Skeuomorphic design is back on the iPhone Duo, with launch apps that turn the phone into a leather wallet, a toaster, a cassette player and a paint tin. We spoke to some amazing developers who say the hinge made the phone feel like an object, and several want to bring back physical textures without the old iOS look.
These developers have made viral apps which have become a part of a must-have list for iPhone Duo owners: Toastie, Tiny Computers, Deck-Man, pico cam, AltoPaint, TypeDraw, and MoneyCoach.
The Hinge Made the iPhone Duo Feel Like an Object
Perjan Duro, who makes MoneyCoach, told us the 3D leather wallet began with a 3D-printed model of the iPhone Duo. The first time Duro folded it shut in hand, it felt like a wallet, and the outer display is almost exactly card-wallet size. The team put real leather wallets next to the model and studied how the pockets sit and how the edges are finished before writing any code.
Once Apple showed the phone on stage, an app built around the closing motion was the obvious idea, says Tom Szykulski, co-founder of Toastie, and a toaster fit it. The look comes from 1960s American diners and research on real fridges, toasters and ovens, which is where the paper menus and the toaster-lid knobs come from. Toastie costs $2.99 on the App Store.
Dan Fountain of Fountain Interactive says the phone’s shape struck him as a laptop, so both of the studio’s launch apps lean into it. Tiny Computers puts ten retro machines above a working keyboard in tabletop mode and costs $3.99 on the App Store, while Fold & Squish mirrors ink splats when you fold the phone, like a child’s butterfly painting. Fountain wanted to move “away from this rectangle portal to flat apps.”
Deck-Man works the same way, with the phone opening to load an album and closing to start playback. Developer Vidit Bhargava recorded the clicks and tape noise from a real Walkman, and Apple named Deck-Man as an indie pick among the iPhone Duo launch apps. It costs $4.99 on the App Store.
pico cam uses the Dynamic Island as a photo ejection slot, and on the foldable each shot slides out of the outer display like a Polaroid print. AltoPaint opens its paint tin along the fold, with a half-open phone holding the canvas up like a lid. TypeDraw opens like a notebook cover when you unfold the phone, which fits Apple’s design team saying notebooks inspired its design.
Developers Want Skeuomorphic Design That Earns Its Place
Fountain sees Liquid Glass as part of the same shift, calling it “already so much more physical and even playful than before.” He thinks software is following an appreciation of the hardware’s physical side, and that this “feels less corny than when all notes apps had a paper texture.” Opening the phone feels like “flipping out the correct tool on a Swiss Army knife,” Fountain adds.
“Nobody misses the stitched leather calendar,” Duro says, drawing a line between this and the old style. Texture and depth are returning because phones can now make them feel real with light, motion and haptic clicks, Duro thinks, but “a texture has to earn its spot,” and every card in the wallet works with VoiceOver.
Phil Traut, who leads product for TypeDraw at Shaped Fonts, calls the iPhone Duo “a great opportunity to bring some fun back into UI.” Traut says “We don’t need to go all the way back to the old days of skeuomorphism, but we should allow ourselves to bring back some aspects of it.” TypeDraw costs $4.99 on the App Store.
MoneyCoach ships both looks, and Duro says Liquid Glass is “where you go when you want to get things done,” while the wallet is for when you want to look at your money and feel it is there. Soon Tiac Ching, who makes pico cam, calls Liquid Glass “an inspiration” and plans to blend it with familiar textures in upcoming versions.
Developers Disagree on Whether the Style Outlasts the Foldable
Traut thinks this is “a foldable moment.” The world has moved on, Traut argues, so it is “more of a homage than a return,” though design is heading toward a time “where things feel more alive again.”
Soon Tiac Ching sees it differently. “As long as people feel nostalgic, I think there’ll always be an appetite for skeuomorphic design,” Ching says, adding that “it reaches beyond foldables.”
Szykulski takes a middle position. Liquid Glass is “here to stay,” Szykulski believes, but people miss textures, colors and interesting design solutions. “Too many apps, logos, and devices look almost identical today,” Szykulski says, and Toastie brings back “just a little bit” of that vibrancy.
Other iPhone Duo apps do the same, with DexFold turning the phone into a talking Pokédex and Foldissimo into a pocket accordion. Orisuji is a paper maze you solve by folding the phone.
iPhone Duo’s skeuomorphic apps are also available on iPhone and iPad so this is not limited to just the foldable phone. Whether this will extend to more apps over time across Apple’s platforms, and eventually, other Android foldables, is yet to be seen. If we had to predict, it is certain that other Android foldables will have their own versions of these apps, where cross-platform is not part of the feature list, eventually bringing skeuomorphic design to more people.
