Apple’s iPhone Duo hinge just survived more than 32,000 folds, and it came out feeling basically the same as day one.
That’s according to Joanna Stern, who put Apple’s first foldable through a week of testing for her New Things review. Since Apple hasn’t said how many folds the Duo is rated for, only that it resists wear and meets “the high standards of iPhone,” Stern decided to find out for herself while she slept.
She teamed up with hardware designer and prototyper Aron Cohen, who built a small folding machine using a servo motor and 3D-printed parts. They named it Hingey. Every night for four nights, Stern put the Duo in a case, docked it in Hingey and let it open the phone to about 130 degrees and close it again, 17 times a minute, for eight hours straight. That’s 8,160 folds a night, and after four nights, the iPhone Duo had been folded 32,640 times.
Stern said there was “no noticeable deterioration.” Back at Cohen’s workshop, they measured how much force it took to open the hinge before and after the test using a calibrated push-pull gauge, and the result surprised them. “The hinge was actually a little stiffer after all that folding,” Stern wrote, adding that in everyday use “it felt pretty much the same as on Day 1.”
For context, Samsung has said its Galaxy Z Fold 6 was rated for 200,000 folds, so 32,640 is a fraction of a lab-grade test. Still, it works out to roughly 45 folds a day for two years, which is a solid sign for anyone worried about a $2,999 phone wearing out early. That’s the starting price for the 256GB model in Canada, and the 2TB version runs $4,799.
Stern called the Duo “a beautiful, surprisingly durable piece of hardware” overall, while also saying it’s “buggy, occasionally maddening and full of first-generation compromises.” That lines up with what other outlets found in the first iPhone Duo reviews, where the nearly hidden crease got plenty of praise and the 254-gram weight did not.
The iPhone Duo goes on sale in Canada this Friday, October 23. Launch stock sold out on the first morning of pre-orders, so if you’re still hunting for one, here’s how to track iPhone Duo stock in Canada and get restock alerts.
Does a test like this make you feel better about buying a foldable iPhone?
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