Reddit User Recreates iPhone Duo Fold Animation on Galaxy Z Fold 8 as Apple's Foldable Draws Early Praise

Apple's animation appears when the user switches between the inner and outer screens on the iPhone Duo, TechRadar reported. As the main 7.6-inch display opens or closes, the wallpaper dissolves and appears to pass through the moving half of the screen to reappear on the other side. The effect is part of the iOS 27 software tweaks Apple has made for the foldable form factor.

The Android user behind the recreation explained the process on Reddit. 'Felt a bit of FOMO seeing that cool iPhone Duo animation Apple showed off today, so I poked around and found that the Z Fold 8 has a really accurate hinge sensor,' the user wrote, according to TechRadar. 'I realized it would be pretty simple to take the hinge sensor values and use them to drive a transition animation on both screens.'

In a video, the effect works in a similar way to Apple's animation. The half of the display that is opening or closing looks semi-transparent as it moves, revealing what is underneath, though TechRadar said it is still trickery involving motion sensors and gradients.

The recreation is only a demo for now. It is an app that screenshots the display and then shows how an open or close animation could potentially work, not something users can apply at the system level across all apps. The developer said only Samsung would have the necessary access to implement it that way, according to TechRadar.

Reactions in the Reddit thread were overwhelmingly positive, with the hack described as 'great,' 'awesome' and 'so cool.' TechRadar reported that the speed of the recreation impressed commenters and that many Samsung foldable owners would want the feature on their phones. The original poster also offered a warning: 'honestly, it looks cool for the first minute, but it gets really annoying after that,' adding that 'the effect is also only convincing head on' and 'any difference in viewing angles really breaks the illusion.' Whether that is true on Apple's foldable remains to be seen.

For now, the iPhone Duo is the only folding handset with this particular animation, TechRadar said. Pre-orders open on Friday, Oct. 16, with prices starting at $1,999, £1,999 or AU$3,499.

In a separate 9to5Mac opinion piece, the iPhone Duo was described as Apple at its absolute best and a little bit at its worst. The article said Apple had a seven-year Samsung head start to answer in the foldables market, and that the company had waited until it could do a far better job than everyone else. It pointed to details including a crease designed to be virtually invisible and a hinge meant to survive endless cycles of folding and unfolding, though 9to5Mac said the latter remains to be seen. It also noted an under-screen front-facing camera that is visible when needed and almost invisible when not, and software that accounts for different ways the device can be held or positioned.

The 9to5Mac piece highlighted several software ideas, such as dragging a subject directly from a photo into another app instead of first isolating and copying it, and replacing a camera self-timer with a device that waits until everyone stops moving and then takes the photo automatically. It also mentioned a blurring effect that appears as the phone folds, which the writer said has no reason to exist except that it looks beautiful. The writer said he had extremely high expectations for the device but was still blown away.

The same writer said the iPhone Duo is not the best match for him personally. He described his ideal iPhone as about 50 percent ultra-slim camera, 49 percent pocket computer and 1 percent phone, and said the iPhone 18 Pro Max better suits his needs. Even so, he wrote that he experienced extreme technolust for the iPhone Duo and argued that Apple can create strong desire for a product someone has no business buying.