Uh oh, the iPhone Duo complaints have begun

There was a lot of pressure on Apple to get things right with the iPhone Duo. It's been seven years since the first Samsung Galaxy Fold came out in 2019, and three years since Google released the first Pixel Fold. The refrain is that Apple does things late, but it does them better, learning from rivals' mistakes to put out something that feels more functional, more premium and 'just works'.

The iPhone Duo selling out until January suggested that people were buying into that idea with Apple's first foldable. Now the early reviews and feedback are starting to raise questions.

One of the most concerning issues coming from real-world feedback involves breaks concentrated around the hinge of the phone, including vertical cracks down the centre, dead pixels or lines across one side of the screen. And because of the scarcity of stock, some people have been told they'll have to wait until January for a replacement.

While clearly not ideal, the extent of the issue is unclear. There's no evidence yet of a widespread manufacturing or design defect.

A lot of iPhone Duo testing posted on social media has focused precisely on the hinge and crease given that it's a potential source of weakness (and that the invisibility of the crease has been touted as one of the features making the Duo superior to other foldables.

In the video by Tim Pan above, the crease does become visibly deeper after 500 manual folds and palpably deeper after 10,000, easily within the range of a few months of real use, but Tim generally finds the hinge to hold up well.

But another test, by HTX Studio (below), finds that the crease became deeper than that of two other foldables after just 3,000 folds and also notes that the screen around the crease is softer.

Some have been subjecting to the poor Duo to harsher treatment. Trung Peng decides to pass on the device after finding the crease to be a magnet for dust and dirty. He also finds that the screen gets marked if you hold a naked flame to it. So, yeah, maybe don't do that.

Speaking of heat, other early tests have raised concerns about the phone running warm without being intentionally singed. Joanna Stern was concerned enough to end a FaceTime call during her testing because it felt too hot.

Apple responded that this points to the cooling system working correctly. The Duo's vapor chamber is slimmer than the one in the iPhone 18 Pro, and there's a flexible graphite heat pipe around the hinge to compensate. This helps transfer heat between the two halves of the device, increasing the surface area to dissipate heat but potentially making the whole device warmer to the touch.

Another common gripe with the Duo involves the optimisation of some apps (or lack of). Some apps designed for iOS 26 or 27 present a smaller layout surrounded by black bars. Some behave the same as iPhone-only apps on an iPad: presenting a tiny version of the app in the middle of the display, which is blurry when resized.

But apps that have already been redesigned for the iPhone Duo appear to work very well. It's not ideal for the Duo to launch before a lot of apps are ready for it, but developers will catch up.

Others have cited buggy transition animations and apps that get the camera orientation wrong. Sometimes Apple's own software seems to get confused show the wrong orientation. Again, this is something that can probably be fixed.

For Stefan Van Der Merwe, the lack of Face ID is a deal breaker. I don't think this will be such a decisive factor for everyone, but I can see how it can be disappointing for a phone designed with multitasking in mind. That said, as a foldable, the Duo really needs two hands.

We haven't completed our own review of the Duo yet, and I've not yet seen anything that should massively change people's decision on whether to buy the Duo or not. It was already clear that it's not one of the best camera phones, and it's not presented as such.

You might want to wait a few months for some of the software problems to be ironed out for a smoother initial experience of the Duo – but then you might have no choice with preorders backed up until the end the year. And by that point, you might feel you have enough patience to wait another nine months for the Duo 2.

Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.