A custom machine in CNET’s lab in Louisville, Kentucky has folded an Apple iPhone Duo just over 260,000 times, and the hinge and crease were holding up extremely well when 9to5Mac reported the count on Nov. 5. CNET calls the rig Fold-a-Phone and runs it around the clock. Apple has published no fold rating for its first foldable iPhone, so the running total is the closest public yardstick.
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The test is scheduled to continue daily until at least Nov. 20, and CNET streams it on YouTube from 1 to 5 p.m. Eastern on weekdays.
CNET’s Fold-a-Phone and the count so far
Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac wrote that the hinge and crease seem to be holding up extremely well. The machine had been running for over a week by the time of his report, folding the phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the count stood at just over 260,000 when the previous livestream wrapped up. Viewers can watch on the CNET YouTube channel, where the weekday stream shows the phone opening and closing on the rig.
The count has moved quickly. iThinkDifferent reported that the same lab’s iPhone Duo passed 75,000 folds at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Oct. 27 with no hinge failure, so roughly 185,000 more folds piled up in the days between that milestone and the 260,000 figure. The site’s author, Imran Hussain, also cited a separate lab measurement that put the crease at 48 microns on a new unit and 167 microns after 3,000 folds.
Earlier public attempts were smaller. According to iThinkDifferent, one tester ran a four-night test, and a YouTuber folded a unit 10,000 times and added cold-weather runs below freezing, reporting that the hinge kept working smoothly while the crease deepened as folds accumulated. None of those testers is named in that account, and each used different equipment, which is why CNET’s much longer continuous run is drawing attention.
Earlier tests: 32,000 folds and a deeper crease
Joanna Stern, a reviewer who writes for New Things, ran a smaller test with her own machine, opening and closing a review iPhone Duo more than 32,000 times over four nights. MacTrast reported that she could not feel any difference in the hinge in daily use, although a calibrated push-pull gauge showed it had become slightly stiffer. She used a case, so the machine opened the phone flat but did not fully close it every cycle. Using Samsung’s own usage estimates, her 32,000 folds equal roughly a year of use, and Samsung says its newest folding displays survived a 500,000-fold test.
iDevice’s account of the same test adds detail on the weak point. The 3D-printed titanium hinge stayed smooth throughout, but the plastic inner screen fared worse: the crease grew deeper and was easier to see and feel when swiping. The matte nanotexture cover hides most of it, and the article relays a secondhand video from Ice Universe suggesting the glossy screen beneath shows a much more obvious crease. It also reports that Apple has confirmed the inner cover is replaceable, at $19 with AppleCare+ or $40 without.
What Apple has said about the hinge
MacRumors’ report on the September launch gives the device’s baseline: a $1,999 starting price for 256 GB, a 7.6-inch inner display and a 5.4-inch outer display. Apple says the hinge is built from more than 100 small precision parts, and that the display layers slide against each other when folding, like pages in a book, to prevent distortion over time. The company added a nano texture finish and a micro lens texture it calls a perceptually flat matte surface to reduce the visibility of the crease.
A fold count on one unit answers a narrow question. The 260,000 figure is just over half of Samsung’s 500,000-fold claim, but the two tests use different machines, speeds and rules, so the numbers cannot be compared directly. No failure point has been reported yet, which differs from a rating, and the lab test says nothing about pocket lint, heat or drops.
The different measurements in these tests track different things. Fold count tests survival of the mechanism, the push-pull gauge in Stern’s work tests hinge stiffness, and the 48-micron and 167-micron readings track the depth of the crease, which grew by more than a factor of three within the first 3,000 folds. A hinge can hold up while the screen beneath it slowly changes shape, which is why the CNET observers watch the crease as well as the mechanism.
The livestream also understates the run. Weekday streaming covers four hours a day, 20 hours a week, while the machine itself runs all 168 hours. MacRumors adds that the inner display is 7.6 inches, about 80 percent larger than the screen on the iPhone 18 Pro, and the outer display is 5.4 inches, with about 90 percent of that phone’s screen area, so the panel under test is a large one.
What remains open is whether the hinge and the crease both survive the run to Nov. 20 and beyond, and whether CNET’s measurements show the same deepening seen at 3,000 folds once the screen has taken hundreds of thousands of cycles.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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