I think discussion here are missing that most people do not own a PC/laptop and if they do barely ever opens one, and not because they can't afford it, but it just didn't fit into their daily lives. This is obviously entirely different from the HN crowd.
And in that case, a folding phone is huge! Having played with one that my parent use, it's such an upgrade for reading/scrolling experience. When we all are spending so much time on the phone (that's a separate discussion, but it is the reality).
What's huge about it for someone who doesn't own a PC laptop?
Every example I've seen or tried using a fold-able was just a regular smartphone with a screen that displayed apps that looked like the app doesn't fit on the phone very well. The few that did fit didn't seem to provide any real advantage.
That and the fold-able users I know all run into reliability issues with screens breaking over time.
Exactly. Considering you could buy an iPhone and a MacBook Neo for roughly the same cost … will be very interesting to see this device in action. Can iOS replace MacOS for a user that doesn’t need a local Xcode? Can I spend $2k for the device I use in my pocket and on my desk… and put the rest of my money into cloud/server infrastructure if I have that need?
To be fair, where this applies is specific countries outside the US, not just outside tech. Very few Americans own a smartphone and not a computer, and they are mostly poor and not in the market for an ultra-luxury phone. You’re describing affluent counties that became so recently, like China, South Korea, and Japan, and indeed that’s where foldables are currently doing well.
I've been dailying a pixel fold 9 pro for a while now and love the thing. Seeing Apple finally join in is exciting as heck. I wouldn't hold your breath for a non visible crease though, nor for it to necessarily be class leading in its screen tech. I doubt any of it matters though, the Pixel Folds aren't exactly class leading in these regards either and the fold is just not a concern at all once you're using it. it's practically invisible from head on, and the "plastic screen protector" worries are really not an issue either. The durability of the inner screen is actually much better than you'd expect since it spends most of its pocketed life protected from external scratches. Mines still in great shape, even though I do not use a case nor any other form of protector.
Where apple has a significant opportunity here is the software side though. Google unfortunately doesn't seem to be too interested in exploring UI concepts with the Fold, leaving that to OnePlus and Samsung, both of which have imo better multitasking experiences than the Pixel Fold. Apple making an iPhone that becomes an iPad would probably be enough for them to win significant marketshare, but I hope they use this opportunity to do some interesting things with UI beyond what the iPad can do.
I have a Pixel 8a, and I have to use a case for it, because it appears to be designed to be as slippery as possible. Every edge is round and there's nothing to grip - it feels like an aluminium/glass bar of wet soap.
I have a 9 pro and it was very slippery at first. I put it face down on a slanted table and it slid right off once.
Anyway, I took the case off after a while. It's not new anymore. Your mileage may vary, but despite dropping it a bunch, it hasn't shattered and the edge only shows some slight marks from falling.
The 10 feels like it should be more slippery, but for some reason, it isn't. It stays stuck in your hand like glue, despite the back feeling like another glass screen. Something special in is coating
Yeah, it's one of those things that's hard to describe, but the 10pf, despite being thicker and heavier, seems to be easier to hold
Since I sometimes like to walk and browse, I ordered one of the Qi rings that goes on the back of the device, since it's just magnetic, I can remove it for pocketing and such
Yeah I use a case with a magsafe compatible ring embedded in it and I have one of the magnetic popsockets on there for extra ease of grabbing. Glad that's showing up in the next gen of pixels maybe by the time I upgrade it'll still be there or in way more phones too.
How timely, I'm writing this from a Pixel 10 Pro Fold I bought in January.
Last night I opened it to find the inside screen having dead pixels in the center by the bend.
I love foldable phones. I use it all the time in both modes, but now I'm currently procrastinating looking up my best buy warranty plan specifics.
For a small percentage of mobile superusers, I really do believe foldables are the future. Having the ability to use desktop mode by default, or multitask, is huge.
