Thought Leadership
Barely on the market, and already showing signs of damage: iPhone Duo owners are reporting cracked displays running directly along the hinge, in some cases after just a few hours of use.
Photos of damaged devices are beginning to surface in online forums dedicated to the iPhone Duo. The damage looks remarkably similar across reports: the defect appears almost invariably at the fold, where the display bends. In most cases, it takes the form of a bright line of pixels extending across one half of the screen, according to MacRumors.
Defects With No Obvious Cause
One owner in Australia says his device did not even last a full day. After around six hours of use and fewer than 20 opening and closing cycles, he felt resistance beneath the display while unfolding the phone in front of a friend. Shortly afterward, he heard a distinct cracking sound, and the panel split along the fold. There were no visible signs of a trapped foreign object or external damage to either the display or the hinge.
An Apple Store promptly provided him with a replacement device. Such returns could prove useful to Apple: examining damaged units may help the company identify the weak point and adjust its manufacturing process if necessary.
Unclear Picture From Store Demo Units
Some of the photos come from China, where the iPhone Duo went on sale several hours earlier than in the United States. They show damaged display units in stores. In most cases, it is unclear how the damage occurred. The possibility that visitors handled the devices roughly cannot be ruled out.
Some reviewers who received an iPhone Duo before its official release deliberately opened and closed it repeatedly. They did not encounter any display issues. However, these results offer limited insight because the number of test devices was too small to draw meaningful conclusions.
Isolated Incidents or a Widespread Defect?
It is currently impossible to estimate how widespread the problem is. When a new device reaches a large number of customers at once, some failures are to be expected. Whether reports of damaged displays increase over the coming weeks remains to be seen.
Buyers do have some protection. If the hinge fails under normal use, Apple’s one-year warranty should apply. New customers can also return their device within 14 days.
(Editorial Team)
