The success of Apple’s new folding iPhone Duo hinged on its, well, hinge.
But sadly for the multi trillion dollar company, some of the larger, inner screens on its $2,000-plus devices are already cracking, and early postmortems point to their faulty hinge design.
In light of that fiasco, now feels like a good time to bring up how the hinge was designed: with the help of AI.
Here’s what Johny Srouji, the company’s chief hardware officer, said during an event last month.
Per TechCrunch’s coverage: “During manufacturing, we use AI algorithms to precisely match each individual hinge with its best-fit housing to ensure perfect alignment,” Srouji explained, “and a confocal laser progressively scans the topology of every single unit and 3D prints up to 25 micro layers of a custom photopolymer to eliminate residual waviness.”
To be clear, “AI algorithms” could mean a lot of things. A machine learning design tool is not the same thing as Claude or ChatGPT, and these algorithms have had a place in industrial applications for years. Apple itself has long boasted about using machine learning to help design and improve its software and devices. For instance, machine learning, or “AI” if you will, powers its iPad’s palm rejection technology that lets you rest your hand on the screen while using a stylus.
Still, Srouji made the conscious decision to conflate machine learning algorithms — if that’s what’s going on here — with what people take “AI” to mean today: a catchall term for chatbots, autonomous agents, and other large language model powered systems that appear intelligent. Maybe he thought it’d sound more impressive to investors and the general public.
Whether the hinge was vibe-designed or not, it’s clearly causing some notable issues, with a small but sizable minority of customers complaining that their screens are cracking along it just hours after unboxing.
Shahram Mokhtari, the lead teardown technician at iFixit explained to The Verge that part of the “extremely sensitive” flexible inner screen is pushing up against the hinge. It appears that a center support bar that makes space for the hinge to fold without crease isn’t retracting far enough and creating stress on the screen.
Apple, at least, acknowledged there was an “issue” Monday and said it’s replacing the damaged units.
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