Other A Foldable iPhone will Flop

[Pbwallstreet]

I'll give you an example. I get to the airport early for an international flight. I have three or four hours to kill. I pull out my iPhone, open it up into tablet size and enjoy myself immensely watching movies or reading news. A few hours later, I'm at 40,000 feet. I pull out my sturdy iPhone from my pocket, open it up and are able to enjoy a full tablet sized screen for my personal entertainment. Sounds good to me.

Ok. Now my question is, will you be happy with a plastic screen and a squared off aspect ratio? If you’re travelling, why not have a dedicated iPad in your bag? And iPads will work with solid keyboards and multi-touch trackpads and runs iPadOS, etc. so a person can choose to work on a plane if they want.

 

[Pbwallstreet]

you are not reading and understanding or maybe just don’t care because of why you argue what people are telling you. because when given the answer you ignore it and say the same thing over and over.

i don’t have to explain why i would want a smartphone that converts into a tablet.

the phone doesn’t convert into a tablet. the phone doesn’t convert into a tablet. the phone doesn’t convert into a tablet.

a foldable becomes a bigger phone. why do i want this phone. because i can go from one screen size to another on my phone. not my tablet but my phone.

Why. The point here is that people reach for the right tool for the job. People use smartphones because it has specific use cases. People use a tablet or a desktop because it has specific use cases.

So when tablet use cases present themselves a dedicated tablet makes sense. If it’s a foldable phone, then both the smartphone and the tablet are compromised.

For instance, travelling and being in airports or on a plane… you have bags. Can easily carry an iPad. If you want to just use your phone, will need to prop it up perhaps with a stand watching movies in full tablet screen if you don’t want to hold it. Then you’ll need a keyboard if you want to be productive in certain respects but that would be separate and not integrated into a case like the iPad.

 

[ofarlig]

Why. The point here is that people reach for the right tool for the job. People use smartphones because it has specific use cases. People use a tablet or a desktop because it has specific use cases.

So when tablet use cases present themselves a dedicated tablet makes sense. If it’s a foldable phone, then both the smartphone and the tablet are compromised.

For instance, travelling and being in airports or on a plane… you have bags. Can easily carry an iPad. If you want to just use your phone, will need to prop it up perhaps with a stand watching movies in full tablet screen if you don’t want to hold it. Then you’ll need a keyboard if you want to be productive in certain respects but that would be separate and not integrated into a case like the iPad.

People reach for the most convenient tool for the job and that includes portability, there’s no job where a laptop is the right tool if you disregard convenience and portability since a laptop is compromised compared to a powerful desktop with a larger screen. But most people prefer the laptop because it is much more convenient to bring with you.

The same goes for foldables, yes the iPhone foldable will fold out to be same aspect ratio as the Mini 5 and about the same size as well so you could use an iPad Mini instead. But that requires you to have it with you which requires keeping it in a bag, there are loads of people that want to cover as much of their daily use with what can fit in their pockets (I am one of them).

As someone that uses an iPhone, iPad Mini, iPad Pro with keyboard and a laptop daily there are many use cases where I’d want the iPad Mini but it just isn’t with me and I am forced to use the small screen of my iPhone. I’ve gotten stuck in plenty of situations where using my small phone screen just wasn’t cutting it but I have nothing else with me so I am forced to do it.

 

[Ghost31]

I don’t think it’ll flop. I think it’ll actually do very well for apple. I just think it’ll remain fairly niche because of its price, cut down features and the fact that a lot of people just won’t want/need it. Personally, i switched down in size this year from a 15 pro max to a 17 pro and I couldn’t be happier. Wanted something smaller in my hand so the idea of an expensive foldable is not something im excited about

 

[uuee6543]

Ok. Now my question is, will you be happy with a plastic screen and a squared off aspect ratio? If you’re travelling, why not have a dedicated iPad in your bag? And iPads will work with solid keyboards and multi-touch trackpads and runs iPadOS, etc. so a person can choose to work on a plane if they want.

A folable smartphone isn't only for watching videos. And as long as Apple implements split screen multitasking - which with 12GB of RAM should be easy look at all the iPadfs with only 8GB of RAM - on the new fodable iPhone, there will be countless reasons to get that over a regular iPhone.

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

Why. The point here is that people reach for the right tool for the job. People use smartphones because it has specific use cases. People use a tablet or a desktop because it has specific use cases.