I've gone all the way around and came back. The Samsung Fold was awesome and convenient. But carrying an ipad mini and a phone is not that big a deal. It's quite nice that the ipad mini does not have whatsapp or SMS plugged into it, so I can use it exclusively for reading books or playing music.
The cost of the iPad Mini + my phone was like $600 and the folds - even the 6th gen and above - are super unreliable, so right now that seems like the best play.
iPad mini is awesome for reading however, it took forever until Apple powered it up.
Personally, as someone being used to the Motorola Razor foldable, which happened to present back then. It was really good and cool as well. I hated the ever smaller getting Ericson smartphones.
I am looking forward to Apple's copy of Samsungs foldable smartphones. After all, I don't want to carry an iPhone as well as an iPad mini around with me.
And I see the foldable more as a replacement for the iPhone ultra max phones. No matter how large the screensize they have, they never beat the iPad mini on readability, even being stuck with the old one for many years.
> It's quite nice that the ipad mini does not have whatsapp or SMS plugged into it, so I can use it exclusively for reading books or playing music.
Both a phone and a tablet can come with WhatsApp, it's a user choice whether they are there and the frequency of checking them. Global muting the apps is also an option.
I understand your point, but it is a point mitigated by user intervention. Now, if we want to say reading on a bigger screen than a phone is a better user experience, I'm on board with that.
The thing I like about the iPad Mini is that it's an optional carry. I don't need an 8" device every time I leave the house. And maybe that's going to be the appeal of the foldable.
Another benefit of the foldable over the ipad mini + regular phone is managing internet connectivity is a lot easier. Also no need for 2 separate sessions on whatever apps/websites you're currently using. As much as syncing states works fine nowadays, it'll never match just sticking to one device and not having separate browsers / note taking apps for your phone + the ipad.
I also don't foresee ipad minis going down that much in size, whereas foldables are constantly being made in smaller sizes (in height, thickness, weight, and even a variety of aspect ratios).
Price is the final real hurdle for most of these things IMO.
In general, managing a single device is always going to be easier than managing multiple -- fewer things to keep charged, fewer updates to run, less stuff to carry, etc.
Yeah, I got used to the big phone, and it's nice to have the big screen around when you are stuck at the bus stop watching YouTube. But I know its an awkward carry for lot of people.
I have a small shoulder bag which also holds wet wipes, a bottle of water, raincoat in case it rains etc... can't really go back to just using my pockets now.
It fits in a front pocket if you wear Dockers or equivalent, which have notoriously large pockets. It fits well in the front of a backpack. It's most akin to a slightly wide paperback book.
The iPad Mini is such an underrated device. For years they have been my primary computing device. The form factor is so close to a paperback book that it's easy to carry with you. Heck, it even fits in the front pocket of my Dockers. Toss in in the front compartment of my backpack.
A big thing about the form factor is the perception. If you are in a meeting and pull out a full size iPad or your laptop to look something up, it certainly feels different than using your mini. Same at a restaurant.
At the park with the dog I can carry it like a paperback, sit on the grass and read. It's perfect for everything except phone calls.
Not a fan of foldables, if I am honest. Just a personal opinion. I do not like the it feels in the pocket bc the device needs to double its thickness when folding over.
When a mobile device manufacturer (samsung, hauwei, now apple) makes a foldable, I get the impression they're running out of ideas with the "slate" form factor and are trying to stimulate sales.
Personally, I would want that R&D spend and innovation to go to more sustainable materials, longer lasting devices, and easily repairable parts to extend the devices useful life.
You and me both, but I also recognize others disagree so ultimately, we'll see what the market decides.
Apple's annual gross profit was $195B last year against an R&D budget of around $35B. So, they've got more than enough spare change to throw around. I'm sure whatever they're spending on foldables isn't impairing them financially in any way.
I'm more concerned for what it means for focus, fragmented ecosystems, user experience, etc.
From Jobs:
"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done."
The market && apple's choice of either pricing it aggressively or pricing it so that nobody can afford it. Both have equal weighting here.
