I’ll give Apple its props by saying that it’s genuinely remarkable they built Apple Pencil compatibility into the iPhone Duo. Yes, it’s a welcome move because it’s a step above what Samsung did by nuking S-Pen support for their Galaxy Z Fold8 series, but it’s also sort of stupid that they didn’t build the compatibility in right away. The iPhone Duo is announced to be compatible with the Pencil on a future date. It’s something Apple announced you’ll get, but in the words of MKBHD, don’t ever buy a product on a promise of future upgrades.
I appreciate Apple trying though, but there’s one problem Apple never accounted for – the Apple Pencil is longer than the iPhone Duo. Unlike the S-Pen, which is mobile-sized, the Apple Pencil measures 6.43″ long. That’s almost 2 inches taller than the iPhone Duo which sits at 4.64″ in height. There’s no realistic universe in which anybody is carrying an Apple Pencil along with the iPhone Duo – they might be compatible but they’re not built to be a cohesive design solution… so Eslam Mohammed invented one. Meet the Pencil Duo – a stylus specially designed to be the iPhone Duo’s loyal sidekick.
Designer: Eslam Mohammed
The regular Apple Pencil’s design was informed by the device it was supposed to pair with. A simple all-white design, a circular grip, and one single chamfered edge to let the Pencil snap to the edge of the iPad to charge. The Pencil was also sized to just about fit the iPad mini, showing how much Apple had thought about the integration between the two products. So when Mohammed built the Duo, he basically approached it from the ground-up. No chamfer, no awkwardly long stylus.
The Pencil Duo is a perfectly cylindrical stylus, albeit with a silver detail running along its edge. Inspired by the iPhone Duo’s silver hinge which punctuates its design, the Pencil Duo sports that running metallic detail too, paired with a button that works just the way the button on the S-Pen does with Samsung’s phones. Mohammed doesn’t explicitly detail what the button does, but one can assume it helps with highlighting text, opening shortcuts, working as a shutter button, etc.
No snapping to the iPhone’s edge means there’s no chamfer. This gives the Pencil Duo a design that feels a lot cleaner in my opinion. The reason why snapping wouldn’t work is because it would prevent you from being able to open your phone. Instead, the Pencil Duo sits at the back of the phone, thanks to a special case that lets you dock the pencil.
The pencil neatly tucks into the back, occupying the empty space left behind by the camera bump, which doesn’t extend all the way to the end (the way the Pixel Fold did in the past). It’s a neat arrangement, and I’m sure Molly Anderson would approve. Who’s Molly Anderson, you ask? Well just the VP of Industrial Design, but Apple’s never really had a design lead in the limelight after Jony I’ve left.
The Pencil Duo measures roughly 4.3 inches in length, and a tad bit narrower than its predecessor. Sort of just like how the iPhone Duo is so much slimmer than its other counterparts. There’s no mention of how this pencil would charge, although I’m sure wireless charging is on the table. You’d probably need a special cradle to charge the device, but I wouldn’t put it past Apple to invent one.
Mohammed has, however, detailed a few other things, like the Pencil Duo having haptic feedback, the Hover Preview feature, and obviously angle and pressure sensitivity. The only real problem here is that this entire stylus is conceptual… but I wouldn’t put it past third party designers from making iPhone Duo styluses that work using capacitive touch and have Bluetooth pairing so that the button on the stylus actually packs a few features. Maybe long-press for Apple Intelligence too!
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