Apple has quietly shown how its own apps will behave on the iPhone Duo, two days before the foldable goes on sale. According to a MacRumors report, the company's App Store listings for its built-in apps now carry screenshots taken on the new device, and they reveal a layout language closer to the iPad than to a traditional iPhone.
A home screen split in two
The Home Screen screenshot shows the Today view with widgets filling the left half of the unfolded display and app icons on the right. A vertical Dynamic Island sits on the outer edge, and the dock runs vertically along the right side. When the phone is held in a tall, portrait-style open posture, the dock and navigation bars move to the bottom instead. MacRumors notes that navigation buttons stay in the same place as the device moves between open, closed and partly folded positions.
Press-and-hold popovers are also described as not being scaled up, so they take up less room than they would on a larger screen.
Apps adopt iPad-style layouts
Several apps, including Clock, Calendar, Reminders, Health, Files and Calculator, are shown in landscape with sidebars or wide views. Apps without a large navigation bar can use the full display, and some navigation bars can be hidden. Contacts uses a two-pane view, with the name list on one side and an editing panel on the other. Siri shows tiled conversations on the left with the full exchange on the right, while Preview combines a bottom tool palette with sidebars, using markup editing as the example.
Apple's listings also point to the unfolded vertical view as a good fit for keyboard-heavy apps and for browsing in Safari. Other supported postures mentioned include laptop-style angles, a tent shape and a book-style partial fold.
What the screenshots do not show
According to MacRumors, the images do not demonstrate side-by-side apps or multiple windows of the same app, although the report says both are supported. Apple has not detailed those multitasking features in the listings themselves.
Why it matters
The iPhone Duo goes on sale on October 23, and Apple has so far shown relatively little of its software in everyday use. These screenshots are Apple's own, which makes them a more reliable guide to the intended design than leaks or mockups. They also suggest that third-party developers will need to adapt their apps to adjustable layouts, a task Apple's own apps appear to handle with familiar iPad conventions such as sidebars and split views.
The details here come from MacRumors' description of Apple's App Store pages, so the exact screenshots may change as Apple updates its listings.
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