iPhone Duo Screens Are Cracking Along the Hinge, and iFixit Has a Theory

Some owners of Apple's iPhone Duo say the foldable's inner display has failed within days of purchase, cracking down the centre line of the hinge before a band of pixels turns solid white. A teardown by iFixit points at the same area of the hinge, but neither iFixit nor anyone else has identified a confirmed cause, and Apple has not publicly responded.

What owners are reporting

9to5Mac's Benjamin Mayo wrote on October 25 that owners reported inner screens that had "cracked and broken on their own" after the phone went on sale on Friday, October 23. The affected phones appear to fail in the same way: a crack along the middle of the hinge, followed by a horizontal block of pixels that glows white. He counted about ten unique instances so far, and a couple of owners said the screen cracked during first setup.

The scale is unclear. Mayo estimated that Apple has shipped hundreds of thousands of units, if not millions, which would make ten reports a very small share. That estimate is his, not Apple's, and Apple has not published sales figures. His working theory, which he stressed is unconfirmed, is a batch with a hinge component that sits slightly misaligned and pushes up against the inner screen.

Most owners who reported a failure said they received a straight replacement at an Apple Store. Customers who bought through carriers may have had less luck, and one was reportedly told they must have dropped the phone and would have to pay for the repair. 9to5Mac said it had asked Apple for comment and would update its story if the company replied. Apple's own iPhone Duo page describes the inner display as made of more than 10 ultrathin layers with a scratch-resistant coating, and rates the phone IP68. It says nothing about cracks.

What iFixit found inside

iFixit published its teardown on October 25 and gave the iPhone Duo a provisional repairability score of 5 out of 10. That is the highest the site has given a foldable; the Galaxy Z Fold8 and Pixel 11 Pro Fold both scored 4 out of 10, according to MacRumors. Its summary was blunt: this is the most repairable foldable it has seen, and still "going to be a bear to repair".

On the failures, iFixit was careful. It noted that the breaks cluster near the point where a flex cable crosses the gap in the hinge and meets the central hinge support, slightly below where the cable passes. It floated several possible explanations: pressure, a trapped particle, repeated bending or a manufacturing defect. It also said a wiring problem could produce the same visual symptom, so the panel may not have physically snapped. The curved hinge rails may lift above the flat plates, and one rail lines up with the damage, but iFixit's conclusion was that there is no clear answer.

The teardown also covered dust, a worry for any hinge. Fluorescent dust reached the USB-C port, speaker mesh and bezel, but few particles got to the internals. Some did reach the hinge and made it crunch, though it collected less than the Fold8 or Pixel 11 Pro Fold. 9to5Mac's account of the same teardown reads the dust result more favourably than MacRumors does, so the details are worth checking in iFixit's own write-up. Other findings were more positive: the battery adhesive gave what iFixit called the best battery removal experience of any foldable so far, and the logic board is unstacked, a first for an iPhone since the iPhone 8.

A separate durability test

YouTuber JerryRigEverything also tested the phone. MacRumors reported that dust entered the hinge through several points and overwhelmed the magnets that hold the phone shut. In a deliberate bend test the inner display showed a permanent green line before it stopped responding. In scratch testing the outer Ceramic Shield 2 screen scratched at level 7 on the Mohs scale while the inner screen scratched at level 2. The tester, who goes by Nelson in the coverage, said most folding phones he has tested over seven years survive, and "the iPhone Duo did not".

A bend test is deliberate abuse, so it says little about why customers are seeing failures during ordinary use. The symptoms also differ between reports: a white pixel band in owner accounts, crunching followed by bright lines in the teardown coverage, and a green line in the abuse test.

Price and India availability

The iPhone Duo starts at $1,999 in the US. In India it sells from Rs 2,99,900 for 256GB, with sales that began on October 23. None of the sources say where the affected owners live, and no report so far identifies a failure on an Indian unit. Apple has not said how it treats such cases in India. Buyers can see how Apple has handled the display's replaceable cover layer in our earlier report, which put that repair at $19 with AppleCare+ and $49 without.

What to watch next

The first thing to watch is whether Apple acknowledges the reports and offers guidance on folding and unfolding the phone, which 9to5Mac says it has not yet given. Other things to follow are whether the failures turn out to cluster in one production batch, whether carriers match Apple's replacement policy, and whether iFixit or others settle the question of the hinge rails. Until then, the evidence is a handful of owner reports and a teardown that stops short of a verdict.

Published October 26, 2026. Gadgets365 will update this article as more information becomes available.