The iPhone Duo Might Be One of the First Foldables That’s Good For Gaming

I've been hooked on foldables for years now, and I carry the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra on me every day. And while that phone is incredible for most of what I need to do on a day-to-day basis, gaming has never felt amazing on it.

A big part of that comes down to the aspect ratio of the larger inner screen. While there are a lot of games that will adopt the 4:3 aspect ratio, there are plenty that just don't, leading to either an ugly, stretched picture or giant black bars. In Hearthstone, for example, I have the choice of having a third of the screen blocked off, or have it stretch out to fill the screen, only to cut off a good portion of what's supposed to be displayed.

There have been several times where I've tried to fullscreen that game, only to not be able to read a card on one of the far edges of the battlefield, because the image is cut off. Now, a lot of this does come down to the developers. Certainly, Blizzard has the resources to update Hearthstone to accommodate the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra's square display. But, I've been testing these foldables for the last seven years and things haven't improved. If Blizzard hasn't done anything by now, I doubt it's going to any time soon. I'd rather not leave it up to individual developers here.

What ends up happening, then, is I spend most of my time playing mobile games with the Fold 8 Ultra closed, and that kind of defeats the purpose of having a device that can unfold to a larger screen, doesn't it? Even then, while Samsung has vastly improved the aspect ratio of its foldables with the Fold 7 and Fold 8 Ultra, its outer display is still more narrow than a typical slab phone, which has its own problems.

On the surface, it'd seem like the iPhone Duo would have a lot of the same problems. Both its inner and outer displays have an odd 1.4:1 aspect ratio, which is smack dab in the middle of 16:9 and 4:3. The difference, though, is that Apple is famously strict with its developers. The company has already published guidelines for developing for the iPhone Duo, and the very first point is that developers should build apps to resize.

Now, there are definitely going to be some growing pains. It'll likely be a couple months before most major games have been adapted to the new form factor, but it's important to remember that Apple name-checked the iPad during its presentation. Most mobile games – including Hearthstone – natively support the various aspect ratios of Apple's tablets. Apple has had that guideline baked into its design documentation for years, and it's why apps largely work seamlessly between different Apple devices.

To be fair, Google also has similar guidelines in its developer documentation, but the difference is that Android has games as an exception to this rule. That's why its a gamble whether or not the game you want to play truly supports foldables. With the iPhone Duo, it does help that both the inner and outer display have the same aspect ratio, which should make resizing less of a technical hurdle. Regardless, I'm at least confident that Apple's foldable will have more games that just work on that inner display. Now, maybe I can finally play my silly little card games on a foldable without dealing with giant black bars.