What happened
The iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable phone, officially went on sale Friday. According to The Verge, a small number of buyers say their inner screens broke almost immediately.
The outlet said posts on Reddit show the damage in similar places. The trouble appears along the hinge, and affected displays show one or more bright lines running across the right side of the screen. The Verge noted that the pattern looks consistent across the reported units, though it did not say how many phones are affected overall.
What owners are reporting
The Verge quoted a user in Australia who described the failure in detail. The person said they had owned the Duo for roughly six hours and had opened it fewer than 20 times. While showing the phone to a friend, they felt something beneath the screen near the inner hinge as they opened it. They then heard a loud crack, and the display broke along the hinge.
The user said they saw no marks or damage on the inner screen surface or the outside of the hinge. That suggests, in their account, that nothing had snagged or harmed the device beforehand. The Verge reported that the Apple Store gave this owner "a brand-new one on the spot."
Other users have posted their own evidence. One post includes a photo of a broken screen, and a comment on it links to a video of another affected phone. A separate Reddit thread has gathered more pictures of damaged Duos, according to The Verge.
What is still unknown
Apple did not immediately reply to The Verge's request for comment, so the company has not explained what might be causing the damage. The source material does not say whether the problem is a manufacturing defect, a design weakness, or something else. It also does not say whether Apple plans any wider response beyond the replacement the Australian owner described.
The reports are anecdotal and come from social media posts, which cannot show how common the problem is across all buyers. The Verge's account covers only a handful of examples, and the publication framed the situation as an early look at what could go wrong with a first-generation folding iPhone.
Why the hinge draws attention
Foldable phones have long faced questions about durability, and the hinge and the bending inner display are the parts most often scrutinized. Those components endure repeated mechanical stress that a conventional slab phone never faces. Other manufacturers' early foldables drew similar attention to screen and hinge reliability when they arrived.
Apple's entry makes the issue more visible because of the company's size and the attention its products receive. Any pattern in early failures is likely to be watched closely by buyers considering the phone, and by competitors in the foldable market.
The Verge also published a separate review describing the iPhone Duo as a messy, expensive, good time, according to the headline in its related coverage. That piece is not the basis for this report, but it shows the outlet has been following the device closely.
