Days after sales for Apple’s newest piece hardware (in years) went live, a group of iPhone Duo customers have posted on Reddit, photos and videos of cracked inner displays. Same could also be found on MacRumors forums, with most showing a bright horizontal line running across the inner screen along the fold. In a report, Bloomberg too has spoken to individual customers and confirmed the issue.
The clearest early account came from a buyer in Australia who reported the display cracked after fewer than 20 openings — roughly six hours into owning a $1,999 phone. The owner described hearing an audible crack while unfolding the device, with no visible external damage beforehand. Apple replaced the unit at an Apple Store. Similar reports have since emerged from multiple markets, with photographs consistently showing damage concentrated along the hinge — exactly the part Apple spent the most time engineering.
The durability testing has not helped. JerryRigEverything’s Zack Nelson, who has been testing foldable phones since the first-generation Samsung Galaxy Fold, put the iPhone Duo through his standard scratch, dust, and bend routine last weekend. The inner display scratched at level 2 on the Mohs hardness scale, compared to level 7 for the outer Ceramic Shield 2. When Nelson covered the device in sand and dirt to test the IP68 dust resistance rating, debris entered the titanium hinge from multiple ingress points, overwhelming the magnets that hold the phone shut. The hinge jammed. Applying pressure in the reverse fold direction then left a permanent green line across the inner screen before it became unresponsive. “I’ve been testing these folding phones since the first generation seven years ago — most do survive,” Nelson said. “The iPhone Duo did not.”
Apple has not publicly responded to either the owner complaints or the JerryRigEverything test results. The company has not confirmed whether the cracking reports represent a systemic issue or isolated units. Hinge repair without AppleCare+ is reportedly priced at approximately $1,000, placing a potential failure well above what most buyers would consider an acceptable risk on a device they’ve owned for days.
In a response to Bloomberg though, Apple acknowledged the issue in a statement, saying it was “aware of an issue impacting the inner display on a small number of iPhone Duo units.”
“If users experience issues with their iPhone Duo display, they should contact AppleCare for a replacement,” the Cupertino, California-based company said. Most Duos aren’t affected by the problem, and the units that are impacted exhibit the defect quickly, Apple said.
The issue, if widespread, will be a straight contradiction to a robot endurance test that was conducted days before launch. That test showed the iPhone Duo hinge surviving 32,640 folds without noticeable wear — suggesting the mechanism itself can handle repeated opening and closing under controlled conditions. What the real-world reports and the JerryRigEverything test both expose is a different vulnerability: the hinge’s sensitivity to debris and the inner display’s limited tolerance for anything beyond its intended fold direction. Whether that reflects a manufacturing defect in early units, a material limitation in the first-generation design, or misuse is something Apple has yet to address.
The iPhone Duo carries Apple’s IP68 certification and a titanium hinge with more than 100 components. It is also Apple’s first foldable, and first-generation foldables across the industry have historically introduced compromises that subsequent versions resolve. That is cold comfort for buyers who spent close to $2,000 and are three days in.