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The Foldable iPhone Is Here, and Everyone Misses Steve Jobs: Defensive Innovation Can't Carry a 20,000-Yuan Price Tag
Trend Tracker: Trending Topics × Tech Analysis × Practical Advice. Author: Yongliang
In the early hours of September 10, Apple unveiled its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo. One day later, the term sitting on the trending list was a telling one: “Apple’s foldable makes people miss Steve Jobs even more” — with nearly 5.8 million views.
For a product people had waited eight or nine years for, the mood after the launch event wasn’t excitement — it was nostalgia. That’s worth talking about more than the phone itself.
1. First, the product: Where does the iPhone Duo stand
A quick run through the facts (from the launch event and the official website):
- Folds inward horizontally, book-style; outer screen of about 5.4 inches when closed, inner screen of about 7.6 inches when open—the largest screen of any iPhone to date
- Starting price of 15999 yuan, top configuration 26499 yuan—the highest prices in iPhone history
- eSIM across the entire lineup + in-house C2 modem, the thinnest iPhone ever
- Powered by the A20 Pro, the same chip as the iPhone 18 Pro
- Pre-orders only open on October 16
Judged on specs alone, this is a “catching up on homework” foldable: the form factor follows the book-style fold Samsung and Huawei have spent years proving out, and both the size and the pricing sit comfortably within industry convention—nothing unexpected. The genuinely Apple-style details are in the craftsmanship—nano-texture glass reduces the crease to “nearly invisible,” and the transition animations have been called “flawless.” When Apple steps in, polish is never the problem.
But a high degree of polish and real innovation are two different things. The original comment behind the trending topic put it bluntly: this is a defensive product launch—Samsung and Huawei have been making foldables for seven years, and if Apple had stayed out any longer, the high-end market was about to be carved up. It entered the game, but it brought nothing that would make anyone else follow because of it.
2. Why the Judgment That “We Miss Jobs” Is Accurate
Apple launches in the Jobs era followed a pattern of “here’s something you’ve never seen — and from now on you need it”: the iPhone redefined the phone, the iPad created an entirely new category, and they’d even take away the headphone jack just to show you they could. The keyword of that era was surplus — Apple created demand.
In the Cook-to-Ternus era, the launch pattern has become “whatever others have, we do better”: a foldable screen that arrived seven years late but with a shallower crease, bigger displays, faster charging, higher refresh rates — every one of them a refinement that came after playing catch-up. This is the logic of holding ground, not the logic of creation. Ternus’s debut as the new chief delivered precisely the report card of a “shrewd custodian.”
On launch day the stock price swung sharply, and the vote the market cast with its money and the vote trending topics cast with their emotions pointed the same way: Apple is still that precision-engineered money-making machine, but it is no longer the company that kept people up at night waiting for a keynote.
In fairness, though: defensive innovation is nothing to be ashamed of. For the vast majority of great companies in business history, defense has been the norm — the profit from a single Apple iPhone Duo could probably rival a competitor’s entire foldable product line. Missing Jobs is, at its core, missing a scarce commodity: someone willing to bet the company on building what the world hadn’t yet imagined. That kind of scarcity almost inevitably disappears as a company’s scale grows exponentially. If Jobs himself could see Apple today, he would most likely say: this is the fate of big companies — which is exactly why, back then, I stayed hungry.
3. A 20,000-Yuan Foldable—Worth It or Not?
Straight to the verdict:
Ordinary users: Not worth it. All three iron rules of a first-generation foldable apply: wait for the second generation (hinge durability needs to be validated by real users), wait for the ecosystem (far too few apps are adapted for the big screen), wait for a price drop (the 15,999 starting price carries a massive early-adopter premium). Duolingo’s official quip says it best—“Some Duos cost over 10,000; some Duos are free for life.”
Users who genuinely need a foldable (heavy readers / multitaskers): You can hold off until real hands-on reviews land ahead of the October pre-orders. Focus on three things: how visible the crease actually is under strong light (the real-world performance of the nano-texture glass), the official promise of a hinge rated for 200,000 folds, and the third-party app adaptation rate on the 7.6-inch display. Only pull the trigger once all three clear the bar.
iPhone 18 Pro owners: Stay put. Same chip—your device gives up nothing in performance. Paying at least 6,000 extra for the form factor buys you a big screen the ecosystem has yet to deliver on.
What does this have to do with AI? Essentially nothing. The A20 Pro’s AI horsepower has no dedicated use case on a foldable—Apple hasn’t released a single AI-exclusive feature for the Duo. This confirms yesterday’s judgment: Apple’s AI narrative (the still-delayed Apple Intelligence) and its hardware narrative (the foldable) are, for now, two parallel lines that have yet to converge.
4. The Real Signal: The Smartphone Industry Enters the Duet of “Luxurification” + “Defensivization”
The iPhone Duo’s pricing is not an isolated case—it’s an industry landmark: the iPhone 18 Pro price increase, multiple domestic flagships crossing the 10,000-yuan mark, and trending discussions about “phones entering the era of luxury goods.” The underlying driver is the supply chain—in the first half of 2026, average prices of smartphone storage chips rose by more than 200%, and as upstream price hikes passed through to the end market, the entry threshold for flagship phones was forcibly raised.
Layered on top of the normalization of defensive innovation, the picture for the smartphone industry’s next phase is clear: technologically, it enters a plateau (replacement cycles keep stretching longer); in pricing, it enters a luxury phase (flagships keep getting more expensive); in innovation, it enters a renovation phase (polishing the completeness of existing form factors).
For consumers, this means the era of “a new phone every two years” is over for good—phones, like watches, will become durable goods you keep “until they break or until you’re tired of them.” For the industry, it means the next big window for true innovation lies not in foldable form factors, but in AI-native devices—whoever can build a device “born for AI” rather than one “with AI bolted on” will claim the next iPhone moment. For now, among the contenders vying for that position, Apple’s first-mover advantage is far from clear.
5. One-Sentence Summary
The iPhone Duo is a good phone, but not a good launch — it proves Apple is still a master of manufacturing, and it proves Apple no longer invents. The starting price of 15999 buys form-factor scarcity, not a technological leap; waiting for the October hands-on reviews, waiting for the second generation, waiting for the ecosystem — that’s the most rational stance for the average user. As for “missing Jobs” — what people miss isn’t the man, but an era “when someone dared to gamble.” The ticket to that era — even 20,000 yuan can’t buy it anymore.
Reference Sources
- Baidu Hot Search entries, 2026-09-10/11: Apple’s Foldable Screen Makes People Miss Jobs Even More (heat approx. 5.8 million) / Mobile Phones Enter the Luxury Era / iPhone 17 Price Hike, In-Store Price Cut / Foldable Phone Creases, Flexible Electronics / Duolingo iPhone Duo
- Apple’s official website iPhone Duo product page (dimensions/pricing/nano-texture glass/preorder time)
- Memory chip price increase data: average price increase of over 200% in the first half of 2026, as cited in the hot search entries