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Other Rumoured iPhone fold size - concept drawing and renders

circatee said:
Hmm, you do have a few valid points.

For me, the Fold 7 does look nice. Albeit, I am not a social media user (X, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky), and would only really benefit when watching YouTube (which I do quite often).

For the moment, I am still on the fence. I suppose, time will tell...
Click to expand...

I don’t use social media either. For me, the benefit comes from websites that don’t format well to mobile and video content. This is where the iPhone Fold could be better than the Fold 7… The Fold 7 has a near square aspect ratio inner display that from what I have experienced with the pixel 9 pro fold, has similar format issues to mobile as it’s a non standard aspect ratio.

The iPhone Fold is rumored to have an aspect ratio similar to an iPad so it should function very similarly to an iPad… Apple is prioritizing the inner display functionality over having the outer display feel like a normal phone.
 
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blairh said:
As a current 16 Pro Max user, the height of the folding iPhone will be such a great change. Lord do I hate reaching up on my current iPhone.
Click to expand...
After using iOS 26 for a week, I'm realizing that a lot of their push to hide or reduce navigation on scroll is likely related to this new form factor having a shorter screen.

On current hardware it feels like a bad tradeoff. But here it might be more valuable to feeling like the shorter screen is more usable.
 
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I gotta say, I think Apple is onto something here… Unfolded feels just like an iPad Mini. I’ll gladly take the more square folded state for this iPad like unfolded layout.

iPhone 16e for comparison.

IMG_1532.jpeg


IMG_5815.jpeg
 
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Even in its folded state it's going to be awesome. You'll be able to reach the top easily (remember those days?!?!) and that super wide screen will be a pleasure to type on.

I am so very hyped for this device.
 
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blairh said:
Even in its folded state it's going to be awesome. You'll be able to reach the top easily (remember those days?!?!) and that super wide screen will be a pleasure to type on.

I am so very hyped for this device.
Click to expand...
I have mixed feelings about the front screen. Right now I have a Pro Max which I can’t reach the top nor the far left side (using right hand) with one hand, even using a phone grip. I can use Reachability as a somewhat passable workaround to reach the top, but there’s no software help to reach the far left side so I have to do difficult hand gymnastics when using my phone one-handed (sometimes rotating my phone in my hand 90 degrees). The shorter screen of the foldable would totally solve the reaching top problem, but it’s supposed to be even (slightly) wider than the Pro Max which will make it even more difficult to reach the far left side. I’m hoping Apple implements a horizontal Reachability to help me reach the far side.
For typing, I always use the Quickpath keyboard which doesn’t benefit from a wider screen. I actually use the squished right-hand keyboard on my Pro Max because I usually swipe with one hand.

That said, I don’t think there’s a perfect size/ratio for a book style folding phone for me. The rumored size/ratio is probably the best option.
 
Great thread!

@iZac and @kaplag, you're both wizards as far as I am concerned. So many people are hoping for a Galaxy Fold form factor, whereas I am with both of you in loving the mini phones. I hadn't heard of the Pura X until this thread, but I'm in love with it, and hope these rumors (and your concepts!) hold true.

I hate the larger size phones Apple is throwing at us, and as such the foldable/inside screen aspect of a folding phone don't really serve me any. I guess I've been maybe thinking an iPad would be fun, so that would pretend as my iPad. I'm sold on this thing if only for that outside screen. We need smaller phones.

iZac said:
I'm humbled that so many of you are suggesting MacRumours use my renders, I'd just be happy if they did their own with the rumoured sizes in mind - anything to stop them using the dodgy one they have that's completely the wrong size.
Click to expand...
Haha, a friend and I got into it a while ago because MacRumors has terrible renders. They've improved a little since then, but they're still pretty had to look at more often than not. I'd gladly take these over theirs. I parrot what you've been saying, their foldable renders are just generic wish casting and don't really support the leaks. I highly implore @Joe Rossignol to take a look at this thread and the supporting leaks, and preferably, forward it to whomever is doing the renders.

Awesome file @Zackmd1! I've got a version printing now and will be done in 4 hours, then I gotta print the next.
 
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Nice to see other people excited for a folding iPhone! And I agree with everyone wishing these news sites would use iZac's renders which are way more accurate.

The new iPhone Air and iPhone 17 keynote yesterday answered some questions I had worried about for the Fold. How do you handle portrait vs. landscape camera sensors on the back of the phone when it changes orientation? Well now with their new square selfie cameras that crop to either mode, I could totally see them bringing an evolved version of that to use as the rear cameras.

