All the news about the iPhone Duo

Apple’s $2,000 folding phone is a surprisingly good stand-in for a $20 notebook.

Believe me; nothing gets me going quite like a new notebook. This one will be different, I think. This time, I really will take it everywhere. Inspiration can strike at any moment, and you have to be ready, says David Sedaris in that one MasterClass I watched on a flight. With this one special new notebook, I will see the world differently. I’ll steal moments for myself to write, rather than pulling out my phone to scroll at every opportunity like a trained monkey. And a few weeks, a month, or maybe a year later, I’ll concede that it didn’t change everything and add it to my notebook graveyard. At least they all look nice on the corner of my desk?

Within hours of the iPhone Duo launch last Friday, people reported that the inner screen on some brand new foldable phones was already broken. The issue was similar across many photos shared on social media: some kind of issue or crack would appear in the middle of the screen above the hinge, with lines appearing on the right side of the display. On Monday, Apple acknowledged an “issue” and said it’s replacing damaged units, without going into much detail about how many broken phones have been reported so far.

So what’s actually going on?

Apple has just released iOS 27.2, bringing Apple Pencil support to the iPhone Duo. The software update also includes an “Edge Light” feature for the iPhone Duo that’s intended to illuminate your face during video calls.

Apple previously said the iPhone Duo would add support for the Apple Pencil “later this year.” The company’s first foldable comes with revamped iOS 27 controls designed to work across the device’s 7.6-inch inner display and 5.4-inch outer screen. Many major apps, like Netflix, Prime Video, and Microsoft Outlook, already support the Duo’s extra screen real estate, but some still need some work.

Following reports of iPhone Duos with cracked and broken inside screens, often showing a bright line running from the center to the right side, Apple says in a statement to Bloomberg and 9to5Mac that it’s aware of “an issue impacting the inner display” on a “small number of iPhone Duo units.” If your iPhone Duo is affected, Apple says to contact AppleCare for a replacement.

Here is the full statement, which Apple’s Alex Kirschner shared with The Verge:

As is tradition, iFixit has torn open the latest iPhone and laid its parts bare on a table. It found some interesting details about how Apple might be hiding the crease on the Duo’s folding screen and gave it a 5/10 repairability score. That might not seem particularly high, but it’s the best score the site has given to a foldable yet.

The internal screen’s matte nano-texture cover doesn’t just make it more readable in bright sunlight; it also helps mask the crease by scattering reflections. When looking at the display under a microscope, iFixit also found oval-shaped subpixels arranged at various angles, which the site believes are designed to reduce artifacts and further mask the crease down the middle of the display.

Social media and the iPhone Duo subreddit are filled with reports of Apple’s foldable failing quickly and in spectacular fashion. Some users report having the phone for only a few hours before the hinge seems to catch on something, then audibly crack and break the screen. Tellingly, the cracks all seem to happen in the same place.

YouTuber CuriousHagi was able to reproduce the cracked screen during some durability testing of the iPhone Duo. Then he pulled it apart to try and find the culprit. What he found is that the Duo’s hinge is quite complex, consisting of a gear-like central hinge and two different types of linking hinges.

The iPhone Duo officially goes on sale today, but a few units already have broken screens. According to posts on Reddit about the affected units, 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:

The Duo is an entirely new kind of iPhone, so it comes with a bit of a learning curve. That’s a wild thing to imagine, since the iPhone has had very few fundamental changes since its inception. But the Duo is built different. If you won the preorder lottery and managed to get your hands on one today, you’ll see what that means. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll lose track of the volume buttons as you turn the thing around.

We’ve learned a few tricks over the past week of flipping and folding the Duo as much as we could. Here are our favorite tips and hacks for newly minted Duo owners.

When we published our review of the iPhone Duo, I got a lot of hopeful questions from my fellow Mini fans who took note of the cover screen’s Mini-ish 5.4-inch size. “Is this… a small phone that turns into a tablet?” they asked. And I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but no. The Duo is not the small phone we’ve been looking for.

I wish it was. I like a small phone. I own an iPhone 13 Mini that I refuse to surrender, even though it barely lasts a full day.

The Delta gaming emulator has been upgraded with a plethora of new goodies and support updates, which include optimizing it for Apple’s iPhone Duo. Delta 2.0 also introduces Sega Genesis games, animated controller skins, custom Pokémon DLC experiences, and a new UI that was built around supporting Liquid Glass.

Adding support for the iPhone Duo is an obvious standout here. If you looked at Apple’s flagship foldable and wondered how well it could emulate Nintendo DS games, this update was made with you in mind. Delta app creator Riley Testut tells The Verge that Delta 2.0 optimizes controller skins for “every pose in both portrait and landscape” and that you can still use split-view multitasking features alongside running other apps. Folding the Duo also puts your emulated DS games into sleep mode, just like closing a real DS would.

Apple is rolling out a new badge in the App Store to indicate whether an app is optimized for its new foldable. The new “Made for iPhone Duo” badge will appear across apps and games that work with the device’s extra screen real estate.

Though Apple doesn’t include an image of what this badge might look like, it highlighted some of the ways apps are taking advantage of the Duo’s inner and outer screens. Netflix, for example, will display shows and movies that take up the whole inner display, while allowing you to watch its feed of short-form clips on the outside. Amazon’s Prime Video will let you watch shows and movies with the Duo partially folded, with the content on top and details about the cast on the bottom.

Apple says it will have “limited” iPhone Duo models for sale in stores, according to a report from Reuters. The iPhone Duo launches on Friday, October 23rd, but online preorders quickly sold out, with some delivery estimates extending into next year.

“On Friday morning, our teams look forward ​to welcoming customers at Apple Stores to experience iPhone Duo ​and the incredible iPhone line-up for themselves,” Apple said in a statement to Reuters. “Apple Stores will ‌have ⁠limited iPhone Duo available for walk-in customers, and we’re working hard to get this revolutionary new product into customers’ hands as quickly as possible.”