The Z fold has succeeded enough that I see it out and about even outside tech-circles. Oppo and Google have had multiple generations of well-recieved folables too, despite not nearly having the marketing machine of someone like Apple.
Even if you haven't, searching up dimensions on the current foldables takes all of 15 seconds.
It should be obvious to anyone who cares about phone hardware even a little that older foldables won't be the end-all of how thin the packaging is ever going to get.
The assumption that even future foldables will feel like holding two typical 7-8mm phones together is just an obivous case of no research and stereotypical hn complaining.
I don’t know why you’re so uncharitable toward someone who holds a different opinion than you. The idea that someone needs to research device dimensions in order to share their personal experience with foldables is a bit much. Instead of accusing them of complaining for the “dopamine hit”, you could have said “hey, your experience is out of date”.
That’s what jayd16 did, and then you rolled in with a complaint about people who complain, which is pretty rich.
Maybe because on hacker news, you expect slightly higher quality comments. Or at least a more forward-thinking opinion on consumer hardware.
Holding a different opinion is great, but dismissing on a modern cutting edge form-factor, one that has lots of love (as you can see even just in this thread), one that has painfully obvious benefits for reading, all because of "thickness" is daft considering the current crop of foldable.
Price would make 100% sense. But thickness? C'mon.
Some people genuinely go online just to complain. If he'd made a reasonable argument, I'd happily respond charitably.
Nice mate. Everything I said has been in support of apple, or anyone else, pursuing and developing a foldable. I'm 100% a fan of foldables, and my point was that they're just going to get thinner. Thus making the "thickness" complaint even more of a non-issue than it already is with the currently available foldables. Almost entirely <11mm across the industry btw.
If you think that's just complaining, I don't know what else to tell you.
> When a mobile device manufacturer [...] are trying to stimulate sales
> more sustainable materials, longer lasting devices, and easily repairable parts to extend the devices useful life
What they are doing, like all for-profit companies, is focusing on profits, for better or worse.
What you are suggesting (and what I'd like to) directly works against the goal of making more profits, literally all of those things will lead to less income for them.
I also want those things, but realistically, because of the economic systems we have, those things will never be the focus, because the market doesn't reward those things, and doesn't seem likely that'll change either.
I don't know what the solution is either, status quo simply sucks, with no escape in sight. Seems to be getting worse in fact.
In a capitalist system, those are the only ways to get for-profit companies to care about externalities (which is what sustainability and longevity address).
It's definitely not due to running out of ideas. I have a Galaxy Fold and love it. I owned it for about two months before my wife went out and bought one for herself. And everywhere I go people want to look at it and play with it - quite remarkable.
I haven't encountered any issues with apps not supporting the wider aspect ratio. It's one of those cases in which Android's up-front investment in more flexible software paid off. Android apps were harder to write up front because they had to support resizable layouts from the get go, but by the time stuff like foldables were introduced the software library was already ready for it all.
Think it'll last 5 years? I don't strongly care one way or the other about the form factor, but if it's more expensive, less durable, and has a worse camera, then I'm perfectly happy to have a one-piece phone.
I don't know but honestly I tend to lose, destroy or want to upgrade phones within five years anyway. So I'm not that sensitive to how long they last. I don't remember when I bought this one but it's probably 2-3 years old now and so far there haven't been any issues with it.
For me the ability to read on a bigger screen is the selling point. I flip it open to read things all the time. Feels like a small book.
Electric car drivers have range anxiety, and I assume foldable phone users have fold anxiety. Do the OS integrate some counter versus Mean Folds to Failure?
The issue with repairability is always the conflict between water resistance, thickness and feel vs the compromises to that needed to make removable batteries or back cases work. There are ways around it but the vast majority of the market prefers solid near glued together phones so that's what companies make.
> I get the impression they're running out of ideas with the "slate" form factor and are trying to stimulate sales.