So when tablet use cases present themselves a dedicated tablet makes sense. If it’s a foldable phone, then both the smartphone and the tablet are compromised.

For instance, travelling and being in airports or on a plane… you have bags. Can easily carry an iPad. If you want to just use your phone, will need to prop it up perhaps with a stand watching movies in full tablet screen if you don’t want to hold it. Then you’ll need a keyboard if you want to be productive in certain respects but that would be separate and not integrated into a case like the iPad.

How is a Foldable a compromised tablet?

 

[FilthyPoor]

iFold. A solid buy! Wish it was this year.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

A folable smartphone isn't only for watching videos. And as long as Apple implements split screen multitasking - which with 12GB of RAM should be easy look at all the iPadfs with only 8GB of RAM - on the new fodable iPhone, there will be countless reasons to get that over a regular iPhone.

Countless reasons for a niche segment of people to get it, sure. I think it will be popular enough as a product, but as others have said, it will always be niche due to cost and appeal. The poll here suggests its fairly even in terms of yes or no to buying a foldable, and we are more on the enthusiast scale of the market, so I doubt it will be a mainstream product in the longrun. It will be a specialist premium option, whereas the standard, Pro/Pro Max will continue to be the more widely used devices I predict.

 

[Dave245]

I think a foldable will be interesting for Apple, expensive and very niche. I'm looking forward to seeing what they will offer, hopefully next year. I don't think it will sell as well as the slab iPhone's, Apple know this and over time the price will come down. After all it's Apple and of course people will buy it. So no I don't think the iPhone Fold will flop.

 

[Contact_Feanor]

Plastic screen, awkward aspect ratio, bulkier phone mode, small tablet screen size, complex hinge... — that’s not versatility, it’s compromise stacked on compromise.

first off, you continue to just enumerate compromises and ignore the point I obviously made that the number of compromises don't matter if it's better at a set of things. Second of all, you are now listing compromises that you know absolutely nothing about. What is the aspect ratio of the upcoming iPhone fold? how bulky is it? what is its screen size? what kind of hinge does it use? exactly. You're just blabbing fictions to support your point now.

 

[kamikazeeMC]

Why? This phone will be at the peak of non necessity luxury purchase. Because they can.

Being a non essential buy, if the device is convenient enough to accomplish the specific users tasks of phone and tablet, that's all that matters.

For me, even just flipping open to have photos and files open side by side to manage and sort would be nice. Why do I need to buy a whole dedicated tablet for that.

 

[ChrisMac47]

Forget a foldable ... the next big thing is a SMALL phone, say 5 inch screen, weighing less than 100g (3.5oz), three cameras and two day battery life. All that is technically possible and a small svelte device would set like hotcakes. The world is fed up of large slab phones, they are now a commodity not a luxury, and need to melt into our way of life.

 

[shootertwist14]

good options for customers are always welcome. as a tech enthusiast i cant wait to get my hands on it. It will be marketed as another option for high-end users maybe the way Samsung presents its s25 ultra and fold 7. for those willing to pay premium it will be a great buy. Apple will sell tons of it for sure, new hardware is always exciting.
iPadOS 26 is already scaleable even on the ipad mini 7 and it works great, this is for sure the way to go for the fold.
The iPhone Air is just barely thicker than half of the fold 7 (considered one of the thinnest foldables right ow), attached is a photo i took with the iPhone Air on top of the fold 7, you can already see where apple is headed as far as design goes with the fold. I like the Air's curves on the edges compared to the fold 7's so hopefully Apple continues the same design for the fold. Exciting times for Apple fans

 

[surferfb]

You’re not reading and understanding what I have posted many times. Why does someone want a smartphone that converts into a tablet? Explain it.

Here’s an example from my work.

I need to go to lots of conferences, happy hours, and networking events for my job. They’re almost always stand-up receptions, often in the evening, where you’re standing the entire time. Bringing a bag is annoying, there’s almost never a bag check, which means if I need to bring a bag, I need to either to hold the bag the entire time, or set it down somewhere in the hotel conference room and hope no one takes it.

I also have to review a lot of proposals my company writes. These are often time sensitive and things get finished in the evenings for submittal first thing the following morning. I’ve reviewed and commented on a proposal in the back seat of an uber or the corner of a conference room more times than I count. It sucks on a phone, but I’m not going to bring my laptop or iPad to an evening reception or happy hour if it means either taking care of a briefcase the entire event or taking my eyes off a device full of proprietary company data into a room literally filled with competitors.

