Cracked iPhone Duo Screens Are Piling Up, and Apple Is Now Investigating

Complaints about iPhone Duo inner displays cracking are growing just days after launch, and Apple employees say the company now has a team investigating.

According to Bloomberg, the problem has been independently verified with more than half a dozen customers, who shared photos of the damage or their support conversations with Apple. The first reports surfaced on Reddit and other social media sites over launch weekend.

Most owners describe the same sequence. They hear a crunching sound while unfolding the phone, then a large crack forms along the centre crease. Some also see a white patch or other glitches on the right side of the inner screen, and every customer who spoke to Bloomberg said they felt a bump under the display near where the crack started.

One owner in San Diego said the hinge “felt stuck/harder/slower to open than usual” right before the lines appeared. Another said the outer screen still works, but “the inner screen is now unusable.”

Apple has not made a public statement. Bloomberg said the company’s spokespeople didn’t respond to several requests for comment, and it’s still unclear what share of units is affected or why.

Behind the scenes, though, Apple employees told Bloomberg that no official guidance has gone out to retail stores or customer service agents yet, but a team is looking into the issue. In some cases, Apple engineers are trying to get their hands on affected devices for analysis. One customer in New York said his phone went through what Apple calls an Early Field Failure Analysis before he received a replacement at the Fifth Avenue store.

Repair site iFixit believes a piece of the hinge is failing and cracking the screen, rather than a flaw in the display panel itself. That lines up with what it found in its iPhone Duo teardown, where CT scans showed the reported damage clustering near the centre hinge support.

Replacements haven’t always been quick. A customer in Richmond, Virginia, said his store confirmed a defect but had no inventory, so he’s still waiting. Another in Texas, with no Apple Store nearby, was asked to send his phone in and go without one for over a week. Apple is now shipping him a replacement by express mail instead.

It’s worth keeping this in perspective. Bloomberg didn’t run into the problem on its review unit or on a second Duo it bought, and most owners don’t appear to be affected. The Duo also held up well in a robot folding test that passed 32,640 folds, and it shrugged off several of TechRax’s real-life drops before finally breaking.

For Canadians, the stakes are high. The Duo starts at $2,999 in Canada, and Apple lists an inner display replacement at $1,499 without AppleCare+. Defects from normal use are typically covered by Apple’s one-year limited warranty, so anyone who hears a crunch or feels a bump under the screen should book a Genius Bar appointment rather than wait it out.

Apple has dealt with launch-day hardware headaches before, from iPhone 4 antenna issues in 2010 to bending iPhone 6 Plus units in 2014, and came out of both relatively unscathed. Whether the Duo follows the same path likely depends on how quickly Apple finds the cause.

Have you noticed any stiffness or strange sounds when opening your iPhone Duo?