Apple’s debut foldable handset, the iPhone Duo, launched on 23 October to some of the strongest opening-week demand the company has seen in years, with preorders selling out within minutes. Within days, however, a very different story began circulating online: owners posting photographs of inner screens splitting along the fold, in some cases within hours of taking the device out of the box.
The $1,999 phone pairs a 5.4-inch outer display, usable while closed, with a 7.6-inch inner screen that opens up to roughly 50% more usable area than Apple’s largest conventional model, the iPhone 18 Pro Max. The complaints centre almost entirely on that inner panel, where affected users describe a vertical crack running down the centre crease, often accompanied by a bright white line cutting across the display.
Apple has acknowledged the problem publicly, telling customers it affects “a small number” of units and pointing owners toward AppleCare for replacement. The company has not detailed a root cause or said whether a design or manufacturing fix is coming for units still on shelves.
Independent repair specialist iFixit took one of the early units apart and flagged the hinge mechanism itself as the likely weak point. The teardown counted more than 100 individual components packed into the fold, and iFixit's chief executive, Kyle Wiens, said the margin for error is unusually thin: a manufacturing variance, or something as small as a grain of sand working its way inside, can be enough to damage the fragile panel the hinge is meant to protect.
That detail matters given how Apple has marketed the Duo's durability. The phone carries an IP68 water and dust rating, but iFixit's own dust-ingress testing found particles reaching the hinge assembly regardless, raising the question of whether a support bar inside the mechanism is failing to fully retract when the phone is closed and pinching the display in the process.
The cost of getting it wrong is steep. Apple is charging $999 for an out-of-warranty inner-screen repair, well above what rivals charge for comparable fixes: Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 runs between $419 and $579, and Google's Pixel 11 Pro Fold sits in a similar range. For a device already priced at the top of the foldable market, a four-figure repair bill on a screen that can reportedly fail within the first day is a hard sell.
The timing is awkward for Apple's newest leadership. John Ternus took over as chief executive on 1 September and has treated the Duo as the flagship statement of his first year in charge. Early reviews had been largely positive, praising battery life and a barely visible crease, which makes the wave of cracked-screen reports a more pointed test of his first major product call than the launch-week sales figures suggested it would be.
For now, the fix on offer is a replacement rather than an explanation. Until Apple says more about what is actually failing inside the hinge, owners weighing whether to unfold their new phone at all are left relying on AppleCare and hoping their unit isn't one of the affected ones.