Foldable will be great for this use case. On any use case where more real estate would be nice but bringing a second device is unwanted.

 

[ab2c4]

I can't ever see myself getting a Fold for four reasons:

1. Price. There is no way any phone is worth $2000 to me, not even $1500.
2. So far foldables have a much shorter life expectancy.
3. I never liked using tablets and a Fold will be nothing more than a folding Ipad mini.
4. Too heavy. If the Galaxy Fold 7 is 215 grams (7.58 ounces) I am going to assume the Iphone Fold will be similar. If I hate how heavy my 16 pro is and plan to switch to an Air due to weight there is no reason I would want this phone.

Will it flop? I have no clue but I know my wife, son and I have zero interest in a Folding phone.

 

[fabianrain]

I will buy one because I am very curious if a folding iPhone works for me even better than the Z Fold 7 already does.
Out of the folding phone world I've only used the Z Fold 6, Pixel 9 Fold and Z Fold 7 so far.
I am not certain if Apple will be ready with something that meets their standards/expectations by next year. They would not release a Z Fold 7.
A few things that bug me about existing folding phones (and I am sure Apple is working hard on these to sort them out):
- Don't make it too heavy. I know some people are saying that no one has asked for thinner and lighter phones but when you have used a Pixel 9 Fold (257 g) and a Z Fold 7 (215 g) you will know what I mean. A 215 g 8" tablet is something that is a joy to use. At 215 g it's also simply an 8" phone as you can comfortably use it one-handed if you are just scrolling/reading.
- Don't have a glued on, raised bezel around the inner screen. It is so annoying that you can't just wipe the inner screen clean with a cloth (like with a regular flat screen phone/tablet), some dust will always stick to the bezels. It's like with the MacBook screen bezels (just that you don't have to clean a MacBook screen that often because it's not a touchscreen).
- Don't have a screen protector on the inner screen. I would be ridiculous if my phone screen would delaminate at some point (and then again at a later point) and I then would have to take it to Apple to fix it each time (this is exactly what other folding phone makers are doing). The screen protector at least looks fine on the Pixel 9 Fold because there's no gap between the screen protector and the bezel (where dust can collect) and it also covers the whole screen (the Z Fold 6/7 screen protector doesn't, it is smaller that the actual screen and you see that "rainbow effect" around the screen when white content is on-screen, it's looks like a bad iPhone tempered glass protector that both doesn't have a black border and is too small).
- Don't make the crease too deep so you can notice it is there. I used the Pixel 9 Fold inner screen mainly in portrait orientation (liked that square-ish aspect ratio better) and you can really feel that this is not a continuous screen when scrolling / sliding over it. I also don't like the 'waterfall text' when text flows over / in and out of the deep crease on the Pixel 9 Fold screen.
- Don't make (metal) components of the hinge stick out too much at the top center and bottom center of the device when unfolded. It is uncomfortable and I don't like touching the screen at these locations because these hinge parts get in the way. That's too bad because the Pixel Fold / Z Fold heavily use the bottom center for their taskbar and the iPhone Fold might have something similar to an iPad OS dock there.
.. and I don't think a folding iPhone will flop, people are already buying Z Folds / Pixel Folds at insane prices and I'm pretty sure Apple will be trying harder (or has the resources to try harder) than anyone else to make the folding iPhone a great product.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Ok. Now my question is, will you be happy with a plastic screen and a squared off aspect ratio? If you’re travelling, why not have a dedicated iPad in your bag? And iPads will work with solid keyboards and multi-touch trackpads and runs iPadOS, etc. so a person can choose to work on a plane if they want.

The folding iPhone does not have a square aspect ratio, the resolutions are literally already out there dude.
“the inner folding display will have a 4:3 aspect ratio and use a 2,713 x 1,920 resolution, while the outer display will use a 2,088 x 1,422 resolution.”
4:3 at 7.8 inches means that unfolded the screen will be *almost identical* to the iPad Mini first through fifth generation that Apple sold from 2012 through 2021, not exactly the compromised disaster you keep making it out to be.
Also just going off of your previous comments it’s pretty clear you don’t really understand this, but…
Saying “it doesn’t run iPadOS” is just an insanely silly statement given that outside of the marketing names and some features being enabled/disabled by device, iOS and iPadOS are identical. Same version numbers, same build numbers, same applications, same developer environment, same everything. Apple giving the folding iPhone the ability to run iPad apps natively is, literally a switch flick away.
On day one, it’s likely the folding iPhone will run all iPad apps with no need for developers to even do anything.
Also, just so you know, the iPhone supports Bluetooth and external keyboards as well, so that’s not really an argument either.

