Rumors about foldable iPads and MacBooks and foldable iPhones have been floating around for years. However, Apple has not released a commercial product yet. Apple keeps selling hundreds of millions of candybar iPhones instead.
Meanwhile, Samsung keeps mocking Apple for not making foldable phones. Samsung is also secretly dying to see Apple enter the space, not just for the potentially lucrative OLED panel contract but also for Apple to make this form factor go mainstream. Samsung may be the dominant player in the foldable niche internationally, but foldable phone sales are a drop in the bucket compared to iPhone sales.
It’s unclear when Apple will release the first foldable iPhone, and we might have a foldable iPad/MacBook in stores before that happens. But there’s a new development in the world of Apple rumors that sort of gives us a first look at what a foldable iPhone would look like. We might see that contraption next year in the form of a first-gen device for the home.
A report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman earlier this week said that Apple will make wall-mountable smart displays for the home next year that will support various apps, make video calls, and support Apple Intelligence features. My colleague José Adorno sees the device as a variation of the iPad, and he’s not wrong.
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But I see the smart home gadget as somewhat of a precursor of the foldable iPads and iPhones Apple might eventually make. Also, a Fold-type foldable iPhone is essentially a smaller iPad. In fact, I said years ago that the iPad mini 6 is practically an iPhone begging to be folded. I still think that.
The home tablet experience Gurman described involves a gadget with a 6-inch display that looks like a square iPad. What attracted my attention was Gurman comparison with iPhones:
Size is about two iPhones side by side, with a roughly 6-inch screen. Device has speakers, FaceTime camera and battery.
When I read that description, my immediate thought was “foldable iPhone.” Think about it: Any foldable smartphone of the Galaxy Z Fold variety looks like two traditional iPhones placed side-by-side.
I won’t mention any names, but a big tech corporation thought that was a great design idea for a dual-screen smartphone: essentially gluing two phone displays with hinges instead of making a foldable device.
Back to the 6-inch tablet that Apple is developing, it will feature speakers, cameras, and a battery, just like an iPad and an iPhone.
More importantly, the Apple software team will invent a user interface appropriate for this screen size. Gurman explains how the software will work in the tweet above:
Focus is on Siri, Communication and Home Control
Runs Safari, Music, Notes, and several other Apple apps but no App Store.
The device is touch, but will mostly be operated by voice through Apple Intelligence’s new App Intents feature.
New OS that is a blend of watchOS and iOS StandBy Mode. The UI is dynamic and shifts based on distance.
What I’m getting at is that Apple will be forced to envision a simpler iPhone/iPad experience for a home device that features a display similar to what a foldable iPhone would have to offer.
In doing so, Apple will practically have to deal with the same problems that Samsung, Google, and anyone making foldable phones have had to deal with. How does one make the most of the available screen real estate? How do you scale apps up and down? Do you run multiple apps at the same time?
Maybe Apple doesn’t need to make the unnamed 6-inch iPhone-like device a productivity workhorse as Samsung would with any Galaxy Z Fold. But any software Apple might be developing for a 6-inch display should work similarly on an 8-inch foldable iPhone in the future with the appropriate tweaks. That foldable iPhone will run a full version of iOS.
Finally, there’s the visual aspect of a 6-inch smart home tablet. Back to the iPad comparison, this will be a smaller, square iPad. But once I start using it, I’ll wonder how long it’ll take until Apple folds said screen for a foldable iPhone experience.
I asked ChatGPT’s o1 model to figure out how large the two side-by-side iPhones would have to be to get a 6-inch display out of the contraption. The chatbot told me that combining two 4.7-inch iPhones, like the iPhone SE or iPhone 8, would give me a device with a combined display diagonal of 6 inches.
That should give you an idea about roughly how big such a gadget would be. It’s unclear how large the bezels would be, but that’s something we’ll learn from future leaks.
The iPhone SE and iPhone 8 are the same size as the iPhone 6s, which I still own. I have to say, I wouldn’t mind a foldable iPhone that’s slightly larger than two iPhone 6s units sitting side by side.
The foldable iPhone would surely feature a larger display than 6 inches, as it’ll lack the large bezels of these iPhone 6 designs. I chatted with ChatGPT o1 about that, too. The chatbot calculated that a foldable iPhone made of two bezel-less iPhone SE units would feature a 7.60-inch display. That’s in line with what you get from the Galaxy Fold-type phones of the world.
