TIME has just published its list of the best inventions of 2026, and iPhone Duo made the list with John Ternus featured on the magazine cover. Here’s what Ternus said in his interview with TIME.

John Ternus sat down with TIME for a wide-ranging interview centered on iPhone Duo, but also covering a variety of other topics, including AI.

Regarding the iPhone Duo, which is hitting the market nearly a decade after other foldables, Ternus was involved in early foldable work at Apple all the way back in 2011.

In 2011, when many people still carried around flip phones, Ternus and five other engineers filed a patent application for foldable electronic devices, exploring what kind of batteries and circuit boards might be needed for such an idea. “It felt clear that we were going to eventually get to a place where OLED displays were going to be flexible,” Ternus says.

Ternus wasn’t a fan of early attempts at foldables from other companies in the 2010s. He says, “The other examples in the world felt kind of cheap and crappy.”

The drive to achieve a foldable unlike its competitors is evidenced by a story from Richard Dinh, Apple’s VP of Product Design.

Along the way, Ternus encouraged the team to invest more time and effort in the project, even as other foldables beat them to market. Dinh says that at one point, he asked Ternus whether his team should proceed with a top surface material similar to those of its competitors, which Dinh felt had flaws but was potentially good enough.

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