There are two displays and multitasking options for iPhone Duo, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to play two videos at the same time.
If you’ve ever been scrolling a social media app while listening to music, you’ve likely had the frustrating experience of having the music pause randomly. That’s because the social media app took over as the primary audio provider.
The same effect occurs whenever you’re watching video on iPhone or iPad. Picture-in-picture, split view, or even dual screens won’t let a user play two videos at once, even on iPhone Duo.
While this may seem obvious to some readers, there was some question given that there are two distinctly different displays. Technically speaking, you could pair two sets of AirPods and play one video on the outer display and one on the inner display at the same time.
However, that use case isn’t available. There are some features, like in FaceTime, that utilize the multiple displays at once, but not for video.
There’s even a new multitasking view that lets users pin a video from an app like Apple TV to the top of the iPhone Duo while a second app remains active at the bottom. If the second app starts playing a video, the top video will pause.
The iPhone Duo still runs iOS, so it will have similar limitations to other iPhones in some cases. It will be available to pre-order on October 16 and ships on October 23.