The iPhone Duo arrived last week as Apple’s first foldable, asking buyers to spend $2,000 for a device built around what the company called a “precision-engineered” hinge. Within days, however, early owners began posting strikingly similar accounts of damaged inner displays: bright lines, dead pixels and cracks beginning near the middle of the fold.¹

The reports accelerated as the phone went on sale. One Australian owner said the Duo had been opened fewer than 20 times when they felt something beneath the internal hinge, heard “an audible crack,” and watched the screen break along it. They said there were no visible marks on either the display or exterior hinge, and that Apple replaced the handset immediately in store.²

That pattern has shaped the emerging dispute. For affected buyers, this does not look like accidental damage: several say the failure came within hours, sometimes during setup, after only a few opens and closes. The financial sting is steep, too: replacing the OLED screen reportedly costs about half the price of the phone.¹

Teardown investigators are converging on a more technical explanation. iFixit’s scans place the apparent failure point below the ribbon cable route, where the hinge’s supporting structure narrows. Its theory is that a support bar can stick and fail to drop far enough as the screen bends, concentrating stress on the OLED until its pixel matrix is permanently damaged.¹

YouTuber CuriousHagi reached a similar conclusion after reproducing the failure and dismantling the device. He found a thinner central hinge link that snapped at a small notch, plus contact marks suggesting the part may catch against the support plate.³

Apple had not responded to requests for comment in the early reports. The company may yet determine these are isolated defects, but the identical damage and narrow suspected failure point have turned its foldable debut into an immediate test of whether the hinge can survive everyday use.²