HTX Studio Reveals What Three Thousand Folds Did to the iPhone Duo Nano Texture Display

HTX Studio scanned a brand new iPhone Duo inner screen and found a peak-to-valley crease of just 48 microns, roughly half the thickness of ordinary paper, with a slope across the center under 0.1 degrees. That measurement placed the Duo ahead of two other fresh foldables labeled Model A and Model B, and far ahead of a five-year-old phone that showed a clear W-shaped groove at 350 microns. In person the fold stayed nearly invisible from most angles, whether the screen was on or off, which matches the reason Apple applied the nano-texture finish in the first place.

After the team folded the same phones three thousand times and then put them in a drawer for a while, the Duos crease had grown to 167 microns and the slope had risen to 1.24 degrees; essentially, the phone had caught up with model A but fallen behind model B in terms of depth, though its slope sat somewhere in the middle. Every crease was becoming deeper, exactly as the reviewer had seen on the demo units following the launch event. Three thousand folds is roughly a month’s worth of use if you open and close your phone about a hundred times every day, thus the scan most likely detected it when the flexible layers inside foldable screens begin to relax and settle.

Apple’s nano-texture finish works by transforming sharp light reflections into much softer, more diffuse ones, so light no longer casts a bright highlight over the uneven bands as it would on a glossy screen. The gloss also provides the glass a feeling that is very akin to paper, which feels great under the Apple Pencil. Dark portions may seem grayish when illuminated by a bright light due to scattering, however this is still softer than most paper-style screen films.

HTX discovered that Apple’s version was significantly more difficult to mark than a competing foldables inner panel; a pencil pressed at around a newton of force left only faint marks at 6H hardness, and those were only visible under bright light, as you’d never notice them with your finger; however, at 8H, the lines became more obvious and tangible. A rival phone had no marks at 4H, but it did have some really bad scratches at 5H, which was significantly worse than the Duos 8H result.

In another test, HTX utilized an Apple Pencil and applied a little greater force – about 15 newtons, or the weight of a 1.5 kg object – to the Duo and barely left a scratch, but another foldable created a horrible permanent white spot under the same pressure. The dual layer of ultra-thin glass on the top and bottom of the screen appears to be doing some of the heavy lifting there, and the nano-texture cover itself can be replaced out for $49, or $19 with AppleCare+, making it a very simple method to get a new surface if the old one begins to show wear. HTX noticed that the screen flexed slightly over the hinge, most likely due to the substantial cushioning foam underneath, but not enough to pose any problems in typical use. The hinge can still hold any angle from 15 to 165 degrees, and it matches or outperforms the other phones they tested.

Leaving the Duo open to charge will not prevent the crease from deepening right away, and this is very typical of how most foldables come out of the factory. Apple hasn’t released fold-cycle ratings yet, so the HTX statistics provide a good indication of how that fancy nano-textured layer performs when put to the test. The crease begins as a minor detail that is difficult to perceive, but then it follows the same pattern as every other foldable and gradually deepens. Plus, the matte finish effectively conceals it, even when it becomes quite deep.