Apple's first foldable survived 10,000 folds in a YouTuber's stress test and 32,640 in a reviewer's machine. It took fewer than 20 opens to crack in one customer's hands.

According to MacRumors, photos shared on Reddit and its forums on launch day, Friday, October 23, show iPhone Duo inner displays failing in almost exactly the same place: right along the hinge, most often with a line of bright pixels across one side of the screen. The most detailed account comes from an owner in Australia who said the phone cracked about six hours after pickup. "I was showing it to a friend, and as I opened it, I felt something around the internal hinge, underneath the screen," the owner wrote. "As I continued opening it, I heard an audible crack, and the screen broke right along the hinge. There were no marks or damage on the inner screen's surface or the external hinge to suggest anything had been caught or damaged." An Apple Store replaced the device on the spot.

Apple has said nothing publicly, but that swap matters: the store treated this case as a warranty matter, not user damage.

Keep the scale in view. The Verge also picked up the complaints, and at least three Reddit threads appeared on launch day, plus photos of broken demo units in China — but the backstory on most of those images is unknown, and the claims remain unverified as to cause. Nobody knows how many units are affected, and a handful of failures in a launch-day batch is not, by itself, a defect.

The contrast with the pitch is what stings. Apple sold the Duo on a hinge engineered from more than 100 components, a device it said was "built to last with an innovative hardware design and a precision hinge." The hinge, in lab tests, held. The question now is whether the flexible inner display it protects holds up just as well under real-world pressure and manufacturing variance. The crease was already deepening in durability tests; a crack is a different category of problem.

What to watch: whether the reports stay a launch-day handful or grow into a pattern with a shared failure point, and whether Apple comments or quietly adjusts manufacturing. For now, if a bright line appears along the fold, don't keep folding it — take it to Apple while the two-week window is open.

— via macrumors