Sam Kohl reported that the iPhone Duo initially worked after an AppleTrack beach test involving sand and ocean water, then its inner display cracked with dead pixels the following day while he was opening it. The failure happened off camera. Kohl suggested sand may have reached the display, a hypothesis about the cause.
NeoTeo previously covered the phone’s design and software in its earlier iPhone Duo review. The durability tests below examine different kinds of stress, from repeated folding to deliberate damage.
A cracked display appeared the day after beach exposure
In AppleTrack’s test, both sand and ocean water were involved. Kohl said the Duo worked at first; the inner display cracked and developed dead pixels the next day as he opened the phone. The crack itself was not filmed as it happened.
Fold-cycle tests tracked crease visibility and hinge stiffness
La Razón reported that Tim Pan’s test reached 11,500 folds: 500 by hand, 10,000 machine cycles, then 1,000 more at −20°C. The crease became easier to see after the first 500 folds and more pronounced after the machine cycles, while the tested display remained functional.
Sam Kohl separately said the crease became more prominent after 1,000 manual folds in AppleTrack’s test. The account of Pan’s test focused on the screen crease; Joanna Stern’s separate test examined the hinge. La Razón reported that Stern’s test ran for 32,640 folds over four nights at 17 folds per minute. A dynamometer indicated slightly greater opening stiffness afterward, though Stern said she barely noticed a difference in everyday use.
Those results describe different endpoints: crease visibility in Pan’s test and hinge stiffness in Stern’s. The cycle totals are not a shared durability threshold, and La Razón cautioned that accelerated cycles cannot be translated directly into years of everyday use.
Zack Nelson’s destructive test showed other damage modes
In a separate JerryRigEverything test, Zack Nelson examined scratch resistance and dust around the hinge, then exposed the inner display to a lighter flame, peeled away its protective top layer and bent the phone severely. The screen showed permanent white marks after the flame exposure; removing the layer damaged the display, and the frame snapped during the bend test.
These were destructive demonstrations under the test’s conditions, not measurements of how often the iPhone Duo fails in everyday use.
