Our best tips for using the iPhone Duo

The Duo is an entirely new benevolent of iPhone, so it comes alongside a bit of a learning curve. That’s a untamed item to imagine, since the iPhone has had extremely few essential changes since its inception. But the Duo is built different. If you won the preorder lottery and managed to get your hands on one today, you’ll see what that means. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll endure track of the quantity buttons as you rotate the item around.

We’ve learned a few tricks complete the former week of flipping and folding the Duo as much as we could. Here are our favorite tips and hacks for newly minted Duo owners.

I learned this one when person on Threads asked concerning it. Normally, I keep display inclination fastener enabled since I dislike it whenever everything flips unintentionally. But the Duo is built to be used in distinct orientations. So, throughout my archetypal week alongside the phone, I fair remaining it unlocked and didn’t think twice concerning it. But it turns out that if you fastener inclination on the external display to maintain your sanity, you can depart it unlocked for the inner screen, which you are much additional apt to desire to rotate. And equal alongside inclination locked on the shield screen, videos volition motionless rotate automatically if you prop it up in shelter mode.

The iPhone Duo is a phone that you sometimes end up using upside down. It happened to us a lot; you flip open the screen, and for several logic it feels natural to rotate the display clockwise. But this orients the quantity controls so that the base clasp turns the quantity up and the top one turns it down. You can alter this setting. Go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Fixed Position Volume Controls and toggle it off. Now, whenever you rotate the inner display clockwise, you’ll media the top clasp to addition the volume. Why isn’t this the default behavior? Great question.

Now that Apple has three shortcuts mapped to swipes from the top of the iPhone display — rub from the top remaining for notifications, the center for Siri, and the top correct for Control Center — it’s uncomplicated to young female any you were going for on the archetypal try. All three shortcuts appear on the Duo as well, but there’s another way to drag up the Control Center — fair tap the new, unified Wi-Fi / power division position icon. This volition completely disclose the Control Center and develop the position icon into its autonomous parts. It’s a small thing, but item that makes the phone easier to use one-handed is greeted in my book.

You power be tempted to speed through setup and fair enroll one digit for Touch ID, but it’s value doing a few additional during you’re at it. Once again, the Duo is a phone you’re going to flip about and reorient by its nature. So during your right-hand thumb makes awareness for unlocking the shield screen, it requires an clumsy maneuver to use that digit formerly you’ve opened the phone and rotated it. Your left-hand indicator digit volition be nearer to the Touch ID sensor if you rotate the phone counterclockwise the way Apple CEO John Ternus apparently intended. And it appears silly, but enrolling your right-hand pinky is a fine move for those occasions whenever you rotate the inner display clockwise.

The iPhone Duo extremely much lone wants you to multitask alongside two apps flank by flank in landscape manner using the inner screen. There’s no opening resizing, no additional apps. And if you rotate the phone to picture orientation, one of those apps flies distant and you’re downward to one. But there is technically a way to get two apps going in this inclination — it’s fair wonky.

Start playing a video in an app akin Prime Video, afterward tap the picture-in-picture (PiP) icon to move it to a PiP window. Swipe distant to get to the homescreen, open another app, afterward rotate the phone to portrait. An icon to stack the video on top of the open app volition appear in the PiP window.

I picked up a PopSocket habit during using the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold, and it makes a enormous difference whenever you’re holding specified a dense phone for a lengthy time. It’s particularly appealing on the Pro Fold and the Duo since they the two have magnets built into the rear panel. You can thwack it onto the phone whenever you desire it and fair obtain it off whenever you don’t. The MagSafe PopSocket I’ve been using alongside the Duo has been additional than powerful adequate to assistance the phone’s weight.

If you’re picking up a Duo today and detect a neat trick as you use your new phone, autumn it in the comments below. We’re all learning together here.