In what has become a sacred ritual of the tech press, iFixit has torn open the latest iPhone and arranged its innards on a table like a tiny silicon autopsy. This time the patient was the iPhone Duo, and the verdict is in: a 5/10 repairability score. That may sound like a C-minus, but it's actually the best grade iFixit has ever handed a foldable - a low bar, admittedly, but progress is progress.

The teardown uncovered some genuinely interesting engineering. The internal screen's matte nano-texture cover doesn't just make the display easier to read in bright sunlight; it also helps hide the crease by scattering reflections. Under a microscope, iFixit found oval-shaped subpixels arranged at various angles, which the site believes are designed to reduce artifacts and further disguise that inevitable line down the middle.

Good news for the clumsy: the nano-texture outer layer is relatively easy to replace without swapping out the OLED underneath. Bad news for the clumsy: if you actually need to repair the display itself, good luck. As with other foldables, it's an expensive nightmare. Dust did find its way into the USB-C port, speaker grills, and the hinge - making things a bit crunchy. But noticeably less of the glow dust infiltrated the phone than in the Z Fold8 or Pixel 11 Pro Fold, which is the sort of victory that comes with a small, dusty trophy.

As for those reports of damaged screens and cracking hinges, iFixit has theories. The hinge on the iPhone Duo is incredibly complex, and the site suspects part of it sometimes isn't descending properly. There's also an accordion cable passing over that exact spot, near the edge of the battery. It's possible this is concentrating pressure and leading to the "audible crack" reported by some users - and, presumably, the broken screens. Apple did not immediately return a request for comment, perhaps because it was busy not descending something properly.