The first broken iPhone Duos are here

Jay Peters is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. The iPhone Duo is officially going on sale today, but a few units already have broken screens.

Based on posts about the affected units on Reddit, the issue appears to be happening at a similar spot on all of them: some kind of problem shows up on the inner screen along the hinge and a strange bright line (or lines) across the right side of the display. Here’s how one user in Australia described what happened to their phone: Had my iPhone Duo for about six hours and had probably opened it fewer than 20 times.

I was showing it to a friend, and as I opened it, I felt something around the internal hinge, underneath the screen. 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.

The user said that the Apple Store replaced their phone with “a brand-new one on the spot.” A post showing an image of another broken screen also included a video in a comment demonstrating yet another. And a separate Reddit thread collected other pictures of affected Duos. Apple didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

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