Early Teardown of the iPhone Duo Reveals Dual Batteries and a Glossy Crease Beneath the Matte Film

Kingmi Mobile managed to pull an iPhone Duo completely apart on camera before the first customer units even leave the warehouse tomorrow. Their video, along with a separate clip that peels the protective layer clean off the inner screen, gives the clearest look yet at how Apple built its first foldable phone and why some repairs will take far longer than usual.

The matte cover film comes off easily, with little elbow grease required. Once it’s gone, the surface underneath morphs into a glossy finish that looks almost identical to the one on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, and the fold line along the middle is much more visible. Apple has already stated that the nano-texture finish is essentially a light-scattering treatment designed to make the crease less obvious when using the phone in regular situations.

If that layer is scratched, you can replace it at an Apple Store for a reasonable charge, giving you some piece of mind in the face of the normal foldable concerns. Inside the phone, the dual-battery design is as expected, with one cell in each half of the chassis. Getting one of them out, however, necessitates first removing the back panel and outer display, making a battery replacement a bit more involved than on a conventional iPhone.

Kingmi also mentions the thin folded ribbon wires that connect things like the selfie cameras, as they appear fragile even when the phone is closed, and you can easily nick or tear them while working near the mainboard. You can still swap out various other components as standalone modules. The two selfie cameras, the dual back camera arrangement, and even the mainboard itself are designed to be replaced without disassembling the entire phone. The hinge and large foldable display remain the key exceptions.

Both are difficult to access, which corresponds to repair costs of roughly $999 for the inner display and up to $1,499 for further damage that typically affects the hinge area. Those figures are far higher than what you’d normally expect to spend for an iPhone repair, which explains why the phone’s servicing prices drew a lot of attention before it even went on sale.