Apple has finally launched its long-rumoured foldable phone, calling it the iPhone Duo. But instead of talk about hinges and screen creases, much of the online chatter has turned to something else entirely: the name.
Long-time Microsoft fans were quick to point out that Duo is not a new name at all. Microsoft used it back in 2020 for its own dual-screen device, the Surface Duo, a phone that folded in half and ran two separate displays side by side. It is a detail that has not been lost on anyone who remembers that era of gadgets, and "IYKYK" (if you know, you know) has become something of an unofficial tagline for the joke doing the rounds online.
Windows Central senior editor Zac Bowden, a self-confessed Surface Duo fan, wrote that "Microsoft gave up on the Duo after just one follow-up model and never even gave its sister device, the Neo, a proper chance." He argued that this is exactly why Apple felt free to help itself to the name, adding that Apple stealing the Neo and Duo names will only bury Microsoft's efforts further, and dismissed the idea that Apple hadn't thought about the Microsoft connection when naming both its MacBook Neo and the iPhone Duo.
Tech outlet Droid Life was more blunt about it, noting that the choice of name is amusing mainly because Microsoft already used "Duo" for its own first foldable, the Surface Duo, which it rated as one of the worst Android phones ever made.
The reaction on social media and forums has followed a similar pattern: amusement mixed with a bit of disbelief.
Over on X, one widely shared post insisted there was no chance Apple hadn't copied the Surface Duo name, suggesting Apple should have gone with "Fold" instead. On the MacRumors forums, one commenter joked that Apple would never dip into "a Microsoft garbage dump" for a name, given how the original device fared, while another quipped that Duo now stands to cost users a fair bit more than the name suggests.
A separate thread pointed out that the "Duo" tag borrows not just from Microsoft's failed phone but from Intel's old Core Duo chips too, calling it an oddly unoriginal choice for a flagship product.
Even rival fans got a dig in. In a Samsung-related thread, one user remarked that people seem to forget Apple itself borrowed both the name and the form factor from a Microsoft device launched seven years earlier, only for someone else to reply that Apple had also used "Duo" for its PowerBook Duo laptops back in the 1990s, long before Microsoft's version existed.
Not everyone thinks the comparison is unfair game, though. Windows Latest struck a more wistful tone, writing that the Surface Duo's failure came down to Microsoft never giving the software enough time to catch up with genuinely excellent hardware, including an impossibly thin design and a smooth 360-degree hinge. The site suggested that Apple's new phone is, in many ways, the device the Surface Duo could have become had Microsoft stuck with it.
For its part, Apple has not commented on the naming overlap, and the choice does have some precedent, given the company's past use of "Duo" branding for accessories like the MagSafe Duo charger. Still, for the community of Surface fans who remember 2020 fondly, watching "Duo" resurface on an Apple product feels less like a coincidence and more like the final word in a naming rivalry nobody expected to still be running six years later.
