Apple to replace cracked iPhone Duo screens⁠.

Apple has acknowledged that some iPhone Duo handsets have developed problems with their screens, days after its first foldable phone went on sale¹. It said it was aware of "an issue impacting the inner display on a small number of iPhone Duo units" and told owners who see a fault to contact AppleCare for a replacement². The Duo starts at £1,999 in the UK, and the best equipped models cost up to £3,199¹.

Owners have posted photos of lines across the inner screen and cracks along its centre crease, and some report a crunching noise when they open it¹. One owner in Australia said the screen broke along the hinge with an audible crack within about six hours, and that the local Apple store replaced the phone at once². Some users have started calling it crackgate³.

The repair site iFixit suggests dust and dirt getting into the hinge may be to blame³. When it put a Duo in a bag of fluorescent powder and opened and closed it, the hinge started crunching once the powder reached the moving parts³. Its model of the hinge also found that a centre support bar that does not drop far enough could create a stress hotspot near where the breaks are reported³.

The extent of the problem remains unclear, because Apple did not say how many phones were affected, and the BBC notes that some images of faulty devices may have been made with AI¹. Ben Wood, chief analyst at the research firm CCS, said there was as yet no evidence of a more widespread issue². Francisco Jeronimo of IDC said problems like this were quite common when a new product came to market, and pointed to Samsung's early trouble with the Galaxy Fold in 2019².

Apple called demand for the Duo "nothing short of extraordinary", and the phone has sold out, with the next shipments not expected until January according to a Taiwanese newspaper². It is the biggest launch so far under the new chief executive, John Ternus, who took over from Tim Cook in September². Jeronimo said that with a further 28 markets launching on 30 October, Apple needs to clarify its warranty position quickly¹.

A first fold, and a fair fix

This is a first generation hinge doing what first generation hinges have done before, and Apple has gone straight to swapping phones rather than arguing about it. That is the response that counts. The awkward part is that nobody, Apple included, has said how many are affected, and some of the worst pictures doing the rounds may not be real, so the noise is running ahead of the evidence. The sources give no word from a British regulator or on UK warranty terms beyond Apple's own offer of a replacement.

If you are thinking of handing a two thousand pound phone to your directors, the cost of a fault like this is time, not money: a trip to a store or a courier in the first week, and a phone out of use while it happens. Buying a new kind of device in its first month always carries that risk. Waiting for the second batch, or for Apple to say how many units were hit, costs you nothing but a little patience.

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