People literally asked for larger phones. There are smaller sizes available for people that want smaller phones.
I don't need my phone to turn into a tablet.
It's not just "not rocket surgery." It's not needed.
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Apple's 2026 Foldable iPhone Could Reinvigorate Stalling Market
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People literally asked for larger phones. There are smaller sizes available for people that want smaller phones.
I don't need my phone to turn into a tablet.
It's not just "not rocket surgery." It's not needed.
I would agree, except for one thing. Nobody’s done it well yet. Having had a few android foldables, there is a pretty steep trade-off somewhere in the equation. Camera quality, battery, life, etc.
If Apple could create a foldable sans sacrificing features and hardware, that would be a pretty big win.
It sure was nice to be able to fit a while phone in a pocket again. But wasn’t worth giving up decent cameras, for instant. I’d go back in a second if they could pull that off.
Because it’s what works. The same way a car has four wheels in a rectangular arrangement. Or airplanes have two wings, one on either side. Or a spoon has a handle part and a concave bowl shaped part.
Sometimes you find the optimal design and everything is just a slight variation of that because anything “radically new” is worse.
Aside from novelty what good does a “radically new” phone design do? What problem does it solve? What way is it better without being worse in other ways?
If you can’t answer those questions then there’s no reason for something new.
With increased chances that users will damage something doing all this folding & unfolding...I'm sure the price of Apple Care will go up.
Not sure how you reinvigorate a market in which ~200mn iPhones are sold every year. Maybe 220mn iPhones would be sold in 2026 if a good foldable iPhone came out? 
I would have to buckle up and wear a helmet for that reinvigoration.
I would have to buckle up and wear a helmet for that reinvigoration.
I bought the very first fold-able iPhone back in 2014. It was called the iPhone 6 Plus.
LOL, you think it’s just Apple fans who recognize how unnecessary and compromised foldables are? Over 98% of the smartphone market are people buying non-foldable phones. You and those like you who love them are in the significant minority. Stop acting like this is some “Apple fans” thing. It’s not.
Almost no one wants foldable phones. They are inferior in almost every way to the standard slate style phones. And their only advantage (being able to be less tall/wide) is minimal at best and requires significant compromises. It’s got literally nothing to do with like Apple devices or not. Unless Apple has somehow made a spectacular breakthrough in materials science their phones will face the exact same problems. It’s not Apple fans who are your problem it’s physics.
So you just want novelty then? Well then yeah, iPhones probably aren’t for you. Apple doesn’t make new things just to make new things. You want Samsung for releasing half-baked products just because they can.
Software can still solve all the problems because its an infinite canvas of possibility. In the case of ergonomics the biggest offenders are notifications and the control centre. These could both be moved to the app switcher carousel, with control center sitting to the RH-side and notifications mimicing the lockscreen ready to fan up from the bottom.
Adopt the universal back gesture from Android and most of the issues go away. I do like the idea of a capacitive back though. I enjoyed the one on the PS Vita.
Excellent points about technology advancement. I remember people saying, “A camera on a phone? I would never use that. That’s ridiculous!”
Then as cam technology improved it became, “I don’t need a camera that good on my phone” yet it’s the camera they use every day to document their lives and family’s. Then complain their pics aren’t as sharp as what they see elsewhere.
What are some example you can think of?
The multiple users spaces are for *one single user* to separate data into two or three separate spaces for their own privacy/security, *not for multiple people*. The feature already exists on iOS with shared iPad, but only for organizations and not consumers. (https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overview-dep9a34c2ba2/web). All they need to do is enable the feature for consumers. How does this waste money in any way whatsoever? 50 percent of people *do* care about and want to use this feature, so that's a big chunk of people who would be willing to pay for a 512gb device giving more money to Apple, generating more revenue and more profit. Everyone wins.
Foldable Phone Market Size, Demand & Growth Outlook 2025 to 2035
Learn how foldable phone technology is revolutionizing the mobile industry.
Folding phones make 0 sense no matter who makes them. Folding ipad/laptop makes more sense.
It’s certainly an Apple fan thing in regards to how useful people see foldables being. Many android fans find foldables great tech and useful but prefer slab phones and are happy with those phones and don’t want to spend double the price for worse cameras than their slab phones.
The market stats show there is a market for foldables. Basically 40 million in foldables sales in the past 2 years show many techies love them and will keep buying them. Foldables are only inferior when it comes to camera hardware and overall durability
Chinese brands are releasing great foldables which are thinner than most slab phones.