Within hours of the iPhone Duo’s launch last Friday, people reported that the internal screen of some new foldable phones was already broken. The problem was similar in many photos shared on social media: some kind of problem or crack appeared in the middle of the screen, above the hinge, with lines on the right side of the screen. On Monday, Apple acknowledged an “issue” and said it was replacing damaged units, without going into much detail about how many broken phones have been reported so far.
So what’s really going on?
Shahram Mokhtari, iFixit’s lead teardown technician, disassembled the iPhone Duo and has a pretty good idea about the potential cause, telling us The edge which is due to an issue along the hinge, where a series of gears, springs and joints work together to allow the device to close flat, while also trying to avoid creating a deeper crease by giving the screen room to bend more smoothly inwards while closed.
At the trouble spot, it appears that the flexible inner screen is pushing against a part of the hinge. That internal screen is already “extremely sensitive,” he says: If you take a pickaxe or a sharp tool and touch the edges of the screen, “you’re going to break that screen.” If you look at pictures of damaged Duos on social media, there’s often a black spot where the damage is concentrated on the screen, and that’s where the metal hits the screen, Mokhtari says.
You can see a visual representation of what Mokhtari is talking about in iFixit’s written and video Duo teardowns, which reveal where the hinge passes, as the center hinge bracket leaves room for a crossed flex cable, creating several edges that could ultimately be the culprit. The damage iFixit has been seeing occurs at a point where the center support bar may not always lower enough as the screen folds, possibly creating a “hot spot” of tension between the flat bar and the folded screen inside a closed iPhone Duo.
Apple says the issue affects a “small number” of Duo units, and Mokhtari says that “in terms of numbers, we don’t know. Apple definitely has all the data here. And I suspect they know more than they’re telling us, too.” But he notes that because folding screens are so delicate, “a certain number” of them will fail, as will several hinges because they are also “extremely complicated and delicate.” And while Apple isn’t recalling the Duos, “if three months from now we’re still seeing the same type of failure, then it’s a more widespread problem and that could lead to a recall,” Mokhtari says.
Mokhtari notes that since this is the first generation of the iPhone Duo, it’s the first time Apple engineers have gotten data on the hinge, and says he “guarantee” that Apple will redesign what’s wrong here for its next-generation foldable. He also notes that, generally speaking, “phones seem to be in people’s hands and people are using them, and they don’t have any problems.”
