GSMArena’s latest weekly poll asks readers a straightforward question: will you actually buy the iPhone Duo, the iPhone 18 Pro or the iPhone 18 Pro Max, now that pricing for all three is confirmed and Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold8 sits right next to the Duo as its closest rival. The iPhone Duo price starts at $2,000 in the US, £2,000 in the UK and €2,300 in the eurozone, with the iPhone 18 Pro from $1,200 and the Pro Max from $1,300.
What the iPhone Duo price gets you
By our arithmetic, the ladder running from the entry iPhone 18 Pro up through the Z Fold8 to the iPhone Duo climbs unevenly rather than in a straight line: $100 separates the Pro from the Pro Max, then a $600 gap opens up to the Z Fold8’s $1,900, before another $100 closes the distance to the Duo’s $2,000. Stretched end to end, the Duo costs 67% more than the entry-level Pro, for a phone that folds and one that doesn’t.
That $2,000 US figure is also where a currency quirk sits. The UK price reads as an identical £2,000, but that figure already has VAT built in, while the US price does not, so the two numbers looking alike on a spec sheet is not the same as them being a like-for-like comparison. India breaks the pattern entirely: the Duo starts at ₹300,000 there, a gap far wider than a straight dollar-to-rupee conversion would produce, and well past what either Pro model costs converted the same way.
iPhone 18 Pro specs and the shipping slip
The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max carry a variable aperture main lens, Apple’s A20 Pro chip and a smaller Dynamic Island than last year’s models. Both are officially on sale, and GSMArena’s own week 37 traffic figures showed the Pro and Pro Max drawing more reader interest than the Duo, despite the Duo being Apple’s first folding phone.
Apple had said the Pro line would begin shipping on 18 September. That date no longer holds for most buyers: 9to5Mac reports that pre-orders for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max have now been pushed back to October for most models, so anyone ordering today should not expect delivery by the date Apple originally printed.
Where this leaves our earlier coverage
We wrote about the run-up to this pricing in Apple raises iPhone prices as DRAM costs bite, when the increases were still a rumoured range; the confirmed $1,200 and $1,300 starting points here land above some of those early estimates. We also flagged the Pro’s shift in position in iPhone 18 Pro becomes Apple’s new default flagship, before the variable aperture lens and A20 Pro chip were official. Whether Samsung mirrors any of this on its own flagship is still open, a question we’re tracking in Samsung may follow Apple’s playbook on Galaxy S26 pricing.
What to watch next
The concrete thing to watch is when Apple issues new delivery windows for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max orders pushed into October; until it does, the 18 September date quoted at launch no longer applies to anyone ordering now. GSMArena’s poll results, once tallied, will show whether reader appetite matches the site’s own traffic numbers favouring the Pro over the Duo, and whether that lines up with how the pricing itself is landing.
Image: ΚΑ ΚΙΤ via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
