I think most people here would actually use a foldable phone if Apple solved all the pain points which are to me:
1. Weight, it needs to not weigh significantly more than a slab phone does today.
2. It needs to be around the same thickness as a slab when closed.
3. The visible seam down the middle of the display when folded open needs to go completely.
4. Needs to be more robust in general with screens that don't scratch when touched with your fingernail.
5. Reliability of the moving parts needs to be high, no gaps in the hinges to allow debris etc
At that point I think I'd buy one even if it was $2,000. The ability to open an iPhone sized device and get an iPad experience? that's obviously a no brainer. The question is can they solve all 5 of those things that I think need to be? - This is obviously a very hard engineering problem they need to come up with entirely new types of material to make the folding aspect work without a crease down the center for starters.
I think if I was in Apples position I'd wait it out a bit more let Samsung and the others figure out some of these problems first and then carry the baton to the finish line.
One last thing, this isn't so different to how we got the original iPhone either. Remember all those smart phones before the iPhone had resistive touch screens and plastic stylus for interacting. They just like the foldables today used soft plastic screens that were prone to scratches and damage. You could literally use a finger nail to damage them permanently.
In walks the iPhone, Stylus is gone, plastic screens are gone. All glass, perfectly hard and extremely resistant to scratches (compared to the soft plastic used previously). There were smart phones long before the iPhone showed up and they all sucked but eventually Apple stepped in once the technology was mature with a leap frog. Maybe they do the same with foldables. Maybe there is a material that can be both flexible and hard, maybe they come at it from a completely different approach by having two solid pieces of glass that meet perfectly in the middle with no discernible gap etc
I think foldables are exciting but I'm not going to buy one until Apple does it, iOS is an excellent operating system so I'm not going to walk away from that to try one of these other devices running Android but I'm also confident that if Apple does ever do a foldable it'll be the first one really worth buying, I can't see them doing a replica of the Samsung Fold for instance it'll be a lot better if they choose to do one is my opinion.
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