The iPhone Duo’s first day on sale has brought an uncomfortable early test for Apple’s long-awaited foldable: reports of inner displays breaking along the hinge, in some cases after only a handful of openings.¹

One Australian owner said the phone had been used for about six hours and opened fewer than 20 times before trouble began. While showing it to a friend, the user felt something around the internal hinge, then heard “an audible crack” as the display broke “right along the hinge.”¹ The owner said there were no visible marks on either the inner screen or outer hinge, and that an Apple Store replaced the device immediately.

Other early reports describe a strikingly similar failure signature: damage at the inner-screen hinge and bright lines appearing across the right side of the display. The repetition has turned isolated complaints into a potential durability question just as the device reaches wider buyers.¹

A subsequent durability test and teardown by YouTuber CuriousHagi offered a possible explanation. The Duo’s folding assembly uses a central gear-like hinge and multiple linking pieces; the component said to have failed sits in the middle of the phone, is thinner than adjacent links, and includes a small notch where it could be most vulnerable.²

The teardown also found marks where the hinge meets a support plate, suggesting a point at which the mechanism may catch during opening. That does not establish a manufacturing-wide flaw, but it aligns with owners’ accounts of resistance immediately before a crack.²

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. For now, the company is replacing at least some affected phones, while early users and repair-watchers wait to learn whether the hinge is an isolated weak link or the Duo’s defining liability.