And after seeing the plateau on the iPhone air, it has me thinking if they widened it they would totally have room for 2 cameras just like in the fold rumors. Plus the fact they were able to bring the A19 Pro to the iPhone Air and get similar battery life to the 16 Pro, It's all looking good for the future of the iPhone Fold.

The rounded sides on the Air would also probably come to the fold too. I been watching a lot of Galaxy Fold 7 review videos and a common complaint I saw was that it was hard to open because the hinge was stiffer but also because the sides are completely flat. One reviewer even mentioned needing fingernails to get enough purchase to open the Fold 7. I'm thinking rounded edges would totally be easier to open and Apple's always been pretty good about the feel of things like hinges, for example the macbook air m2 being able to be opened with 1 hand while flat on a table, can't do that with a lot of laptops in the same weight class. Just hope the price isn't tooo insane. And I hope app developers give some love to the new shorter screen size and that apple figure out the keyboard in a satisfying way.

One thing that I haven't really seen talked about was how on every foldable there's a raised frame on the folding screen. The hubbub is about how apple is getting rid of the crease but what about the raised bezel present on every foldable to this day? I would imagine the swipe up gesture being annoying having that popped out frame where it is. I feel like this is a technical limitation because of how folding screens work but could be cool if Apple or anyone figured out how to make a folding screen without the raised bezel.
 
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Interesting thoughts on the air telegraphing things for the fold.

I too see the dual camera setup being more than possible now for the fold. My theory is that to differentiate the fold over the air next year, the air will keep just a single camera - whilst likely adding either super wide or macro capabilities next year - with the fold debuting the air-like plateau with dual camera a-la the standard iPhone 17. The year after the third gen Air will then get 2 cameras as well.

I’d just love Apple to come up with a way to do some design magic to allow iPhone curved corners with all 4 corners - symmetry is a big thing for Apple aesthetically and it would still be jarring to have an asymmetric design from the front. It’s about time the iPhone X curved edges made a comeback and I’m all for it being the Fold that reinstates it.

Fold will totally not have a sim tray and will be eSIM only.

Going back to Touch ID will be a bit painful.

I ordered a black Air for launch day - I think the Fold will be mega-bucks so will keep the air until either the fold appears on refurbished store or I can get one second hand. It will just be great to have some interesting Apple devices to drool over again.

And final thought - Air battery life according to Apple is even better than my iPhone 15 Pro - iPhone Fold battery life could be frankly astonishing. Could it have a full on M6 chip inside? And not be called an iPhone at all and be an iBook (having what … SIX versions of your iPhone lineup a year seems utterly bonkers). Then that leaves the door open to iBook, iBook Pro, iBook Air and whatever - although Apple won’t want to dilute their iPhone sales numbers in their annual metrics.

Well that was a long post. Apologies.
 
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iZac said:
a mock-up of the device with a keyboard in a 'laptop' orientation and an aluminium camera bump since that's been seen in some of the recent dummy models:
Click to expand...

Hey iZac, I’m back coming up with another challenge 😄 With the release of the iPhone Air and knowing the reasoning behind using titanium in it, is it possible to update the render with the look of the iPhone Air instead of the Pro? I think it seems very likely the foldable will be very similar in looks to the Air and use titanium for the sturdiness.

IMG_4492.jpeg


Another thing I’m really curious about is if the plateau with 2 cameras will have the same height as the Air or as the Pro. The bigger the plateau the more battery. But a taller plateau would probably look weird in the folded state.
 
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deuxani said:
Hey iZac, I’m back coming up with another challenge 😄 With the release of the iPhone Air and knowing the reasoning behind using titanium in it, is it possible to update the render with the look of the iPhone Air instead of the Pro? I think it seems very likely the foldable will be very similar in looks to the Air and use titanium for the sturdiness.

Another thing I’m really curious about is if the plateau with 2 cameras will have the same height as the Air or as the Pro. The bigger the plateau the more battery. But a taller plateau would probably look weird in the folded state.
Click to expand...

Haha, you know what I was thinking the same thing - it does seem likely that this folding phone will have the "premium" and rigid materials to go with the rumoured price. A lot of the reviews of the Air have been alluding to it being a prototype of sorts for the folding phone. Also with the mirrored finish and what appears to be a more translucent glass on the back, it does have a more jewellery-like quality to it. It's certainly a way to differentiate it as a device that appears premium because of the thickness and materials but spec-wise is limited.

