An indie developer has turned the iPhone Duo into a virtual Sony Walkman, and the demo is going viral. The app is called Duo-Man, and it uses the foldable’s hinge the way a cassette player uses its door.
Developer Vidit Bhargava posted the demo on X a few days ago. He built it at a hackathon hosted by Bitrig, the AI app builder that recently added a 3D iPhone Duo simulator for developers. His post also says he recorded the button clicks and tape static from a real Sony Walkman for the sound effects.
Duo-Man makes opening and closing the iPhone Duo part of playing music
You open the iPhone Duo to show the 7.6-inch inner display, pick your music and “insert” a cassette. When you close it, the 5.4-inch outer display takes over and playback starts. Bhargava told TechCrunch he went looking for physical objects with a hinge, and the Walkman’s cassette door was the obvious match.
The post has topped 1.8 million views on X, and that reaction has pushed Bhargava to turn the hackathon build into a real app. He told TechCrunch the finished version supports Apple Music and local files, along with a few Walkman-inspired extras:
- Apple Pencil support to “roll” the cassette loop by hand
- Fast-forward and rewind that mimic the original Sony Walkman
- Spotify support, possibly further down the road
The Apple Pencil feature depends on hardware Apple has not shipped yet. The iPhone Duo gets USB-C Apple Pencil support later this year, after Apple dropped its own Pencil for the phone.
Our Take
This is what the early iPhone App Store felt like. In 2008, developers shipped iBeer, which tilted a virtual pint with the accelerometer, and Ocarina, which you played by blowing into the microphone. Nobody knew what a killer app looked like yet, so people tried whatever the hardware allowed.
The iPhone Duo has a hinge, two screens and an iOS that adapts to how far it is open. Duo-Man is the first app I have seen where the fold drives the whole interaction. Developers have had virtual iPhone Duo testing tools since before launch, so I expect more experiments like this before the hardware reaches customers.
Pre-orders for the iPhone Duo open October 16, and the phone reaches customers on October 23 starting at $1,999.
