There’s something slightly odd about the iPhone Duo footage from the Emmys.
When Apple’s new CEO pulled the unreleased iPhone Duo out of his jacket pocket and opened it up for the waiting press, the display looked… surprising.
And before anyone starts writing the obituary for Apple’s first foldable, there’s a pretty obvious explanation: the brightness may simply have been turned way down.
The footage was shot under a wall of bright red-carpet lighting, with cameras and photographers pointing directly at Ternus and the phone. That is about as hostile a viewing environment as you could invent for a screen.
Apple says both the inner and outer displays can reach up to 3,000 nits of peak outdoor brightness, so what we’re seeing in the Emmy footage clearly isn’t representative of the panel’s maximum capability. (Apple)
It could simply be that he had the brightness manually reduced, or that the camera exposure is making the display look considerably worse than it did in person.
And there’s another possibility: the nano-texture display is doing exactly what Apple designed it to do.
The inner display uses a special nano-texture finish intended to reduce glare and reflections. Under normal conditions, that’s potentially a huge advantage. Under a barrage of television lights, however, it makes for a rather unusual-looking screen on camera. (Apple)
Interestingly, people watching the footage have already noticed the same thing. Some have suggested the screen was simply running at a low brightness, while others have pointed towards the intense lighting surrounding the red carpet. (Reddit)
Personally, I’m leaning towards a combination of the two.
We’ve already seen the Duo looking bright and vibrant in Apple’s own material and hands-on footage. The Emmy clip is a very specific snapshot of an unreleased phone being casually demonstrated in probably one of the worst possible lighting environments.
So no, I don’t think this is evidence that the iPhone Duo has a dim display.
If anything, it’s a reminder that a phone designed to deal with reflections is going to look very different when you point a television camera at it under a sea of studio-grade lights.
Still, Ternus casually opening an unreleased $1,999 foldable iPhone on the red carpet remains one hell of a product demo.
Two weeks into the job and the man is seemingly already enjoying the executive perks.
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