Too Hot to Hold: China's Best-Known Tech Reviewer Says Skip Apple's First Foldable
MediaStorm, China's most-watched tech review channel, found the iPhone Duo burns hot under load and flickered in a bend test — and told its audience to buy a conventional phone instead. The verdict is a blow to Apple's late entry into the world's biggest foldable market.
Apple's first foldable arrived in China last week carrying the weight of a late entry: as the site covered at launch, Huawei and Xiaomi have sold foldable rivals in volume for years, and the iPhone Duo's 15,999-yuan starting price made it one of the most expensive phones on the domestic market. The verdict from China's most influential consumer-tech reviewer is now in, and it is not the launch Apple had hoped for.
Tim, founder of the review channel MediaStorm, published his full assessment of the iPhone Duo this week — a release the channel marked by handing an iPhone Duo to every one of its employees, then adding ten more for a Weibo lottery. The review itself was far cooler than the giveaway.
The sharpest finding concerned heat. MediaStorm's tests found the Duo manageable in everyday use, but when recording video or running heavy workloads, heat built up severely beneath the camera housing. Tim called it one of the hottest phones he has ever tested — "it got so hot I could barely hold it" (就已经烫到快要握不住了), a line that became a trending hashtag in its own right.
Reliability came second. At the Apple launch event, Tim bent the unfolded phone backwards in the hands-on area to test its stiffness. Nothing seemed wrong at the time; a replay of his own footage later showed the outer display flickering. He was careful to note he had not used unusual force — his conclusion was simply that a first-generation folding screen still trails a conventional "bar" phone on durability. Add an AppleCare plan he described as especially expensive for the Duo, and his advice to most viewers was blunt: buy a good bar phone instead.
The review resonated partly because of who delivered it — and partly because of how rarely Chinese reviewers say anything critical at all. Another tech blogger, posting under the name 科技新一, wrote that he felt genuine admiration for Tim: at a moment when influencers "don't flatter hard enough," he had listed a flagship product's flaws in detail. Chinese review channels depend on brands for early units and advertising budgets, and early verdicts on Apple hardware in China tend toward the congratulatory; a top channel telling its audience to skip the flagship is unusual enough to be news in itself.
The verdict landed across platforms. Baidu's trending board carried the bend-test story and the overheating quote simultaneously, while the tech news outlet 36kr, published its own first review of the iPhone 18 Pro and Duo the same week — concluding that the biggest genuine improvement was charging speed, and saying little for the foldable's novelty.
For Apple, the timing is awkward. The company raised iPhone prices in China just as the foldable finally shipped, betting that its first entry into the category could command a premium in the world's largest foldable market. Chinese rivals have spent years iterating on hinge design and thermal management; the Duo's first week of independent Chinese reviews suggests the gap has not closed.
The phone goes on sale in China later this month. MediaStorm's ten lottery winners will receive theirs after launch day — along with a reviewer's recommendation that most of them would have been better off without one.