I think we've just reached the local maximum of the phone design and adding folding gives two different branches to go down: 1) same size screen unfolded but smaller folded size or 2) folded with an external screen roughly the same size as a normal phone today but it expands to a much larger one unfolded. We'd kind of reached the peak size that people can reasonably pocket so option 2 allows for even bigger screens for people willing to pay without having to have a second device (something like a tablet).
The folds do add functionality and I think there's an impulse that leads people to say they don't see the point of something just because they're not interested in it personally.
> the vast majority of the market prefers solid near glued together phones so that's what companies make.
the vast majority of companies only make solid near-glued together phones, so that is all anyone buys.
if apple made a phone with replaceable batteries with a bit more thickness and some compromises on water resistance vs. cost, you'd actually see the consumer preferences play out.
> The folds do add functionality and I think there's an impulse that leads people to say they don't see the point of something just because they're not interested in it personally.
you're going to have to go through some real mental contortions to support foldable phones as consumer choice while treating repairability/replaceability as inherently not worth it because you like slim designs.
> if apple made a phone with replaceable batteries with a bit more thickness and some compromises on water resistance vs. cost, you'd actually see the consumer preferences play out.
We already went through the period of offering both and people preferred the thin hard to repair slabs we have now. There were quite a few phones made during the transition to the current state and the overwhelming purchasing choice was eliminate replicable batteries.
I'd love it if we could make slightly thicker phones (I put cases on my phone still I'm not chasing absolute thinness contrary to your assumptions) with the same battery capacity and feel, but there's a lot more of a trade off than just a little thickness when you go back to the old replicable battery. You lose a lot of capacity vs volume when you make the battery removable because it needs it's own plastic shell and you have to have a water resistant cavity to insert it into. Both of those eat up probably 10-20% of the capacity you can place in the same area with a bare(ish) lithium polymer pack that goes into the current design.
It's nice to believe people would agree with you if only they had the choice companies have stripped away from them to make again but it's not like people didn't have a chance to buy repairable smartphones over the current version already.. Most people just don't really think about replacing their phone's battery ever until it's a problem.
> the compromises to that needed to make removable batteries or back cases work
Seems like they are going to have to make that compromise, at least in the EU market. User-replaceable batteries from 2027 onwards, unless they are willing to quit the market (probably still requiring screwdrivers, but hey, its something)
Unlikely because the law includes this out for manufacturers, manufacturers are exempt from the user-replacement rule if their devices are waterproof (IP67 or higher) and utilize ultra-durable batteries that retain 83% capacity after 500 cycles and 80% capacity after 1,000 charge cycles. That's skipped over in a lot of the headlines about the law.
A lot of phones these days are at least IP67 if not better. My Pixel 8 is IP68 so it comes down to the battery capacity retention and how well they can game that measurement (slower charging etc for the measurement) but most phones are pretty good at that afaik.
I clearly haven't had good luck on this front. My iPhone is showing a battery health of "service", and a maximum capacity of 77%, after just 357 cycles.
You could try draining it to zero and recharging it without using it. Sometimes the battery life calibration gets a little off and reports bad numbers. There's not a perfect way to monitor battery health a lot of it is based on the voltage curve of the battery and that's somewhat variable from battery to battery in a way that can mess with the battery health estimate.
There's also the chance you get a slightly bad battery and just got screwed on the lottery.
Tbh I think the microsoft neo (or was it the duo?) was the "best" - have 2 (or more) screens but put them on a hinge. You can get one big screen with whatever panel quality you like (hell, make it a cheap or transflective if you want), or you get a smaller screen if you wish.
There's a reason the Asus Duo is so much cheaper than the ThinkPad Fold X1 and all other OLED "folding" screen devices.
Or, alternatively, they feel like they finally cracked the code and think they can do it better. That's when Apple finally enters a market.
Consider how much money they put in to building a car to cancel it when they decided they couldn't, in fact, do it better. I'm sure there are hundreds - maybe thousands - of failed prototypes along the way.
