Apple’s $2,000 folding phone, the iPhone Duo, came out just two days ago and people are already seeing big fat creases down the middle of the folding screen, and some devices are cracked in the same specific spot too.
People waited in line overnight at Apple stores to get this thing, and now we’re seeing photos of heinous cracked and creased-up Duos all over social media. In some cases, the phone screens have cracked along the crease, causing a crashout people are now calling “crackgate.”
“Had my iPhone Duo for about six hours and had probably opened it fewer than 20 times,” one person wrote on Reddit’s r/iPhoneDuo. “I was showing it to a friend, and as I opened it, I felt something around the internal hinge, underneath the screen. As I continued opening it, I heard an audible crack, and the screen broke right along the hinge.”
“How long before I join crack gang?” someone else wrote, posting a photo of their iPhone Duo with a wide, uneven gully down the center of the screen.
Other users report not just a fold, but a bright white line of stuck pixels extending from the center to the outer edge of the screen. iFixit wrote a teardown analysis of the Duo, and speculated that the components around the hinge could be causing this particular white line issue: “One possibility is that a central support bar isn’t retracting properly as the phone closes, potentially putting excessive pressure on the display. Another involves the curved rails that guide the hinge’s movement, which rise above the surrounding components during folding and could, in theory, interfere with the screen if they fail to move as intended,” they wrote.
Plenty of people seem happy with their creased-up new phone that only cost them two stacks. “Folks, it’s a foldable device. The crease is there. Just enjoy the fact that you have one,” someone commented on another happy customer’s crease pic.
9to5 Mac reported that most buyers seeing the white line screen glitch have been able to get a device replacement from Apple. Whether Apple will replace a phone that’s showing the center line crease everyone else is complaining about is yet to be seen. Apple did not immediately respond to my request for comment about the crease.
Apple released the Duo seven years after Samsung’s Galaxy Fold hit the market. That line of phones also gets a crease down the middle after using it for long enough that users say gets more noticeable with time. But the wait and hype around the Duo has meant gadget YouTubers and journalists have put this thing through extreme paces. TheCaseTester tested it with 1,000 folds and saw the crease by the end; Tim Pan folded his 11,500 times and saw a similar result. CNET’s test with a folding machine they custom-built to test the Duo just passed 55,000 folds. Journalist Joanna Stern found that after 32,000 folds, it felt “pretty much the same.”
