It brings me no great joy to inform you that Apple has announced just how much it will cost you to repair its iPhone Duo. I’ll spare you the suspense: it’s a good chunk of change.
According to a list of repair fees that went up Wednesday (thanks, MacRumors!), the notorious “other damage” fee (a category that is ever-mysterious but has, in the past, included water damage and bent enclosures) is $1,499. There are several whole iPhones you can buy for less than that—heck, you can buy a brand new iPhone 18 Pro for $300 less. The same sum could even buy you two iPhone 17e models. You could use one yourself and gift one to a friend or tech reporter in need. (Hello.)
Other prices listed here don’t make me quite as nauseous, but they’re still a tough pill to swallow. Battery and rear camera repairs are both $229. If you, so help you, happen to damage both the outer display and the back glass, that’s going to set you back an oddly specific $509. The one that does give me some hope for humanity is the $199 sticker on damage to the back glass. This probably betrays my age more than anything else, since I’m old enough to remember when cracking the back of an iPhone was a paycheck down the drain. (Curse you, 14 Pro.)
There is, of course, the question of why these prices are so high. I understand that there’s an extent to which repairing a foldable phone is probably its own beast. But let’s take a brief look at the competition. Damage to the iPhone Duo’s inner display (which can happen if, for example, someone knocks a foldable out of your hand on the subway—ask me how I know) will cost $999 to patch up for those not blessed with the kiss of life that is AppleCare+. A full screen module replacement costs $579 for owners of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and $639 for those rocking a Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra; inner-screen-only repairs are $419 and $479, respectively. Oh, while we’re at it, can we just address the battery situation? The iPhone 18 Pro’s battery costs just $129 to replace, a full $100 cheaper than the Duo’s. Yes, I know the Duo folds in half, but this is a 78% increase we’re talking about. Yes, yes, I know Samsung makes its own panels, and that likely explains part of the gap here, but the overall point is that the Duo is being priced as a luxury object rather than as anything in the realm of a typical iPhone, and these choices are spilling over into service costs, too.
Now, I know what you’re all thinking. “Just buy AppleCare+, you silly writer!” I know. I don’t have any kind of retort. This is me swallowing my pride, standing in front of you, saying you should probably buy AppleCare+. Back-of-the-envelope math suggests that two years of the subscription pay for themselves and then some if you break your Duo’s inner display. I’ve never owned a phone that hasn’t had some kind of major mishap in its first few months, but hey, we can’t all live cool, adventurous lives. That doesn’t mean Apple’s paid protection plan is suddenly a bargain—the whole shebang that includes theft and loss is $199.99 per year plus varying service fees—but these repair costs make it look like a more compelling purchase here than it is for arguably any other iPhone currently on the market.
This is all to say that announcements like this make me wonder if high-end consumer technology is headed the way of fancy jewelry—that is, something you insure the day you buy it, even if you have every intention of taking very good care of the thing, because doing so is widely considered to be baked into the cost of the product. Many (many) people won’t recoup their investment, especially when the same company sets the repair prices and sells the plan, but a luxury product is a luxury product, and Apple now makes a foldable phone that fits squarely in that category.
