Early buyers of the new $2,000 foldable iPhone Duo have run into a serious hardware failure: the inner OLED display develops bright lines of dead pixels and stops working within the first few hours of use, infohub.kz reports.
Sales of Apple's first foldable smartphone began last week. Images of broken devices with identical defects are multiplying online: the inner OLED screen develops bright vertical lines after maximum voltage is applied to damaged matrix traces, and lines of dead pixels appear along the fold line. For some users, the screen failed after just a few open-and-close cycles — before they had even finished setting up the phone.
Specialists at iFixit disassembled the device and performed a CT scan of the hinge. They found that the failure originates below the power ribbon cable, where the hinge mechanism narrows. The support plate in the narrow section can get stuck and fail to drop fully into place, creating critical mechanical pressure on the teardrop curve of the display. Tech blogger CuriousHagi confirmed the problem in this area, suggesting that a thin connecting link sticks or breaks. When this defect occurs, the screen is inevitably damaged within hours or days.
Replacing the proprietary screen costs about half the price of the device. Affected users are turning to Apple Store locations to exchange their gadgets, but replacement units in stock are limited. Apple itself has not yet issued official comment on the situation. Similar reliability problems with the hinge mechanism recall the 2019 launch of Samsung's first foldable device, the Galaxy Fold, whose release the manufacturer had to delay to rework the hinge.