Is Apple almost ready for foldable iPhones?

Is your gadget fat and foldy? You might have a better choice next year as Apple treads its long-traveled path of not doing things first, but doing them better. That’s right, a folding iPhone is now scheduled for 2026. 

Folding devices are becoming increasingly popular. Even the Appleholic has spent time fondling a friend’s Samsung Fold, and I’m impressed by the size of the display and the dual use the device delivers in its folded and unfolded states.

While it is the thinnest folding device you can get right now, it’s pretty thick — even the 6.3-in. (folded) Galaxy Z Fold 6 comes in at just under a half inch thick when folded, and weighs 8 ounces. In contrast the 6.3-in. iPhone 16 Pro is 0.3 inches thin and weighs 7 ounces, while the 6.9-in. Pro Max is just as thin and weighs 8 ounces. The benefit is that you get a 7.6-in. screen when you unfold the Fold. That’s a lot of extra display, so long as the crease doesn’t get too obvious after use. Can Apple do it better?

Perhaps. Apple has been exploring folding phones for at least 10 years, filing its first relevant patents in or before 2014.

Not first, but best

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman tells us Apple plans to introduce an iPhone Fold in 2026. That report follows a similar claim from the Wall Street Journal, which also posited introduction of a 19-in. folding iPad. The Information last year claimed prototyping of the device had already begun. And analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reckons Apple is building a device with a humongous near 8-in. display and an eSIM. Other speculation claims the display will be only slightly larger than Samsung’s, while noted display analyst Ross Young suggests it will be larger.

The weight of all this accumulated speculation comes on top of the anticipated introduction of a much thinner iPhone Air later this year. Widely seen as a testing ground for new tech, that product is expected to be a significantly thinner iPhone, with the slim frame enabled by two key Apple technologies which also make foldables possible.

Apple Silicon: The company’s chips are high-performing, battery-sipping, low heat powerhouses capable of being squeezed into smaller devices such as iPhone 16e, or being maxxed out for larger systems, such as the M4 series chips in desktop Macs. 

Apple’s modem: Apple has designed its own 5G modem. In line with Apple’s broader silicon development, this should be optimized for use on Apple’s systems, meaning you can expect better battery life when networking. We recently learned Apple is also bringing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips in-house, which means that by next year we could see one integrated component handle all these tasks.

Together, these two improvements mean Apple should be able to create thinner iPhones at no sacrifice in performance or energy consumption. Together, they suggest the company will be able to deliver an ultra-thin iPhone Air this year, followed by a similarly thin iPhone Fold next year. 

If it folds, will it flip?

Apple Silicon is once again the wind beneath Apple’s wings in this design.

The processors Apple makes are suitable for a wide array of deployments and most certainly enable the company’s product designers to imagine whole new product families. How much processor do you need to drive an autonomous home help robot, after all? To what extent can autonomous Apple home devices exploit technologies Apple developed when it was driving toward developing a car? Kuo has previously claimed Apple is working on domestic robots, but it really doesn’t matter whether that is true — what is true is that ownership of a world leading processor architecture means Apple can look at putting its software in all kinds of things.

Returning to the iPhone, it means we can anticipate a folding device with the kind of performance we expect from any iPhone and a battery life similar to the 23 hours video playback we’re told to expect from the latest Fold. (The iPhone 16 Pro promises 27 hours video.)

Gurman also tells us Apple has been sweating to create a fold mechanism that isn’t visible when unfolded and does not deteriorate in normal use. If Apple has achieved that, then it can rightfully claim to have bought something better to market. That is not to say that Samsung, with its own competitive moat built around ownership of the means of production, isn’t already on the same track.

Finally, of course, once you figure out how to make a high quality iPhone that folds, you’ve probably also figured out how to make one that flips. On which, I imagine, we’ll hear more later down the line.

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