A lot of the iPhone design decisions have generally had the nature of something I didn't like that some market research must have shown to be in demand. And so the iPhones have kept getting bigger, even though I've held on to my 4, 5S, and SE's for dear life.
People seem to want them, so Apple end up selling them. We're probably in the minority, and I can't fault Apple for not turning down the money.
Although I do wonder how the hell cases and screen protectors work for foldables.
Opposite opinion. I have the Huawei trifold, and it's by far my favorite phone I've ever used. I'm typing this on that phone right now, half-unfolded to square mode.
I don't care that it is a few mm thicker than other phones when it's in my pocket. It's so much better than a regular phone for everything from reading books to writing email to watching YouTube, and it's also a slightly thicker regular phone. It also has a pretty good UI for moving apps to side-by-side mode, which I use so often that I'm 100% sure I will never go back to a regular phone.
I think it's because they're running out of ideas too BUT the current generations of foldables (galaxy fold 7 for example) are essentially indistinguishable from non folding phones when closed. Yes, that means they could have made a thinner phone over all - the Galaxy Fold is the same thickness as the iPhone 17 pro max but both are twice as thick as the air - but I think consumers have gotten use to thick heavy phones - its why the SE and air don't sell as well IMO
I guess a foldable phone that unfolds to be that large kind of competes/kills the market for iPad, so this kind of user probably expects to store the device in a bag instead of pocket, and use bluetooth / smartwatch / siri to interact hands free instead of pulling the phone out all the time.
The iPad lineup has forked into two classes that seem to be drifting in the direction of “alternative laptop” or “portable television” respectively. A big folding phone would maybe eat into that second case somewhat, but I still view it as a distinct specialization. The difference would probably be clearer if they set up iPadOS to be viable as a shared multi-user/family device instead of assuming it must have a single owner.
The last two Apple products I purchased for myself were:
- OPENSTEP 4.2 --- for use on a NeXT Cube w/ a Wacom ArtZ tablet
- Newton MessagePad
I've been waiting for Apple to make a product which I want to use since the Newton was shut down, making do w/ a succession of Windows tablets and a Wacom One display attached to my MacBook, and a Kindle Scribe (recently upgraded to a Coloursoft), and a Galaxy Note 10+ --- being able to use the same stylus on all of my devices is quite nice.
not necessarily, some foldables are almost as thin as a usual phone even when folded.
But as much as I like flip phones aesthetics, I do agree there lot of other meaningful areas where the R&D spend is actually needed
Try the RAZR style folding phones. It trades length for thickness which is a godsend for me. I hate how unpocketable phones has been ever since like 10 years ago.
Apple Watch and AirPods were certainly category-defining products, some people would also argue that the iPad was. So 2010 or before is certainly not fair.
> Personally, I would want that R&D spend and innovation to go to more sustainable materials, longer lasting devices, and easily repairable parts to extend the devices useful life.
Does the broad market care about sustainable materials? What does that even mean? Almost no one buys something because of sustainable.
For longer lasting devices, people like buying new phones. The iPhone has pretty much not changed in the last 5 years. People just like buying the new and best
Same thing w/ repairable parts. People just like buying new things. And it's not a conspiracy theory, it's just observed behavior.
So I'm glad they're trying something, because as much as you would like these other things, the broader market of consumers don't care. Yes profits are a useful proxy for value people place on your activities. Not perfect but in the long run if you provide a shitty experience you're likely to lose.
That is likely what it will be. The iPhone Air was probably just a test to see if all the super-thin components could work. Now they'll throw a hinge in the middle and a screen on the back. It'll end up being 2 or 3mm thicker, because of the bonus screen.
I was hoping for a small phone as well since I’ve read rumours about the display being 5.3in when folded. However it also said 7.8in unfolded, which implies 4.1in × 3.3in folded… quite big and squarish.
