Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
This design does not fill a gap or fit the need of anything at all. Apple would be right to give it a miss permanently as there’s no use for it. It’ll only do a worse job of an iPad and a keyboard — or a MacBook. Please don’t.
 
No one:

Not a single soul:

Apple: FOLDABLE IPADS COMING SOON ONLY $14,999 64GB MODEL!


Lol I joke I joke :D
 
Who asked for this???
We want a foldable phone!

I'd actually be pretty thrilled with an improved version of what Samsung has in a foldable phone (design-wise, not just fixing its problems.) Having a nice outer screen for general use, then open to a big screen for media would be pretty awesome.
 
everyones got it wrong

this is the 2020 MacBook Pro - no keyboard, no ports, no hinge, no power socket, no headphone port, totally water submersible.

No. They canceled that when they **** canned Jony.
[doublepost=1562380876][/doublepost]sketchymacrumors.com
 
2020? Lol. Yeah, right. More like 2025, with a starting price of 10K by the point.
Exactly. The iPad is just barely starting to be functional in aspects like access to the file system and multitasking. The iPhone still doesn’t allow you to dictate which apps you want to stay open while you use the pathetic amount of ram for things like using the camera. These are things that Windows Mobile devices could do like 7 years ago. We heard rumors about a TV from Apple for how many years? Apple even announced the AirPower charging pad and kept us waiting for how long before they decided it couldn’t be done? There’s no way in hell this same company could put out a foldable iPad by next year. I love Apple stuff but they don’t rush anything. There is a 0.0000% chance this will be available next year.
 
So no pros in October like the forums have been telling me. Who knew?
What would the forums know? :)

Without actual insider info, the best that can be done is to look at the timing of the previous release dates. Previous releases had breaks of 15 and 17 months between generations (March 2016, June 2017 and November 2018), about 16 months apart.

So my initial guess might be somewhere in the February to April 2020 timeframe. But it wouldn’t be at all surprising if they aren’t released until Oct/Nov 2020, waiting for an A14X. That’s probably more likely than March 2020 imo.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: jimmy_uk
Who asked for this???
We want a foldable phone!
No one really wants foldable phones. It's a stupid hype from people who want to force new technologies into the wrong business because they don't care about usability. Maybe it's the same group of people, who likes the ergonomical nightmare of touch displays on desktop/laptop computers.

Let me provide you one of many, many valid points. A bendable/foldable display can't use a static protective layer as glass. You have to use some kind of plastics that needs to be very flexible. But flexible plastics are not very durable and not scratch resistant. They can't be. If they were, they are not flexible enough anymore. You can't have strong and weak molecule bounds at the same time. That's why scratch resistant displays are very easy to shatter. Even if companies like Corning will let us believe the opposite - in real world conditions, they break easily. You can work the molecule structure to handle some well defined force vectors, but you will weaken the structure to other forces. You have to decide between these two characteristics of a potential cover material. If you will be resistant to scratches from dust, sand and keys, you can't get very far below aluminium silicate glass. We don't know a synthetic material, that provides bendable flexibility and the scratch resistance you will need to make a foldable phone a success. There is no magic in science.
For the most users, a foldable phone's display will scratch in weeks, if not in days.
Things will get worse, if you do it the Huawei way and put the flexible display at the wrong side.
Another point is, how the hinge section of the display will look after a year of use, if you had bent the display many thousand times. These phones will look like garbage within months.
To make things clear: I have an iPhone 4s here. It has grown a little bit yellowish over the years, but despite of that, is absolutely undamaged and fully working. No bendable phone will ever achieve that durability.
Of course, you can cover the unflexible part with glass and just leave the hinge unprotected. Nevertheless, you will have a well defined point of failure. Let Samsung have managed it to survive the first 12 months, what will be a great step forward from the two days of their first interpretation. But what's then? Will customers buy the next iteration of a foldable phone, if the last one hardly survived?
To be realistic: yes they will, but it's stupid anyway...

Even the additional screen estate doesn't provide any benefit.
For videos it's stupid. Usual screen ratios (16:9 or 21:9) will use the same screen estate as if you turn a normal phone by 90 degrees.
Different Apps side by side on a phone? Really? A phone is not a great device to work with different apps simultaneously and hopefully it will never be. It's more usefull to have a tablet or a laptop (bigger screen, keyboard, pencil, stand) than try to use serious tasks with one hand while holding your device in the other hand. At least if you do more than just instagram and tinder.

