In a packed theater, New Chief Executive John Ternus unveiled the foldable through a video presentation. The phone has a 7.6-inch display when opened and 5.4-inch outer display when closed. It will also work with Apple Pencil, and it can be placed in several display modes, including half-folded on a table. The announcement came nearly 20 years after Steve Jobs upended the consumer hardware space by introducing the world to the iPhone, propelling Apple to unprecedented heights. The phone when open is 50% larger than iPhone Pro Max.

The phone will cost $1,999 for the 256-gigabyte version and be available Oct. 23. Apple is also selling a 2 terabyte version for $3,199.

“We obsess over the details,” Ternus told the crowd from the stage before Apple’s event kicked off, as executives and Apple Board Chairman Tim Cook watched. “We care enormously about design simplicity. We want our products to be incredibly powerful, but we also want them to be simple and natural and intuitive.”

When open, the phone is the thinnest Apple has made, and Apple packed it with new software that enables features like usability even when half-folded. The phone can also be used as a display monitor for calendars or clocks, like how people use Amazon’s Echo Show products. The front-facing FaceTime camera is hidden within the screen when the device is open.  [See the new iPhone Duo up close in Fortune’s photo tour]

The Duo launch also marks new CEO John Ternus’ first big event since replacing Tim Cook in the top job earlier this month. Apple also announced its iPhone 18 Pro, which starts at $1,199 and iPhone 18 Pro Max, which begins at $1,299 on Wednesday. Both phones reflect a $100 price increase, likely due to the industrywide increase in memory costs.

Shares of Apple, which had been down roughly 1.5% earlier on Wednesday, climbed back into positive territory after the Duo was announced, with the stock up less than 1% in after hours trading.

With the foldable, Apple now has a new form factor after years in which it has iterated on its original iPhone. The phone will help Apple compete in a market set by Samsung and hand Ternus a flashy new product to tout as he begins his tenure. 

Apple’s events in recent years have “been a wash, rinse, and repeat cycle,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst and former Apple marketing employee, speaking ahead of Wednesday’s event. With its event Wednesday, however, the company has something distinctly new it can present to consumers and show off a different approach to foldables from the ones Samsung and Google currently make.

“Everyone, whether you’re the kid at home saving their money for a new iPhone, or an analyst on Wall Street, will pay close attention to everything that Ternus says and does,” Gartenberg told Fortune.

And while the roughly $2,000 price of Apple’s foldable is likely to limit the potential buyers, the price will be comparable to competing products such as Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold8 phone, which starts at $1,899.99, and the upgraded Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, which begins at $2,099.99.

Apple isn’t abandoning its traditional bar type iPhone design. But the company’s base model, the iPhone 18, is not expected until Spring 2027, according to a note by analysts at Bank of America. That’s a change from Apple’s standard playbook. “The split launch could support mix and (average selling prices) but creates some risk that price-sensitive consumers defer upgrades until the lower-priced models arrive,” analysts wrote.

Apple, like other companies, raised prices recently due to a shortage in memory chips brought on by the intense demand for AI computing resources. The company’s price hikes ranged from 15% to 33% across its Mac, iPad, and home device lines (it also increased monthly subscriptions by $2) in what former CEO Tim Cook called a “100-year-flood” event.

In July, Apple issued a disappointing revenue forecast for its fiscal fourth quarter owing to supply-chain constraints. Investors are also examining the company’s progress on AI, with its new Siri AI being rolled out this fall that is promised to better understand data across apps, answer questions based on what is on users’ screens, and act autonomously within apps. The update has drawn praise by some analysts who have tested it. Apple has also bet that much of AI could happen locally on-device, rather than in the cloud.

Ternus, who took over on Sept. 1, told employees in a note that day that he was “so excited about everything we have in store.” He added that he’s “just as excited about what lies beyond that, including the incredible products already in the works and the ones we haven’t even imagined yet that we’ll dream up and create together.”

The 51-year-old executive is widely regarded as a low-key product-engineer savant with an encyclopedic memory of Apple product minutiae and an all-around nice guy who has played a significant part in building many of Apple’s most successful hardware products, Fortune reported in a profile this month.

He’s stepped into the role as Apple looks to compete in AI after mostly ceding the AI model ground to competitors like Google and OpenAI, which are also keen on beating out the iPhone-maker on consumer hardware devices in the AI era. OpenAI has not yet released a product but is working with former Apple star designer Jony Ive. Roughly half of Apple’s revenue is from iPhone sales.

Analysts and former Apple employees interviewed by Fortune have said they hope Ternus, given his product engineering background, can revive some of the company’s innovation and design mojo it has lost over the years. It’s likely Ternus will not make drastic changes to start out, experts pointed out, especially since hardware cycles are usually a few years in the making. But nevertheless, he could make a dent in a different way than the supply-chain minded Cook did.

Gartenberg and other analysts said Wednesday could be the start of that, with Apple having promised some “surprise and shine” in its event description that the public now sees includes a specialized hinge—the kind that opens a foldable device.