I probably will open up the model to tinker with it and re-render it with a mirror finish. I'd like to scale up the camera bump a bit too, now that we know Apple's current methodology is to squeeze the motherboard inside, on the Air and Pro. But don't hold your breath, it might take me a while to get around to it! ;)

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple try to differentiate three distinct product lines now -

iPhone & SE
iPhone Air & fold
iPhone Pro & Max

With that in mind I'm beginning to think they'll name this folding phone with the 'Air' naming convention. Something like iPhone AirBook or iBook Air. Both of those are bad names, but you get the idea.
 
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Falhófnir said:
Nice renders! My immediate thought is given the dramatically different aspect ratio for the outer display, a lot of apps may struggle to scale correctly without updates? Letterboxing would make for a truly tiny 16:9/19.5:9 app! I'm assuming the inner display will use the iPad versions where available, or possibly letterbox an iPhone version initially.
Click to expand...
iPhone apps also contain iPad binaries which scale in windows to any size and shape. I imagine an Apple foldable would instruct apps to run the iOS version on the outside and the iPad version in the middle.
 
iZac said:
Haha, you know what I was thinking the same thing - it does seem likely that this folding phone will have the "premium" and rigid materials to go with the rumoured price. A lot of the reviews of the Air have been alluding to it being a prototype of sorts for the folding phone. Also with the mirrored finish and what appears to be a more translucent glass on the back, it does have a more jewellery-like quality to it. It's certainly a way to differentiate it as a device that appears premium because of the thickness and materials but spec-wise is limited.

I probably will open up the model to tinker with it and re-render it with a mirror finish. I'd like to scale up the camera bump a bit too, now that we know Apple's current methodology is to squeeze the motherboard inside, on the Air and Pro. But don't hold your breath, it might take me a while to get around to it! ;)

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple try to differentiate three distinct product lines now -

iPhone & SE
iPhone Air & fold
iPhone Pro & Max

With that in mind I'm beginning to think they'll name this folding phone with the 'Air' naming convention. Something like iPhone AirBook or iBook Air. Both of those are bad names, but you get the idea.
Click to expand...
The Air currently lacks the '17' in its name which strongly implies it might be a one-off product. The next iPhone Air may well be the flip phone line going forwards.

I do think they will bring back the iBook branding for the foldable phone but drop the 'iPhone' part of the brand so that the product lineup doesn't look jumbled and it can have an event all to itself.
 
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iZac said:
Haha, you know what I was thinking the same thing - it does seem likely that this folding phone will have the "premium" and rigid materials to go with the rumoured price. A lot of the reviews of the Air have been alluding to it being a prototype of sorts for the folding phone. Also with the mirrored finish and what appears to be a more translucent glass on the back, it does have a more jewellery-like quality to it. It's certainly a way to differentiate it as a device that appears premium because of the thickness and materials but spec-wise is limited.

I probably will open up the model to tinker with it and re-render it with a mirror finish. I'd like to scale up the camera bump a bit too, now that we know Apple's current methodology is to squeeze the motherboard inside, on the Air and Pro. But don't hold your breath, it might take me a while to get around to it! ;)

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple try to differentiate three distinct product lines now -

iPhone & SE
iPhone Air & fold
iPhone Pro & Max

With that in mind I'm beginning to think they'll name this folding phone with the 'Air' naming convention. Something like iPhone AirBook or iBook Air. Both of those are bad names, but you get the idea.
Click to expand...
I thought I'd do some simple Photoshop to kill the time 😄

iPhone Fold.png
 
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deuxani said:
I thought I'd do some simple Photoshop to kill the time 😄

View attachment 2561450
Click to expand...
Ah excellent job!

The lenses aligned vertically would certainly create a load of volume to fit electronics. They do look a bit lonely but I guess that’s because we’ve already got used to looking at the three camera setup.

I keep thinking there’s something that we’re missing with the hinge but my brain just can’t conceive of anything other than the mechanical system used by all the other manufacturers. Maybe Apple will surprise and delight us with something unexpected, like this old Sony laptop that had a fascinating hinge with the charger and power button positioned in each end.

I know that would not really fit with the folding screen, I’m just thinking abstractly that they have the opportunity do do something new rather than just refine whatever Samsung has already doing for 6 years.

But yes, the Photoshop work looks great!
 
