Apple’s causing a commotion with its new iPhone Duo.
The tech giant’s first foldable phone hit shelves Friday, and lines were forming (and selling out) well before Apple stores even opened. Many preordered the phone, but that didn’t stop people from trying their luck to buy one without an order number. CNET editors and reporters were on the ground to bring you all of the uproar so you can save yourself the trip if you were trying to buy one over the weekend.
At Apple’s 5th Avenue location in New York, the line started forming on Wednesday by 9 a.m. ET — two days before the launch. Over 50 people were waiting in line by Thursday at 7 p.m. ET, sometimes with buckets serving as placeholders. In the first minutes after the store opened, there wasn’t word of the iPhone Duo selling out yet, but other stores were done before their doors opened.
The Oxmoor Center opened at 6 a.m. ET for Apple fans planning to buy the iPhone Duo on launch day. Faith Chihil / CNET
At the Oxmoor Center in Louisville, Kentucky, the Apple store opened at 8 a.m. EDT, and CNET’s Faith Chihil saw a line of more than 40 people three hours earlier. At about 7:27 a.m. ET, Apple store employees started taking orders for the phone. But the 256GB iPhone Duo was already sold out.
Lines gather outside of Walt Whitman Shops in Huntington, New York, where the iPhone Duo sold out before 7:30 a.m. ET.David Katzmaier / CNET
CNET Editor in Chief David Katzmaier reported that the first person was in line at Walt Whitman Shops in Huntington, New York, on Thursday at 10 a.m. ET, and was able to preorder the phone. Apple store employees started taking orders to pick up the phone at 7 a.m. ET. But by 7:30 a.m. ET, the rest of the line was dismissed after an announcement that the store had sold out before doors opened.
CNET’s Patrick Holland reported from Apple’s Union Square store in San Francisco. The first people started forming a line at 9:30 p.m. ET on Thursday. As of 11 a.m. ET, lines were down the block and around the building. There were also some sightings of people reselling the iPhone Duo just moments after waiting in line to buy one.
The line for the iPhone Duo started at 9:30 p.m. ET on Thursday at Apple’s Union Square store in San Francisco.Patrick Holland / CNET
Meanwhile, at the Apple store at University Village in Seattle, about 180 people were waiting in line who didn’t preorder the iPhone Duo. It sold out within 15 minutes of the store opening.
While many may have expected new Apple CEO John Ternus to be at the New York flagship store, he debuted the iPhone Duo launch at the Apple store in Austin, Texas. He might have been there because of this weekend’s Formula 1 race in the city — streaming on Apple TV.
The iPhone Duo, Apple’s long-awaited first foldable iPhone, debuted earlier this month alongside the iPhone 18 Pro Max. It features split-screen capabilities, a photo preview display, Touch ID instead of Face ID and Apple Pencil support. The iPhone Duo’s preorders opened on Oct. 16, but quickly turned into a backlog that stretches into early next year. Pricing starts at $1,999.
“Details like the matte inner display, under-display inner camera and smooth transitions between screens give the Duo a premium feel that helps to justify its high price tag, at least to some extent,” CNET’s Abrar Al-Heeti said in her review of the iPhone Duo.
The Duo, Al-Heeti said, “is a foldable experience that feels cohesive, intuitive and genuinely useful, which could help win over more people to foldables in general. But I think that broader appeal is still a ways off.”
We don’t know how many iPhone Duos are available at each store or when Apple will restock its physical locations. But there’s a limit of two iPhone Duos per person, per day, which marks the first time in a long time that Apple’s put a cap on how many you can buy.
If you’re set on getting the phone, try ordering on Apple’s website and picking it up at a nearby store to get the phone sooner, but you’ll need to check availability on Oct. 24. It could be sooner than its estimated shipping times that say the phone won’t arrive until Jan. 29 in some areas.
Dashia Milden
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