iPhone Duo teardown: iFixit's clues to cracked inner screens

Apple's first foldable has been through the iFixit treatment, and the results are mixed. The repair specialists praise how the iPhone Duo comes apart, but they also found hinge details that could explain the early inner screen failures some owners have reported since launch, as 9to5Mac reports.

What may be breaking the inner screen

The complaints follow a familiar pattern: owners describe a crunch while opening or closing the phone, then bright lines across the folding display. Many of the failures appear in roughly the same place, where the opening for the cable that links the two halves meets the central hinge support.

iFixit used CT scans, teardown footage and Apple's own patents to build a 3D model of the hinge, and came up with three leads:

• a central support bar that may not fully retract as the phone closes, pressing on the panel;
• curved guide rails that rise above nearby parts during folding and could touch the screen if they don't move as designed;
• several structural edges that converge under the damaged area and may concentrate stress on the thin display layers.

iFixit is clear that it has not proven the cause. Apple has not publicly explained the failures either, so treat these as informed theories rather than a diagnosis.

Dust, hinge and display tricks

The phone is rated IP68. After iFixit's fluorescent dust test the hinge made crunchy noises, but relatively little dust got inside compared with other foldables the team has opened. The hinge uses gears, springs and linked metal joints with a waterdrop fold, plus curved guides that control how the joints move.

Under a microscope, the matte nano-texture coating turns out to be a field of tiny rounded bumps that scatter reflections to hide the crease. Some subpixels are oval and rotated in different directions, which an Apple patent suggests may reduce diffraction around the fold.

Why the 5/10 score matters

Repair is better than on rival foldables. The inner screen bezel uses clips rather than just glue, and the outer display comes off easily, which matters because several repairs start there. The two batteries, 11.567 Wh and 7.506 Wh (19.073 Wh in total), sit in different halves and use electrically releasable adhesive; iFixit calls it the best battery removal it has seen in a foldable. The score is provisional until Apple sells replacement parts.

For context on the hardware, see our iPhone Duo battery comparison and the first iPhone Duo reviews. Planning to keep a phone for years? Our guide to checking phone battery health explains what to watch.