Samsung’s iPhone Duo Roast Was More Than a Foldable-Phone Joke

Samsung met Apple’s first foldable iPhone with two messages at once: a public roast and a welcome to a market Samsung had helped establish. As the $1,999 iPhone Duo appeared at Apple’s September 9, 2026 event, Samsung Mobile US used X to argue that Apple was bringing familiar foldable ideas to its customers—not inventing the category.3743

The jokes during Apple’s presentation

Samsung’s shortest verdict was “So far, so same.” After the Duo reveal, it added: “Let us know when you’re done reheating our leftovers.” Both lines cast Apple’s new phone as a late take on devices Samsung had already been selling.37

Samsung also joked about how long the presentation was taking to reach the foldable announcement: “Making us wait? Fine. We’ll be over here, folding 3 ways.” That was a reference to its three-panel Galaxy Z TriFold, which folds twice, rather than the Duo’s two-panel design.9 The account extended the copying joke to the phone’s name, tagging Duolingo with “They copied us too” and #Solidarity—a nod to Duolingo’s mascot, Duo.3133

The response was not confined to the US account. Samsung’s Canadian division also posted a Galaxy Z Fold 8 video using a Kourtney Kardashian line about copying, according to Tech Times.42 Reports describe some US posts drawing more than a million impressions, but the supplied reporting does not establish a reliable 10-million-view figure for an individual post.12

The campaign behind the punchlines

Samsung had begun its “Welcome to Foldables” campaign before Apple’s event. Billboards in Seoul, Tokyo and London carried that message and “The World’s Lightest Fold,” turning attention from the jokes toward Samsung’s own hardware and experience.1643 The company’s first Galaxy Fold dates to 2019, giving the late-arrival joke a roughly seven-year basis.9

Apple, for its part, presented the Duo as a different approach to the format. Its passport-like phone opens to a larger screen, while Apple CEO John Ternus criticized earlier foldables as feeling like “two phones awkwardly stuck together.”1923 Samsung’s posts were a competitive argument, not proof that the two devices offer the same experience.

Why Samsung welcomed a rival it mocked

The friendly campaign slogan and the sharper X posts served the same purpose: claim Samsung’s head start while drawing more attention to foldable phones. Reuters described the campaign as an effort to defend Samsung’s position against a major new challenge from Apple.43

That challenge was a forecast, not a settled result. Counterpoint Research projected that Apple could take 25% of the foldable market in 2026, versus 38% for Samsung.43 Apple’s entry could therefore make the category more visible while putting pressure on the company that had spent years building it.