Within hours of the launch of the iPhone Duo last Friday, people reported that the inner screen on some brand new foldable phones was already broken. The issue was similar across many photos shared on social media: some sort of issue or crack would appear in the middle of the screen above the hinge, with lines on the right side of the display. On Monday, Apple acknowledged a “problem” and said it would replace damaged units, without going into much detail about how many broken phones have been reported so far.
So what is actually going on?
Shahram Mokhtari, the lead teardown technician at iFixit, has actually torn down the iPhone Duo and has a pretty good idea of the potential cause, says The Verge that it’s due to a problem along the hinge, where a series of gears, springs, and joints work together to let the device close flat, while also trying to avoid creating a deeper crease by giving the screen room to bend more gently inward when closed.
In the annoying spot, it appears that the flexible inner screen is pressing against part of the hinge. The inner screen is already “extremely sensitive,” he says — if you took a pick or a sharp tool and poked at the edges of the screen, “you break that screen.” If you look at the pictures of damaged Duos on social media, there’s often a black spot where the damage is focused 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 transitions, as the center hinge support makes way for a cross-flex cable, creating some edges that could ultimately be the culprit. The damage that iFixit has seen is at a point where the center support bar doesn’t always go down far enough while the screen folds, possibly a stress “hot spot” between the flat bar and the curved screen in a closed iPhone Duo.
Apple says the issue affects a “small number” of Duo units, and Mokhtari says that “As for the numbers, we don’t know. Apple definitely has all the data here. And I suspect they know more than they’re telling us. But he notes that because foldable screens are so delicate, a “certain number” of them will fail, as will a number of the hinges because they’re also “extremely complicated and delicate.” And even if Apple doesn’t recall the Duos, “If three months from now, we’re still seeing the same kind of error, then it’s a more widespread problem, and that could lead to a recall,” Mokhtari says.
Mokhtari points out that since this is the first generation of the iPhone Duo, it is the first time that Apple’s engineers get data on the hinge, and he says that “I guarantee you” Apple will redesign what is owed here for its next generation foldable. He also notes that, generally speaking, “the phones seem to be in people’s hands and people are using them, and they’re not running into any problems at all.”