The Korean company’s devotees are once again feeling the indignity of ‘new’ features they’ve been using for years
Apple’s iPhone Duo is reviving an old score with Samsung and its followers.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News
By Timothy W. Martin and Sooyoung Rhee
Sept. 17, 2026 5:30 am ET
Rasheed Richmond has owned several Samsung foldable phones. It’s been a lonely existence.
He’s typically the only non-iPhone user at work meetings and social gatherings. Worse still, people don’t even recognize his device.
That stopped when Apple introduced the iPhone Duo, its first foldable phone.
Rasheed Richmond prefers his Samsung foldable phone. Rasheed Richmond
Since then, Richmond’s phone has been buzzing with a consistent refrain: “Now I understand why you have a foldable.” The 48-year-old tech CEO in Los Angeles has tried to persuade people to try Samsung’s version. Few are biting.
“They don’t feel brave enough,” he said.
Welcome to a day in the life of Samsung Nation, where the indignities never end.
The company and its followers have long chafed at their second-class status, and last week’s iPhone unveiling reignited the resentments. “So far, so same,” one of Samsung’s social-media accounts said. Fans, tired of hearing about “new” features they’ve been using for years, are spreading conspiracy theories about the new phone and chiding potential defectors.
It’s an inferiority complex tempered by innovative breakthroughs.
Samsung beat Apple to jumbo-sized screens, 5G-network connectivity and the industry’s first mainstream foldable phone—in 2019. Since then, it’s released roughly 20 models, including one that folds twice. Weeks before the iPhone Duo’s unveiling, Samsung debuted a nearly identical-looking device.
Samsung’s offerings include devices that fold twice and those that snap shut like a clam shell. Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters
But being first doesn’t ensure a win, especially in the U.S., where blue-bubble texts reign supreme. Americans willing to fork over $1,000 or more for a smartphone overwhelmingly choose iPhones. And they feel pretty smug about it.
In a video message introducing the iPhone Duo, Apple CEO John Ternus acknowledged rivals’ foldable offerings. But, he added, those incumbents feel “like two phones awkwardly stuck together.”
In contrast, the iPhone Duo brings an “entirely new design,” Ternus said, “while preserving everything you love and expect.”
Apple’s new CEO, John Ternus, introduces the ‘entirely new design.’ David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News
Samsung had a different take: “Let us know when you’re done reheating our leftovers,” its official U.S. Mobile account wrote on X, adding a winking emoji.
For loyal Samsung user John Lee, it was just one more example of the tech press fawning over Apple.
“To act like it’s the first great foldable in ages is just overpraising Apple,” said the 35-year-old Fresno, Calif., stay-at-home dad, “because everyone else is doing it.”
For Apple fans, that’s just the way of the world. While Samsung routinely pipes up around Apple’s phone releases, iPhone users don’t even know when Samsung Galaxy releases occur, Richard Bruckner, a comedian and iPhone 17 Pro owner, posited in a viral social-media post.
“This one-sided beef needs to end.”
The post only fueled the beef, with Samsung loyalists taking umbrage and Apple fans defending Bruckner. “It’s fun to have the debate,” the 35-year-old, from Lindenhurst, N.Y., said in an interview.
Samsung said its foldable phones have become a benchmark for the industry and growing competition demonstrates continued momentum for the category. Apple declined to comment.
Apple sued Samsung in 2011 over the look, design and interface of its tablets and phones.
PARK JI-HWAN/AFP/Getty Images
The smartphone wars began differently.
About four years after the iPhone launched in 2007, Apple sued Samsung, alleging the Korean company copied the look, product design, packaging and user interface of the iPhone and iPad, violating its patents and trademarks. The two sides settled out of court after seven years, following a U.S. jury awarding Apple $539 million in damages for patent infringement of the iPhone.
Today, the world has more than 5 billion smartphones. That includes about 1.4 billion iPhones and more than 1 billion Samsung devices, according to Counterpoint Research. The competition can be fierce.
Samsung, with display and semiconductor divisions, often pushes the envelope on technical achievements. Apple even uses that chip and display technology. But the Cupertino, Calif., company keeps tight control of its product universe through its iOS operating system and proprietary software, and commands a vast, affluent user base.
With just a few months of sales, the iPhone Duo is projected to nearly match Samsung’s annual volume in the growing U.S. foldable market this year, then capture a majority in 2027, according to Counterpoint forecasts.
“When Apple does anything, it gets the spotlight,” said Tarun Pathak, who researches the global smartphone industry for Counterpoint.
The iPhone Duo launched around seven years after Samsung’s first foldable phone.
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News
Many Samsung users are over it. On message boards and fan accounts, they’re spreading theories about the iPhone Duo: Don’t the fingers in Apple’s promotional photo, meant to show how it could easily be held with a single hand, look unnaturally long? Is the iPhone Duo discriminating against left-handed users?
Samsung foldable phone users are also sharing tales of strangers excitedly asking them “Is that the new iPhone?,” causing a collective eye roll.
Not long ago, Apple loyalists viewed foldable phones as pointless, said Jeff Pritz, who’s owned more than a dozen Samsung devices, including foldable phones. Now, the iPhone Duo has them “losing their minds.”
Classic “iSheep mentality,” Pritz said.
The iPhone Duo has created a frenzy that Samsung users find ridiculous. Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images
“These Apple users don’t know any better,” said the 35-year-old Las Vegas resident, who works in sales. “Because Apple is doing it, it’s the best.”
Recent Samsung convert TJ Pompos has to admit he’s intrigued by the iPhone Duo’s new features.
The military recruiter from New Mexico switched from Apple last year because he liked the Galaxy Z Fold 6’s bigger screen for photo editing, note taking and reading sheet music while on stage playing the bass guitar. But he expects the iPhone Duo to beat even Samsung’s top offerings.
“As a latecomer,” said Pompos, 25, “Apple has had a lot of time to study the different features that people enjoy.”
