The hinge for Apple’s new foldable phone was built with AI

苹果新款折叠屏手机的铰链由人工智能打造

Duo, Apple’s long-awaited foldable phone announced at the company’s Surprise and Shine event on Wednesday, contains a number of surprises, including a critical hinge that was designed and built with the help of AI and 3D printing. 苹果在周三的“Surprise and Shine”发布会上推出了备受期待的折叠屏手机 Duo。这款手机带来了诸多惊喜，其中包括一个在人工智能和 3D 打印技术辅助下设计并制造的关键铰链。

The 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 haven’t always lived up to the hype. 这款新手机标志着苹果首次进军折叠屏手机领域。尽管消费者对这一类设备表现出了极大的热情，但其外形设计往往未能达到人们的预期。

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 of other smartphones. 正如你所预料的那样，由于设计原因，折叠屏手机的磨损程度是传统设备的两倍，因此大多数折叠屏手机都会出现明显的性能衰减，且耐用性不如其他智能手机。

Apple 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. 苹果声称，其在 Duo 的设计中整合了创新的保护措施，以防止手机受到折叠屏设备常见的磨损影响。苹果硬件工程高级副总裁 Johny Srouji 表示，这其中就包括铰链的设计。

“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 Wednesday’s event. Srouji 在周三的发布会上说道：“在制造过程中，我们利用人工智能算法将每一个铰链与最匹配的外壳进行精准配对，以确保完美的对齐。同时，共聚焦激光会逐一扫描每个单元的拓扑结构，并 3D 打印多达 25 层定制光敏聚合物微层，从而消除残留的波纹。”

Srouji also shared that Apple gave the foldable phone “a custom nano-texture finish that significantly reduces glare and reflections,” as well as a multilayer lamination strategy designed to increase the device’s durability. Srouji 还透露，苹果为这款折叠屏手机采用了“定制的纳米纹理涂层，可显著减少眩光和反射”，并采用了旨在提高设备耐用性的多层层压策略。

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. 当然，这些保护措施是否足以让 Duo 在长期使用中保持最佳物理状态，还有待观察。