 

[bearded prophet]

Why release another niche phone but not a mini?

 

[surferfb]

Why release another niche phone but not a mini?

I suspect if Apple could release an iPhone mini and charge $2,000 for it, then making one might make sense even if it got the 3-5% of iPhone sales it was estimated to be getting. I also think the fold will get more than 3-5% of iPhone sales. I expect somewhere between 10-20% of iPhones, but to be clear that's a guess based on nothing more than just my intuition.

Obviously I don't have inside info, but highly suspect the reason the mini fails was because in carrier stores, which is where most phone sales actually happen, the vast majority of users were comparing the mini to an Android device with a much larger screen and selecting the phone with the bigger screen. The market has pretty clearly spoken that consumers prefer larger screens. Which sucks for my friends who love the mini. I wish it weren't the case.

 

[Cuesca]

I mean, what I'd love to see (if it's even possible) is a "fold and unroll". non-plus iPhone size when closed, unfolds "book style" twice (like the Huawei) then "unrolls" upward to be full iPad size. (Like the silly "Tecno" thing from last year.)

I eventually expected to be injected with iOS50 and then whenever there's an update they would just inject me with more.

 

[ayephoner]

I eventually expected to be injected with iOS50 and then whenever there's an update they would just inject me with more.

It does seem that wearables are the next big device. It might take some time, but I think there will soon come a day when smartphones are phased out for some sort of glasses like devices.

 

[philfloyduk]

A foldable iPhone will succeed. Just like the Apple Vision Pro (AVP), it will be a niche product with limited appeal — but overtime it will be iterated on and ultimately be a successful product with respectable sales numbers. Yes, I know there will be a small brigade of you ready to jump in and tell me they don’t want one, and therefore nobody else will want one either. But lack of personal desire doesn’t equal product failure.

 

[digimc]

I think the poll needed more qualifying factors. I voted 'YES' but it will depend on the features and specs obviously. But I will also add it depends on the price that Apple settles in at. If it is slightly under $2,000 or around the price of the Samsung Z Fold then yes will most likely be in line with everyone else. But if it is priced like Apple priced the AVP, then I will be sitting it out.

But I love the idea of an Apple Fold. Very excited to see what Apple can do here. Long overdue.

 

[digimc]

Why. The point here is that people reach for the right tool for the job. People use smartphones because it has specific use cases. People use a tablet or a desktop because it has specific use cases.

I disagree with that. The iPhone is at its basic element a phone. It's most essential tool is to make and receive phone calls, but the phone capabilities of the iPhone are probably its least used feature. People text more than they talk, they surf the web on their iPhone more than they talk and they play games on it more than they talk.

Products and devices evolve over time with new features and people then use those new features as they see fit. When the original iPhone came out it had limited use cases, those use cases have evolved over time.

Heck I would argue that one of the primary use cases NOW on the iPhone is its ability to replace most point and shoot cameras. That was not a use case when the original iPhone came out. Sure the original iPhone offered a camera, but it did not immediately create the photography market that the iPhone has created now.

All these things evolve over time, including use case. The iPhone Fold (or whatever Apple decides to call it) will expand on those use cases. They will evolve themselves over time.

People use various devices for all sorts of different tasks, and eventually settle on a device that is more practical for their needs. Prime example is the iPod Touch. The iPod Touch ceased in its usefulness and eventually went the way of the dinosaur. But why? The Touch was useful and practical and did a lot of the things that the iPhone did. The Touch took pictures, played music, surfed the web. Those are three giant use cases right there. So what was the problem?

The problem was its use cases became more limited over time. While the iPhone use cases became more expanded over time. Consumers always prefer the device that gives them more choices, not narrows those choices.

That is what the Fold will do. It will expand the already beneficial use cases of the current iPhones. That is a win/win for most people.

 

[frou]

For most people who already own a vaguely recent iPhone, there's little reason to buy any brand new iPhone, period, other than basic consumerism.