Apple's first foldable goes on sale today, and Apple has never published a fold-cycle rating for the iPhone Duo's titanium hinge — so on launch eve, the internet ran its own durability certification. The verdict: the hinge is a tank, but the crease visibly ages with use.
According to gagadget, YouTuber Tim Pan folded his Duo 500 times by hand, then put it on a machine for 10,000 folds at room temperature — plus 1,000 more at -20°C. The hinge came through without complaint. "After 10,000 continuous folds at room temperature, plus 1,000 more at -4 Fahrenheit, we can finally confirm to you that the hinge is still very smooth," Pan said. "It still assists when opening just like it did on day one." The crease, however, deepened — visibly, starting after just the first 500 folds, roughly a month or two of normal use. (Caveat: Pan published no crease measurements, so that's one reviewer's impression, not lab data.) Pan also found hair and sand could enter the hinge at certain angles. For all that, he called the inner screen "an engineering achievement" and praised the corner selfie camera that avoids rivals' cutouts.
A second test lands the same way on the hinge. Journalist Joanna Stern built a machine she calls Hingey and ran it for 32,640 folds — roughly a year of everyday use. "In everyday use, I really couldn't feel a difference. So, after 32,000 folds, it felt pretty much the same as day one, which is pretty darn impressive," she said. If anything, the hinge measured slightly stiffer afterward on a push-pull gauge — not looser. Stern didn't weigh in on the crease.
No one has months of real-world pocket data yet, and Apple gives launch-day buyers no official number to hold it to — while Samsung rates the Galaxy Z Fold 8 at 500,000 folds. That's a deliberate choice: a fold rating is a warranty-shaped promise. But it makes the crease the real launch-day gamble. The hinge is mechanical and has held; the crease is cosmetic and it deepens. At $1,999 to $3,199, you're betting that deepening is a cosmetic footnote, not a display compromise.
What to watch: whether Apple ever publishes a fold rating, whether crease language enters the warranty terms, and how the crease looks six months from now. Long-term verdicts arrive in 2027.
— via gagadget