The iPhone Duo hit stores last week, giving consumers willing to spend $2,000 a chance to try Apple’s first foldable phone. For a handful of early owners, the excitement quickly turned to disappointment. Although Apple has highlighted the device’s “precision‑engineered” hinge, some units appear to suffer a hardware defect that ruins the impressive internal display within minutes or hours of use.
Online, users are sharing photos of damaged iPhone Duos that look remarkably similar. The OLED panel shows several bright lines that start just below the screen’s midpoint and run down to the bottom and right edges. In some cases, additional lines of dead pixels follow the crease from the top of the display to where the bright bands begin.
Anyone familiar with a faulty OLED panel will recognize this pattern. When the display’s layers are compromised, pixels no longer receive the correct voltage. Instead, they receive the full driving voltage and stay permanently lit at maximum brightness, while other pixels receive no voltage and appear completely black. The only remedy is to replace the OLED panel, a repair that reportedly costs about half the price of the iPhone Duo itself.