I loved microsoft's approach with Contiuum, where you can put your phone on a docking station (with keyboard, mouse and monitor) and instantly have a full featured workstation. Samsung copied that for Android, but it's still Android. A system that had been proven not to work great for tablets, how bad can it be on a desktop? A blown up phone without the phone is a stupid concept for a tablet, that's why Android phones are growing bigger and bigger and why Apple users still claim the demand of phones in a range between 4-5". We don't need a phone that is the worst of both worlds. We can have a phone that is a phone, and we can have a tablet with usefull additional features, optimized apps and from this year, we have iPadOS. A system that is the next level to separate phones from tablets.


Why do people really want bendable phones?
Because phones are near to perfection and nothing dramatically changed over the last few years.
We have full displays with resolutions that are better than our eyes, incredible computing- and graphics power as 2 years old laptops, wireless charging, wireless gigabit networking, wireless anything else. Despite of better battery life (what's hard to achieve without a chemical breakthrough) here is nothing to improve anymore. And if you like the statement or not, not even 5G will provide significant benefits to phone users. It's made mainly for IoT and autonomous traffic. A lower latency and smaller cells is nothing you will recognise and the higher bandwidth will be split to much more devices than now.
Phone's hardware is on an end. Foldable displays will not change it. We have to improve software and features. Maybe, future phones will become again smaller, because we outsource the display to glasses or retina projectors, that are freaking small to build.
To achieve the future, we doesn't need bigger or bendable screens, we need the display to come more closer to our eyes. Making a device so big, so you can only hold it in 3 hands is stupid.


There are bazillion applications for bendable displays, but not even one of them is a phone or a tablet computer. I hope, Apple thinks the same way.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: jimmy_uk
What would the forums know? :)

Without actual insider info, the best that can be done is to look at the timing of the previous release dates. Previous releases had breaks of 15 and 17 months between generations (March 2016, June 2017 and November 2018), about 16 months apart.

So my initial guess might be somewhere in the February to April 2020 timeframe. But it wouldn’t be at all surprising if they aren’t released until Oct/Nov 2020, waiting for an A14X. That’s probably more likely than March 2020 imo.

I agree and have made this point many times but have been repeatedly told there is to be a minor refresh around Oct. So two sets of conflicting rumours. With my decision to not buy the current bendy pro I would really like to know when the update model is actually coming and these rumours don't help, if anything they dash my hopes! :confused:
 
Last edited:
I really don't get the foldable thing. I simply wouldn't buy one as I'd be convinced it's break extremely quickly.
If it's something people really want I don't know why they couldn't do something like a Macbook Air with a normal display up top but instead of a physical keyboard have a second screen with touch that acts as a digital keyboard when it needs too. Seems like it'd be a lot easier to actually make. Sure you'd get a small bezel down and gap the middle but that could be minimised and it'd be a lot more robust.
 
Believe it when I see it...
Foldable OLED phones/tablets seem a lot like a hype to me... Because doing it properly will increase cost to insane levels.
With microLED it would be possible though to have an edgeless screen that "docks" to a second screen.
Problem there is mechanical forces of anything that comes between these displays, like a hair or tiny pieces of dirt. Also, the edge of the screen would likely be exposed when the device is folded, allowing for easy damage. Mitigating that problem is possible, but requires some serious mechanical engineering (moving away frame when the display is unfolded).
 
Can Apple copy ... sorry, innovate this idea better than Samsung did?
Yes!
How?
They have learned from the mistakes of the (competition’s) past and ... wont bother.
Job done!
Again.

Apple doesn’t need to do new stuff anymore. Leave it to the others. The brand name is enough.

“The cash keeps coming in. The share price inexplicably keeps going up. Why rock the (gravy) boat?”- T.C.
 
They should create an accessory that elevates it from your desk so its at eye level. They could charge $999 for it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Seanm87
What if it only folds 90 degrees? Like “closed” it’s just a flat iPad, and “open” it bends 90 degrees to be used more like a laptop. Would get around some of the extreme bending issues that other devices are having issues with.

I really like this idea! Nice thinking!
 
  • Like
Reactions: macduke
guess that’s one way Apple can address the bending issues with iPad Pros just start saying there now foldable
 
5G fantastic but until cellular service is truly uncapped like my home WiFi connection, I won’t buy another cellular iPad. Nearly every place I use an iPad has WiFi. IMO paying for internet twice is more than enough.
 
It would have to be sketchy. I mean, how the heck can put this in your pants pocket?

I reckon these people see the failure of what [others] have done, then cite the same stirring up the pot.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.