I considered the Z Flip many times, because I want something that is smaller by default. But people who have used one have regular display issues. I'm hoping that Apple somehow nailed this better than the competition.
The thinness and low weight of the Air is also great though. I hope that Google makes a Pixel like that, so that I can have a phone with GrapheneOS that is this thin/light.
They made the worst laptop keyboard of the last 3 decades, and put it in their $1000 laptops, AND then refused to update it until 2019 when it could've been fixed a whole year earlier.
Straight junk, forced onto all of their laptop buyers for multiple model-year updates.
Sure, they have a reputation for quality today (in general), but that wasn't even a decade ago and you've already forgot. Classic apple discourse.
But they still make repairs very difficult in case of accidental damage, random failure, or inevitably battery wear.
Glued batteries, soldered storage, keyboards and screens that absolutely aren't designed to be swapped out in the event of damage. There's still an element of planned obsolescence even if reliability/quality generally seems better than the competition.
For an end user the “very difficult” repair process is to go to an Apple Store and either get it repaired under warranty or pay a parts and labor fee for it. It’s not actually planned obsolescence so much as tighter control over the supply chain of device parts.
> Apple's MO has never been to make junk that breaks.
Have you never used their cables? I don't think I've seen a single Apple cable lasting more than a few years if they're being used daily, the only ones that last are the ones that are kept static for the entire time.
Their computing hardware is great otherwise, no disagreement there. But their cables are the polar-opposite of whatever engineering methodologies they use for their computing hardware.
So because their cables were subpar at one point (hint: they were bad because they got rid of insidious chemicals you don't want in your house), that means that's not their MO?
Failure at a mission statement does not mean you have a different mission statement.
> So because their cables were subpar at one point
What do you mean at one point? We bought a laptop for my wife a year ago, cable is almost broken already, behind the connector. They really don't seem to know how to make cables today or before.
> Failure at a mission statement does not mean you have a different mission statement.
Ok? MO or no MO, the cables have useless durability even compared to cheaper cables.
This is a pet hate of mine. My whole family has iPhones but only my wife and daughters cables break because they use the phones while they are plugged in. The cable gets bent sharply where it joins the connector causing it to break.
I'm not sure if the newer braided cables are better or not as they don't have them.
I have never needed to replace mine as when the phone is plugged in and charging I don't use it.
> cables break because they use the phones while they are plugged in.
Is that something Apple advise iPhone users not to do, or why would that be a problem? Other cables can handle being bent sharply, Apple's cables break way faster than other's.
Anecdotal, but for what it's worth, only two of my Apple charging cables have broken since 2007. I always hear about people having issues with them, so maybe I've been lucky with all of mine, or maybe I just don't treat them like I expect them to be indestructible.
People beat the hell out of cables. People yank on cables to unplug instead of the connectors, wad them up in the bottom of a bag and drop books on them, etc.
I don’t think I’ve ever had an Apple cable fail, all the way back to the 30 pin.
I know people who put up with Android because they want a foldable phone, to be able to read documents more easily without carrying two devices. They're clearly not for everyone, but the relative sales of Pro vs Air or Mini suggest that these will be more popular than this suggests.
iPhone useful life is already pretty great. I'm using one regularly from 2020 (as a work device) - better than any laptop I've ever owned including classic-era Thinkpads have lasted as a daily driver.
Considering how many people are dailying >6.8 inch phones (already massive in the average sized pocket), complaining about a thickness of 11mm* is just small brain behavior. I guarantee the weight is what you're noticing more than the thickness.
As someone who's into foldables but doesn't use one, the benefits are very real, especially if you read a lot of articles/blogs. Only reason I'm not using one is I can't afford the ones I want. How is a smaller phone, that's ideal for 1-handed use while having an expansive screen available at any moment, "running out of ideas"??? I like large screens, and I like being able to fit it in a small chassis. That's all it is.
* Samsung, Oppo, and Google's currently available foldables are all under 11mm
I don't believe it's really that, but the fact that Apple 1) is profitable 2) holds a lot of cash, and 3) has a proven capability to execute new products.
