On October 23, u/Bitter_Offer7123 posted four damaged inner screens on r/iPhoneDuo. He wrote that he is not trying to blow it out of proportion. The same spot, he said, was already being discussed among Chinese users, which he guessed might follow from foldables being more common there. The four screens in his gallery are open to Chinese menus. He is not saying every Duo will do this. He does say the matching damage raises a question about a design flaw. From what he has seen, Apple has been offering replacements. He wants an investigation, and he hopes the count stays small. By the time this was filed, the gallery had 3,164 points and 1,011 comments.

The later photos are other owners, on their own posts.

u/scary_duck23 wrote that a pre-order from the day before cracked in under 24 hours. There was a little resistance, then a cracking noise, then a line through the inner display. The lock screen in the photo reads Saturday, October 24. 9to5Mac credited that post for the top of its story.

u/leftyhyzer16 titled the post as a crack during setup. He wrote that he had folded it about four times, the hinge got tight, and it made a loud pop when he pushed past it. The photo is the software-update screen, with a line down the crease and a thin bright line across it.

u/Midnight_Slump, in Australia, said he had the phone about six hours and had opened it fewer than 20 times. He was showing it to a friend, felt something under the screen at the internal hinge, kept opening it, and heard a crack. The screen broke along the hinge. He said there was no mark on the inner surface and none on the outside of the hinge. Apple's phone support offered an express replacement that required a hold for the full price, with no promise of when it would ship. He went to a store instead. He said they saw him straight away, apologized, and handed him a new phone that evening. It was Friday night, and he had not finished signing in.

u/Vishnu_RK in Chennai wrote that his phone cracked on day one, during setup, after at least 20 folds. He said Apple support in India would not take the claim because he bought from the reseller Aptronix, and that the reseller was arranging a replacement in a different color because Night Sky was out. He also wrote that the unit's manufacturing month reads September 2026. A wide bright band in his photo runs along the hinge. He called the problem widespread. That is his view. He did not publish a count.

Benjamin Mayo at 9to5Mac, early Sunday, counted about ten unique instances. Some fail during the first setup. He wrote that most people who bought at an Apple Store got a replacement, and that a carrier buyer can have a harder time when the carrier has no stock. One person was told they must have dropped the phone and would have to pay. Mayo asked Apple and had no reply when he published. He thinks the reported breaks are a small share of what Apple has shipped. Apple has not published a shipment figure. That line is his judgment.

The cause is still open. Mayo's working theory is a hinge piece in some batch, slightly out of line, poking up into the inner screen. No report here includes a teardown that shows that piece. Posts online say not to close the Duo by pressing the center of the inner display. Mayo says it is unclear whether that matters. Apple has not published a way to fold the phone.

Zack Nelson's JerryRigEverything test is a different event. Dexerto's account says dust got into the hinge and the phone would not close. A bend left a permanent green line. A second bend left two more, and the inner screen stopped responding. Nelson said the hinge moved enough to hurt the flexible screen, and he could not tell whether the dust or the hinge did it. He did not identify the cause of the phones that cracked during setup.

MacRumors and The Verge described the same pattern on October 23. Both said Apple had not commented. MacRumors added that the circumstances of most of the images are unknown, including several from demo units in China. Those demo photos are not in this strip. The newest replies under the gallery do not settle a cause. Guesses there include a bad batch, a drop, and a hoax. None of them brings a failure rate from Apple.

A Norwegian edition of this story is at https://diebrief.com/no/523.html.

The photos match each other. They do not match a cause.