm’s new CPU cores and GPUs for Android chips promise ‘desktop-class’ games, more AI power. This is the part where I joke about how excited I am to play a ray-traced version of Candy Crush or something, but Arm genuinely knocked it out of the park with this release.
- Google Find Hub update brings new ‘Remembered’ tab with Gemini. I cannot wait to abuse the heck out of this feature.
- Google Search kicks off the NFL season with Live Game Feeds and fantasy football advice. Go Bills!
Today in bugs, bug fixes, and shutdowns:
- Google Maps speedometer disappears on Android Auto for some, traffic data still missing too
- Google Messages slowly rolling out fix for bug that randomly sends old texts to other people
- Samsung is shutting down ‘Quick Measure’ and ‘AR Doodle’ apps for Galaxy phones
- Google Pixel Tablet has been discontinued, out of stock everywhere
🍎 Etc.
Apple didn’t just introduce a foldable iPhone yesterday. There was also the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, and the AirPods 5.
With the Duo stealing much of the spotlight, it may be easy to overlook the other products, but it’s worth sticking with them for a minute. The iPhones, for instance, feature an upgraded main sensor with a variable aperture, a spec that Samsung adopted with the Galaxy S9 and abandoned two years later. Apple’s implementation offers four stops of range (f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8, and f/4.0), which are cycled through automatically depending on the environment. I’m not sure how much real-world impact it will have, but the technology has likely come a long way in the past few years, so I’m cautiously optimistic.
Perhaps more interesting is that the iPhone 18 Pro is the first in Apple’s flagship lineup to do away with Qualcomm modems, a change seven years in the making. The C2, which is also in the Duo, is Apple’s first chip to support mmWave in the US, which is required for Verizon’s network. (Oddly, the iPhone 18 Pro Max retains its Qualcomm modem, perhaps because it performs better and can fit into the larger housing.)
The new Apple Watch’s most notable feature may be its most controversial: inside its overarching Audio Intelligence announcement are two features, Live Rewind and Siri Recap, that create transcriptions or summaries of recent interactions. While Apple is quick to point out that no audio data is uploaded to its servers, nor stored permanently on the watch, the reality is that this feature enables surreptitious recording of everyday conversations without consent.
The AirPods 5 is low-key interesting, not because of any particular upgrade but because it’s the only product in Apple’s entire lineup that received a price drop.
➡️ FWD:
This section has some of our favorite stuff from around the internet. Great videos, weird memes, fun reads, recommended apps, whatever. Send us your recommendations!
Watch me and Will Sattelberg talk endlessly about the insane You Can See Everything trailer before dovetailing into a conversation about repairable tech with Fairphone CTO, Chandler Hatton.
Afterwards, if you still have any brain cells left, you should watch this Metroid Ravenous trailer, which I’ve already seen half a dozen times, and then spend some time with Playdate Season 3, which drops in October.
🎙️ Quotations
I asked the 9to5Google editors to sum up their thoughts on yesterday’s Apple event.
This event really cemented Apple as just another player in the industry, if it wasn’t already. A Pro-tier iPhone leaning on AI tricks as the bulk of its pitch? A foldable that pulls from nearly a decade’s worth of other companies’ devices without bringing much new to the table? What was even new on the Watch Series 12 besides that awful new brown color? Whatever spark of creativity Apple once carried — even from an Android user’s perspective — has been long gone for a while now, but this is the first event where I really felt a burning sense of boredom in the pit of my stomach.
– Will Sattelberg, Senior Writer and Podcaster
The iPhone Duo was the highlight for me; Apple’s entrance to the foldable market was inevitable, and it was fairly well done.
I’m wary of things like the side-oriented UI changes to iOS and the glossy dot in the middle of a matte inner display, but Apple’s usual level of polish has me intrigued. Not enough to drop $2,000 on a device that runs an OS I absolutely loathe, though, especially seeing as Apple didn’t show off much that actually changes the game in terms of using a foldable. The most revolutionary addition was that neat animation when transitioning between displays. For now, I’m still loving my Fold 8.
– Ben Schoon, Senior Editor
Apple did in fact “just walk in” and possibly figure out foldables. That or the reality distortion field was upgraded.
Anyway, I’m personally interested in the Apple Pencil support for the iPhone Duo, while I’m very eager to see how the new sidebar that incorporates status bar icons and the dock feels on the Duo’s cover screen. Ignoring third-party launchers that you have to install yourself, this might be the biggest change in smartphone UX for a bit.
– Abner Li, Editor-in-Chief
After seeing the Duo in the hands of the public, it seems like Apple isn’t magically reinventing the foldable after all.
Apple’s take on foldable software is fun, with lots of good hardware choices that will hopefully positively influence Android foldables. But overall, it hasn’t addressed any huge problems that existing foldables aren’t already dealing with.
– Jordan Floyd, Video Producer
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