iPhone Duo · 23 October
A free drawing app for the iPhone Duo
The Duo unfolds to a 7.6-inch screen, which makes it the first iPhone that is genuinely a drawing surface rather than a place you could technically draw. drawsta runs on it from the day it arrives — free, no account, no subscription.
The Apple Pencil situation, stated plainly
This is the part most pages will get wrong, so here it is in full.
The iPhone Duo is the first iPhone to support an Apple Pencil, and it supports it on both screens — the 5.4-inch outer one as well as the unfolded 7.6-inch one. That is genuinely new.
Three caveats, all of which matter if you are buying it to draw:
- Only the USB-C Apple Pencil. If you own an Apple Pencil Pro or an Apple Pencil 2 from an iPad, it will not work. The compatible one is a separate purchase, $79 in the US, and it pairs and charges over a cable.
- No pressure sensitivity. The USB-C Pencil reads tilt but not pressure, and has no double-tap. Pressing harder will not give you a heavier line on a Duo, on any app, because the hardware is not sending that.
- Not on launch day. Apple has said Pencil support arrives after the device does — “later this year”, with no date. On 23 October the Duo is a finger-drawing device.
None of that makes it a bad place to draw. It makes it a different one: line weight comes from the tool you choose and the angle you hold the pencil at, rather than from how hard you lean on the glass. That is closer to a pen than to a brush, and it is how most drawing was done for most of history.
What actually changes at 7.6 inches
The gap between a phone and a drawing surface has never really been about resolution. It has been about how much of the drawing you can see at once while your hand is on top of it. On a normal phone your palm covers a meaningful fraction of the picture.
Unfolded, the Duo is in iPad mini territory. That is enough to see the whole composition while working on a corner of it, which is the thing that makes proportion possible. Folded, the 5.4-inch outer screen is still a perfectly good place to do twenty minutes of shape practice in a queue.
That is the real argument for drawing on a foldable, and it is not about specs: frequency beats session length when you are learning a motor skill, and the device that is always with you wins. An iPad is better and it is at home.
What drawsta gives you on it
Most drawing apps open to a blank page, and most people who quit drawing quit because they could not think of anything worth drawing. drawsta opens to a wall of pictures instead: street art and murals, modern illustration, Swiss typography, vintage ads, gig posters, skate and surf culture, patent drawings, Bauhaus. Different every visit, all of it openly licensed, public domain or original art, credited where the source provides it.
Tap one and it lands on your canvas as a ghosted trace layer. Follow the lines. Turn the ghost off and what is left is yours.
Underneath it is a real canvas: inks that behave like the tools they are, layers you can reorder and hide, an x-acto for cutting and moving your work, and a canvas you can rotate under your hand like a sheet of paper. Your work saves itself as you go, survives a crash, and syncs through your own private iCloud — so a drawing started on the Duo is on your iPad when you sit down with it.
One thing we are not going to imply: drawsta does not yet do anything clever with the hinge itself. It runs on the Duo as an iPhone app, on both screens. If that changes it will be on this page.
- Free.
- No account.
- No ads. No tracking.
Questions
Does drawsta work on the iPhone Duo?
Yes. drawsta is an iPhone app, and the iPhone Duo is an iPhone — it installs and runs from the day the device arrives, on both the outer screen and the unfolded one. It is free, needs no account, and needs iOS 17 or later.
Can you draw with an Apple Pencil on the iPhone Duo?
Eventually, and only with the USB-C Apple Pencil. The Duo is the first iPhone to support an Apple Pencil at all, on both screens, but Apple has said the support does not arrive with the device on October 23 — only that it comes later in the year. The Apple Pencil Pro and Apple Pencil 2 are not compatible.
Does the USB-C Apple Pencil have pressure sensitivity?
No. The USB-C Apple Pencil recognises tilt but not pressure, and it has no double-tap. For drawing that means line weight comes from the tool you pick and from how you hold the pencil, not from how hard you press.
Is drawsta free on the iPhone Duo?
Yes. It is free, with no subscription, no account, no ads and no tracking. That is the same on every device it runs on.
Will my drawings sync between the iPhone Duo and an iPad?
Yes. Your work syncs through your own private iCloud, so a drawing started on the Duo is on the iPad when you sit down with it. There is no drawsta account involved — it is your iCloud, not our server.