It’s now been around three days since an iPhone Duo owner complained on the MacRumors forums that something was “a little off” during their FaceTime calls. The note prompted a bit of an investigation, and MacRumors itself confirmed on Monday what that user had feared: Apple’s first foldable does not support FaceTime’s Eye Contact feature.
Eye Contact, for those unfamiliar, is essentially the FaceTime version of that creepy Nvidia feature of the same name that, for about five minutes in 2023, made me feel like I was talking to an AI interviewer every time I video-called someone who owned a gaming PC. It uses on-device AI to make it appear as though you’re looking directly into the camera while FaceTiming someone, even when you’re almost certainly looking elsewhere on the screen.
This feature has been widely available across the iPhone line since the launch of iOS 14. That means the normie iPhone 14 has it. The iPhone 13 mini has it. The SE 2 (which also doesn’t support Face ID—sorry to anyone who was about to shout that theory at me) has it.
Cupertino hasn’t yet explained why the iPhone Duo appears to be missing this feature, nor has it stated when it might be coming. As MacRumors correctly points out, however, the camera’s position is a possible culprit. The algorithm that powers Eye Contact is presumably tailored to a top-centered front camera, which neither of the Duo’s is: both its inner and outer cameras are off-center, and one is literally crammed into a far corner. It’s possible that to ship this magic Eye Contact process on the Duo, Apple would’ve had to rebuild the model around the new camera positions, which may not have been a priority for this first-generation device.
If that theory is true, those who care deeply about their appearance on the other end of a FaceTime call can rejoice, because it could indicate that Apple could plausibly fix this with a software update rather than a limitation inherent to the Duo’s hardware. Then again, we had to wait (checks notes) 14 years for a built-in calculator app on the iPad. Will Eye Contact on the Duo be quicker? I like this game. Let’s start the clock now.
