Amidst the hype for Apple’s new A20 Pro chipset and slick foldable software, the company’s durability has been quiet for a moment.
Its Ceramic Shield 2 display glass — first introduced on the iPhone 17 line and returning to the iPhone 18 Pro this year — is earning plaudits for delivering on the promise of 3x better scratch resistance 12 months after its release, while the iPhone Duo is set to arrive next month with a slew of impressive durability credentials (including a rating, 8, 8, resistance rating, IP6).
But while features like ingress protection and corrosion resistance aren’t the sexiest topics of discussion at Apple Park, they are some of the most important to ensure Apple products stand the test of time — and Tom Marieb, the new vice president of hardware engineering (a role formerly held by CEO John Ternus), knows that better than most.
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I had the chance to quiz Marieb on the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo in a group interview at Apple’s London HQ, and he lifted the lid on how Ceramic Shield 2 – which we described as “the first iPhone glass we fully trust” earlier this year – managed to deliver such a noticeable leap in quality versus the original Ceramic Shield, and why it’s “especially Duo”.
“Personally, when I see someone put a screen protector on their iPhone, it makes my skin crawl because we work so hard to make beautiful front screens,” Marieb told me. “So we really wanted to develop new coatings that resist [scratches]but also ensure that these coatings were also wear resistant. We worry about scratches, which is obviously very dependent to have [material that can withstand] very sharp things go into the screen. But we also worry about wear and tear over time; how people use the screen, whether they disappear this surface. And it turns out that those things are somewhat contraindicated in many materials.
“So we had to try to optimize both [qualities] at the same time […] And I think we finally hit a nice balance between the two [in Ceramic Shield 2]. We could have made it more scratch-resistant, but it would have been a little less wear-resistant. It is the long life that we seek against the two burdens over time.
We’re trying to say, ‘How do customers actually use this? What exactly do they represent in the real world?’ And we do tests that mimic these things.
Tom Marieb, VP of Hardware Engineering, Apple
Marieb added that, in testing Ceramic Shield 2, Apple has demonstrated half a decade’s worth of usage in a relatively minimal testing period: “We’re very much trying to meet the customer where they live, and so we’re not designing tests that measure old military specifications or old standards; we’re trying to say, ‘How are customers actually using this? What are they in the real world? And we’re doing tests that mimic these things.’
“And like you said, people wait a year or two to see the benefits [Ceramic Shield 2] means we correctly predicted how people would use it. We speed up the time to try to compress these things into the engineering cycle, so we can feed again as we try one thing after another, and represent five years of life – or even more – within a few weeks of testing.
It all depends on the hinge
The display is the most important part of any iPhone, but the foldable iPhone Duo saw Apple protect a new, equally crucial part: the hinge.
Like all foldables, the Duo can be opened or closed, and Apple has also developed dedicated ‘sit’ or ‘stand’ modes that see the Duo bent at different angles for extended periods. The former displays visual content on the top half of the screen and view controls on the bottom (photo a Game Boy Advance), while the latter turns the duo into a bed box, photo gallery or weather screen via StandBy.
No matter which orientation you choose, the duo stays firmly in place – but the job of doing so was not easy.
“I’m glad you hit on this because this is something I’m particularly proud of, and it took us a long time [to crack]”, Marieb explained. “What we worry about with this device is that people see how thin it is and they think it’s fragile. People also seem to be worried about the Air, but it’s honestly one of the most reliable phones we’ve ever made. And so we thought, ‘How do we design a hinge that feels very solid when you close it, but also really solid when you open it?’
“We really worked very hard on the torque profile, and that means changing a lot of the mechanical properties of the hinge so that it feels solid, like a high-end car door, when you close it. That was design intent, so people feel like, ‘Oh, it’s okay.’ This is well done, and it is not safe for me to use.
And then, as you said, we have a lot of use cases where the duo is [in a half-folded state]. And so we also had to think: ‘Can people interact with it [device] and didn’t it feel floppy?’ So getting the torque profiles right at both ends, as well as in the middle – not feeling like you’re opening something up, and not feeling like it’s floppy – we spent a lot of time optimizing that. So thank you for noticing because a lot of blood, sweat and tears went into it.
The double benefits of nano texture
On top (literally) of the hinge of the iPhone Duo, Apple equipped its first foldable phone with a 7.6-inch nano-texture display. This new material is not a million miles away from the anti-reflective nano-textured glass that can be added to the best MacBooks, but of course the Duo version of the glass has to bend in half.
Another journalist in my group interview with Marieb noted that folding folds typically appear minimal out of the box, but become more prominent only months after being used extensively. In response, the Apple executive was bullish about the longevity of the Duo’s hinge and explained that the nano-textured display should help retain its obscurity:
“Hold us accountable for this, please […] Choosing a matte finish – apart from being beautiful – is part of that equation. When looking at glossy displays, their specularity makes it very easy to pick up topology differences. That’s part of the reason we chose the matte finish – it’s not only beautiful in terms of preventing glare, but it’s also more forgiving of [topology] changes over time.”
Apple, then, is super confident in the durability credentials of its first foldable phone – and we’re looking forward to putting the iPhone Duo through its paces before its official launch on October 23.
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