Samsung and Duolingo just turned Apple's foldable Duo launch into their own comedy show.
Apple unveiled its first-ever foldable, the iPhone Duo, at its “Surprise and Shine” event — and before the keynote even ended, Samsung and Duolingo had hijacked the internet’s attention with a savage, screenshot-worthy roast session. Picture: Supplied
Apple finally used its biggest event of the year to announce its anticipated venture into the foldable space with its $1 999 iPhone Duo.
At Wednesday’s “Surprise and Shine” keynote, headlined by new CEO John Ternus since he took over from Tim Cook this month, Apple unveiled its first foldable phone, alongside the iPhone 18 Pro line, AirPods 5, and new Apple Watches.
On paper, it’s a genuinely big deal as Apple’s most significant iPhone redesign in years. In practice, nobody was talking about the specs within hours of the announcement. They were talking about Samsung, Honor, Xiaomi and Duolingo.
Samsung had a whole plan
Samsung Mobile US shared live commentary throughout the event along with the official hashtag “it’s time to switch”.
Before the Duo even appeared, the account posted digs like “So far, so same” and “Making us wait? Fine. We’ll be over here, folding 3 ways,” a nod to its own tri-fold Galaxy Z designs.
The line that actually broke through the moment the Duo was revealed read: “Let us know when you’re done reheating our leftovers,” jabbing at Apple for arriving seven years after Samsung’s original Galaxy Fold in 2019.
It travelled hard, racking up well over 10 million impressions at the time of writing. Samsung kept going, mocking the Duo’s design familiarity and its use as a StandBy-mode bedside clock (“It’s giving Groundhog Day”).
Then Samsung reached for an ally: “I’m so sorry, @DuoLingo. They copied us too #Solidarity.”
Duolingo took the bait and ran
Duolingo’s owl-brained social team didn’t need an invitation. The social media-team fired off well planned, pun-laden X posts throughout the live-streamed event: “what an exciting Apple event! i sure hope my brand doesn’t get infringed upon,” they began.
Followed by a series of hilarious follow-ups. “It’s called the iPhone WHAT???” “Oh god, oh god, my SEO, my SEO,” and the line that became the whole event’s unofficial tagline: “they named a phone after me and made it bend over.”
When Samsung swooped in with its “solidarity” post, Duolingo answered with a meme reference -something to the effect of an ugly stranger calling you twin, complete with a “no brand” disclaimer. Samsung fired back, mock-offended: “Ugly?? Watch your language.” Duolingo de-escalated the only way it knows how, all lowercase and covered in green heart emojis, begging Samsung not to “break my app” on its phones.
Motorola and, of all things, the dictionary
Motorola played it straighter but still landed a jab, posting an Instagram Reel tracing the Razr’s foldable history with the line: “Some are just discovering it. We’ve been making it even better.”
The best line of the day, though, may have come from Merriam-Webster, who quote-tweeted Apple’s announcement with “Not to brag, but our product has been foldable since 1828.”
The real story
Apple entering foldables years after Samsung, Motorola, Huawei, Honor, Xiaomi, Oppo and Google was always going to invite comparisons.
What nobody could predict was that a language app’s mascot and a 200-year-old dictionary publisher would end up as the day’s biggest characters.