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iZac said:
Haha, you know what I was thinking the same thing - it does seem likely that this folding phone will have the "premium" and rigid materials to go with the rumoured price. A lot of the reviews of the Air have been alluding to it being a prototype of sorts for the folding phone. Also with the mirrored finish and what appears to be a more translucent glass on the back, it does have a more jewellery-like quality to it. It's certainly a way to differentiate it as a device that appears premium because of the thickness and materials but spec-wise is limited.

I probably will open up the model to tinker with it and re-render it with a mirror finish. I'd like to scale up the camera bump a bit too, now that we know Apple's current methodology is to squeeze the motherboard inside, on the Air and Pro. But don't hold your breath, it might take me a while to get around to it! ;)

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple try to differentiate three distinct product lines now -

iPhone & SE
iPhone Air & fold
iPhone Pro & Max

With that in mind I'm beginning to think they'll name this folding phone with the 'Air' naming convention. Something like iPhone AirBook or iBook Air. Both of those are bad names, but you get the idea.
Click to expand...
I feel extremely confident that they will call the folding iPhone the iPhone Ultra.

I also personally hope they don't go the shiny frame route of the Air. I don't think they will. I'm expecting at most three colors. (Black, white, and perhaps something gold or silver.) Different color hinges that match the backplate and frame.
 
iZac said:
Ah excellent job!

The lenses aligned vertically would certainly create a load of volume to fit electronics. They do look a bit lonely but I guess that’s because we’ve already got used to looking at the three camera setup.

I keep thinking there’s something that we’re missing with the hinge but my brain just can’t conceive of anything other than the mechanical system used by all the other manufacturers. Maybe Apple will surprise and delight us with something unexpected, like this old Sony laptop that had a fascinating hinge with the charger and power button positioned in each end.

I know that would not really fit with the folding screen, I’m just thinking abstractly that they have the opportunity do do something new rather than just refine whatever Samsung has already doing for 6 years.

But yes, the Photoshop work looks great!
Click to expand...

I created another one in comparison to the iPhone Air:

iPhone Fold.png


The idea behind the larger camera plateau is because when you see the internals of the Air, a second camera next to it would take up too much space, so below it would make more sense. Also not having a 3rd camera leaves more room for the brains of the device and then the rest of the bottom and the other screen side can be completely batteries.

Regarding the hinge, I think other manufacturers would've come up with something really innovative already, as Apple is more of perfecting instead of innovating at this time. But I hope they can surprise us.
 
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I was thinking by the way, that the inside and outside screen both have aspect ratios that more closely resemble iPad instead of iPhone. Also the entire idea of the almost iPad mini sized inner screen is that you could use it as a tablet with all the multi tasking benefits it brings. So I guess it would make sense if the basis of the OS is actually iPadOS.

I’m really curious to see how they will handle the App Store on this device. Are they going to add an extra for this foldable or is it going to get access to one of the existing or maybe even both stores.
 
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deuxani said:
I was thinking by the way, that the inside and outside screen both have aspect ratios that more closely resemble iPad instead of iPhone. Also the entire idea of the almost iPad mini sized inner screen is that you could use it as a tablet with all the multi tasking benefits it brings. So I guess it would make sense if the basis of the OS is actually iPadOS.

I’m really curious to see how they will handle the App Store on this device. Are they going to add an extra for this foldable or is it going to get access to one of the existing or maybe even both stores.
Click to expand...

Interesting, yeah since it’s all ~4:3 for the inner and outer screen, there’s going to have to be some tweaking from developers to have this build properly for the new device.

If we’re leaning toward it being more of an iPad-like experience I would have thought they can’t just let it run existing iPad apps out the box because I’m certain this won’t have Apple pencil support or mouse support (maybe?) plus devs would have to optimise it for the smaller front screen. The aspect ratio also makes it problematic for existing iPhone apps too.

With that in mind, I’d be willing to bet now that they will introduce this under a new product category. Something like … iBook/iBookOS or AppleBook/BookOS - which fits Tims preferred naming conventions.

I guess for Devs it would basically be iPadOS with a few unique APIs to handle the small screen and handover between the inner and outer screen. But for the end-user there will be absolutely no risk that their favourite iPad/iPhone app will be broken, because the devs are forced to build and test for a new device - although like you said, it shouldn’t be too different from an iPad.

BTW I like your concept that this device could be used portrait when opened, I don’t know why I didn’t consider that before!
 
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