Reflections on the iPhone Uno

The more one thinks about the iPhone Duo the more the “Duo” branding appears to be signifying something beyond two screens or two thousand dollars. It becomes apparent that it also represents 2.0. The iPhone 2.0 branding seems appropriate as so much of the product is changing: not just the way it looks but the way it works.

To contemplate this, consider that the premise of folding the screen isn’t just to afford a larger surface but also the mechanical theater of moving parts, user gestures and positional geometries. It’s a “book”, a mini laptop, a notebook (with Pencil!), a tablet, an alarm clock, a movie screen with stand and controls, etc. Note also the role of cases: from being simple skins to now being functional additions requiring modalities and moving parts.

When the device was only a glass rectangle we got touch computing. When that surface is variable and multi-modal, we arrive at gestural computing.

Bringing this to market required solving mechanical and UI problems but also conceptual, jobs-to-be-done questions. Perhaps more productivity, perhaps more creativity. The folding mechanism is a wonder, the surface treatment is chemistry and noting also the liquid glass application, the new interface is magical. These developments, and, undoubtedly, more to come, were necessary to make the idea of gestural computing not just possible but attractive.

Now a new gesture language will emerge: Opening, closing, propping, typing, flipping are all new, adding to swiping, rotating, pinch and zooming brought to us by multi-touch. The promotional videos Apple released highlight these new gestures visually presenting the product as not just being a 2D slate.

Naturally, the folding capability will come to other screens in the Apple pantheon: the iPad, Mac, and a multitude of iPhone sizes. Missing elements will be added back to the Duos: FaceID, spatial photography, top-level cameras. The Duo will stand next to it first but eventually will likely eclipse the Uno.

Such screen Origami will force a question of what happens to the iPhone Uno. Will it become a quaint form factor for the artisanal iPhone crowd? Will it be remembered fondly like we remember Nokia phones today? Sturdy, robust, simple and somewhat rustic?

Or, will the Uno remain the baseline iPhone for decades to come? And what of the accessories “surfaces” which will expand the interaction and sensing universe?

When I worked at Nokia 20 years ago, the “mono block” or candy bar form factor was the logical way to think of phones. Not long after achieving dominance, flip phones began to catch on in Japan and the US, eventually also becoming popular in Europe. The pinnacle of this trend was the Motorola RAZR which became the best selling phone for years, selling an unheard-of total of 50 million units in no time. We were baffled by this. The flip was more fragile, had a smaller battery, had a terrible UI, was fiddly in use, required two screens and was more expensive to make. It added no functionality but seemingly added friction to the experience.

Those who loved the form factor kept emphasizing that it was better but could not explain it except to say it was more satisfying to use. The pantomime of opening and closing provided punctuation to phone calling. We were told women loved it because it mimicked using a make-up compact. A very peculiar argument.

But Nokia was wrong to ignore flip phones. At least until Apple released the iPhone which put the emphasis on what’s on the screen rather than what behind it. The iPhone was once again a reset of the basis of phone competition: from mechanical features to software capability. A screen could offer an infinity of buttons and functions.

So the Duo in many ways betrays the Uno. It drops a mechanical wrench into the “no-moving-parts” machine that defined the phone for two decades. Apple even got rid of almost all mechanical anything: no more home button, no headphone jack, wireless charging.

One can argue from an engineering point of view about how the Duo is counter-intuitive: so many compromises to cope with and so little gained. But as the flip phone taught us, the customer’s perception of usage is not easily measured or explained. The lust for the fidget, the tactile and the third dimension has been served.