TechCrunch put the iPhone Duo through the most honest test a phone can face: a vacation, with the reviewer's iPhone Pro Max along as the safety net. The verdict — the Duo won them over, frustrations and all.

The review doesn't pretend the device is friction-free. The Duo "has its frustrations," the reviewer writes, but it proved "fun and engaging enough" that they didn't want to return to the Pro Max afterward. That's a meaningful bar to clear. The Pro Max is Apple's established flagship, and a new form factor talking a daily driver out of someone's pocket is the strongest endorsement a first-generation device can earn.

It also hints at how these devices get judged in practice: not on spec sheets, but on whether the novelty survives real-world use. A week of travel — navigation, photos, idle browsing in airports — is exactly the kind of sustained contact that exposes gimmicks. The Duo, at least for this reviewer, came out the other side as the phone they preferred.