{"slug": "the-hinge-for-apples-new-foldable-phone-was-built-with-ai", "title": "The hinge for Apple’s new foldable phone was built with AI", "summary": "Apple's chief hardware officer Johny Srouji said at the Surprise and Shine event on Wednesday that the hinge of its first foldable phone, the Duo, was designed and built using AI algorithms and 3D printing, with AI matching each hinge to its housing and a confocal laser scanning and 3D printing up to 25 micro layers of custom photopolymer to eliminate waviness. The company also added a custom nano-texture finish and multi-layer lamination to improve durability, though long-term performance remains unproven.", "body_md": "Apple’s long-awaited foldable phone, the Duo, contains a number of surprises, including a critical hinge that was designed and built with the help of AI and 3D printing.\n\nThe new phone represents Apple’s first entry into the foldable phone genre — a category of devices that has seen significant consumer enthusiasm, but [whose form factors](https://www.androidauthority.com/one-year-with-a-foldable-phone-3505243/) haven’t always lived up to that enthusiasm. As you might expect from a product that, by design, undergoes twice as much wear as a traditional device, most foldables suffer significant degradation and [don’t have the durability](https://www.bgr.com/2184010/how-long-foldable-android-phones-last-lifespan/) of other smartphones.\n\nApple claims that it has integrated innovative protections into the Duo’s design to keep the phone from falling prey to the typical wear and tear associated with foldables. That includes the hinge, according to Johny Srouji, the company’s chief hardware officer.\n\n“During manufacturing, we use AI algorithms to precisely match each individual hinge with its best-fit housing to ensure perfect alignment, 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,” Srouji said during Apple’s Surprise and Shine event on Wednesday.\n\nSrouji also shared that Apple gave the foldable phone “a custom nano-texture finish that significantly reduces glare and reflections” as well as a multi-layer lamination strategy designed to increase the device’s durability. Of course, it remains to be seen whether those protections will be enough to keep the Duo in peak physical condition in the long run.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-hinge-for-apples-new-foldable-phone-was-built-with-ai", "canonical_source": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/09/the-hinge-for-apples-new-foldable-phone-was-built-with-ai/", "published_at": "2026-09-09 19:21:48+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-09 20:16:43.526264+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-products", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["Apple", "Johny Srouji", "Duo"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-hinge-for-apples-new-foldable-phone-was-built-with-ai", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-hinge-for-apples-new-foldable-phone-was-built-with-ai.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-hinge-for-apples-new-foldable-phone-was-built-with-ai.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-hinge-for-apples-new-foldable-phone-was-built-with-ai.jsonld"}}