iPhone Duo Hinge Starts to Loosen After 440,000 Folds

The iPhone Duo on CNET‘s folding robot is finally showing wear. A week ago, the same phone had passed 281,000 folds with no damage.

After 20 days of folding around the clock and more than 451,000 cycles, the hinge no longer opens the phone completely flat.

The phone still works, and there is no cracking or deeper crease. But lab director Matthew Murray calls it the first significant step toward failure.

What changed

Murray says he first noticed the hinge feeling looser during Thursday afternoon’s livestream. The Duo was no longer opening with the same firm sound, though it was still unfolding flat when he left the lab that evening.

Going back through the sensor data, photos and video, the team traced the first changes in opening force to around 390,000 folds on Tuesday afternoon. Things gradually got worse from there.

The rig uses a wire to pull the screen open, and for a while the Duo would coast the rest of the way flat on its own. Early Friday morning, at about 440,300 folds, it stopped getting there before the machine closed it again.

The inner display now stops about 5 to 10 degrees short of flat. It can still be pushed the rest of the way by hand, but without the snap it had earlier.

Not a failure yet

This doesn’t meet CNET‘s definition of failure, which covers loss of power, sensors not detecting the screen position in time, or the screen going black. The Duo also still holds its other positions without trouble.

Murray points out that most owners might not even notice the change at first. At 100 folds a day, the phone had been through the equivalent of nearly 12 and a half years of use before the hinge started loosening.

That is far beyond the 139,000-fold checkpoint where the crease barely changed, and well past the 32,640-fold overnight robot test from before launch.

Apple still hasn’t said how many folds the Duo is rated for. Samsung rates the Galaxy Z Fold 8 at 500,000, and guesses inside CNET have ranged from that number up to 1.5 million. The lab plans to keep folding until the phone gives out, and it is still livestreaming the test on YouTube on weekdays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. ET (10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PT).

What it means in Canada

A clean lab rig is a best-case scenario. Real-world durability tests have been harder on the Duo, from a handful of dirt that jammed the hinge to a hand-folding test that ended in the cold at 75,000 folds.

There are also the cracked inner screens Apple is investigating, which iFixit’s teardown linked to a stress point in the hinge area.

The Duo starts at $2,999 CAD in Canada, and Apple’s out-of-warranty repair prices run $1,499 CAD for the inner display and $2,249 CAD for “other damage.”

Apple’s Canadian AppleCare page lists AppleCare+ for iPhone Duo at $22.99 CAD a month or $229.99 CAD a year.

Would a hinge that starts loosening after more than 400,000 folds make you more comfortable buying a Duo, or are you waiting to see where CNET‘s test finally ends?