The first batch of Apple’s first folding phone may already have some screen issues.
The iPhone Duo is a strong first foldable from the company, but multiple Reddit reports say the phone's inner screen cracks when customers open the device. Some apparently happen very soon, like during device setup. (Others might be from influencers trying to break the thing, like YouTuber JerryRigEverything.) People are already calling this “crackgate.”
It's unclear how widespread the problem is or whether it only affects a small number of units. (WIRED's review unit hasn't had any issues after more than two weeks of daily use.) Apple did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.
This is familiar territory for foldable phones. A hinge means strain on the screen and the components inside. It's also a place for dust to seep in and break the phone, as with Samsung’s original Galaxy Fold in 2019, forcing the company to pause sales and fix the issue. Some devices handle it better than others, and as the product category has grown, those issues have largely diminished. But fewer problems don't mean easier fixes.
Courtesy of iFixit
On Sunday, repair company iFixit released its teardown of the iPhone Duo, including a video detailing the specific parts inside and what to look out for if people need to fix their $1,999 phone one day—maybe sooner than they think.
The phone got a provisional repairability rating of 5/10, though that score may be updated to factor in how Apple supplies replacement parts. A 5/10 doesn’t sound great, but it’s actually the highest repair rating iFixit has given any foldable phone.
“The state of foldables today is one of the hardest engineering challenges across a number of disciplines out there in the market today,” iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens said at an event the day before Apple announced its folding phone in September. “It is the pinnacle of material engineering and materials science. It is ludicrously difficult to accomplish this.”
The iPhone Duo earned good marks on some repair fronts. The battery and back panels are straightforward to remove and replace. The outer trim comes off in one piece. The 5.4-inch front screen comes off easily enough. Disassembling the pieces and putting everything back together is doable too, since almost everything is secured with brackets and screws you can remove and reuse.
The tricky part, according to iFixit, is the inner display. A thin matte nano-texture finish sits on top of the OLED screen, and if you’re not careful, you could easily peel the layer off. (Apple strictly tells users not to remove this finish on a support page.)
Removing the full inner screen requires melting the adhesive with a heat gun and some real elbow grease to pull the screen away. Users have reported breaking this part of the screen, and it seems it is the most fragile component and the hardest to replace. (Apple has an inner screen repair service, but it costs $999.) The Duo also collects dust in typical places like the USB-C port, outer edges, and speaker, but it accumulates along the inner hinge, causing it to sound "crunchy" like other folding devices when dust gets inside.
Apple long resisted letting users repair their own devices. When it finally started offering real repair options in 2021, its programs got off to a rough start and were less helpful than they could have been. Slowly but surely, thanks to various legislation in the US and the European Union, Apple has been introducing efforts to let people fix their own things. The iPhone Duo had a widely accessible repair manual on launch day, which hasn't always been the case for how the company shares that kind of information.
The iPhone Duo may not be perfectly repairable—folding phones might never get there. But when a device starts having problems like cracked screens, it’ll be nice to know how to fix the thing.