For foldable phones, it’s typical for a crease to become more noticeable after years of use. And we want to find out exactly how much bending Apple’s new $1,999 iPhone Duo can take.
CNET has been speeding up those years using our Fold-a-Phone machine. After a week of nearly nonstop folding, our iPhone Duo test unit has surpassed 139,000 folds.
In this clip from our YouTube channel, you can take a closer look at the crease, which has remained largely unchanged since we began the test. That is to say, you can certainly see the crease as the phone opens and closes, but when the display is on, the crease is quite hard to see. When the display is turned off during a break in folding, the crease is substantially more noticeable, though that’s also the case when you take the Duo out of the box before turning it on.
That doesn’t mean the crease isn’t getting wear and tear, but Apple’s nano-texture matte display helps disguise it by reducing reflections. This matte layer is removable, and some people who have peeled it off are discovering that the Duo’s crease is far more visible without it — the same as on other book-style folding phones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8. One clip posted to X by Ice Universe shows this off.
The ability to remove that layer is intentional, and Apple offers a service to replace it: $19 with AppleCare and $49 without the program.
Our folding tests will continue until the iPhone Duo can no longer fold. You can watch how it’s holding up in our machine every weekday as we livestream on CNET’s YouTube channel.
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