So by not attempting to enter market niches, they could be potentially leaving a lot of money on the table, while the downside of the product failing to get traction doesn't really kill them.
A foldable iPhone will definitely solve one of the biggest problems at Apple. Foldable phones won't last 5-10 years. I can see Apple making all iPhone offerings foldable down the road
Are they really having any issue getting people to upgrade? At least here in Canada, carriers harass everyone to upgrade with deals where you can get a new phone for $0 once your contract is up to keep you renewing your contract.
My non-techie parents pretty much always get the latest non-Pro iPhone every couple years because their carrier calls them and practically begs them to take a new phone.
It's extremely rare to see anyone with a phone older than like 4 years.
For me at least the screen size isn’t the limiting factor the lack of a keyboard is. I don’t know why I’d choose this device over a Neo or Air + non-folding phone.
Mentions of the resizable iOS apps seem to signal a desktop dock mode, which ties into your concern.
We know Apple is bringing a folding iPhone through manufacturing leaks. A desktop mode is less likely to be leaked, since it would be mostly software and (a lot) less reliant on third parties.
Foldables are life changing - everyone I know who's got one, doesn't go back.
It's all the benefits of a tablet with the weight/thickness of a cell.
Example: maps shows both the map and listing detail.
Example: messaging/email apps show the message/channel list and the current message
Example: virtual keyboard has plenty of space for punctuation, emojis, etc.
Example: games and multimedia are perfectly pleasant to view, even for hours.
Example: I used the remote-control app to take photos from my Sony and Fuji cameras, and the live preview was large enough to easily check for tack-sharpness, which is hard even in the camera viewfinder.
I don't think I get foldable phones. When is the extra space necessary? I mean most of them turn from a somewhat 9:16 aspect ratio to 1:1. You don't earn anything in space to consume media content. The only real improvement might be for multitasking?
The foldable iPhone will have an aspect ratio very close to 3:2 for the outer display (like the original iPhone) and of 1.41:1 (between 3:2 and 4:3) for the inner display (similar to an iPad).
Running two full size apps at once is pretty nice. Text conversation and website, things like that. Or copying and pasting credentials out of a password manager
I mean you can see more at once but now your typing experience is worse. I have an iPad and it's by far my least productive device unless it's connected to a physical keyboard. Typing on a giant touchscreen is so much more tedious than my phone's screen.
It's not perfect, but there are plenty of things I do where I'm not typing very much, but I am swapping back and forth between apps or web pages quite a bit.
> stop thinking about creating software for a specific piece of hardware. Design software to be adaptable across a range of screen sizes and aspect ratios
This is right, of course, and pretty obvious I think. But a part of me also thinks that we're still not good at it (or are not good at it anymore). At the very least, the tradeoff is a huge increase in UI complexity. It was so, so easy to design UIs with Hypercard when you knew it was going to run on a 512×342 display.
Everyone I know over 70 would love something that works like a phone when folded but like a tablet unfolded -- big enough for text to be big, small enough to carry, and without fiddly interface -- and at a reasonable price for those anchored in 1980 prices.
(If those under 17 got attached to foldables, it would be an enduring franchise.)
For those of us in between, I'd love it if my foldable when unfolded were finally the OS of choice - iPadOS or iOS or even macOS. It would be the hub for hub-and-spoke devices...
The OS of choice may be an “impossible” ask from Apple. However with the Neo running on the A18 I don’t think we’re far from seeing something along those lines.
I am not fully convinced that a foldable is really going to be something that most will want, but I think it could find its niche. Given that from another article it seems that in the simulator it is using the iPad view it could be useful for some people.
Though, I have yet to find myself in a situation that I wanted to use an iPad and I was not already in a position to be carrying one. I use mine for work and I am already carrying a laptop, throwing in an iPad is a very small addition to my bag.
Any time I have just been out, was never a situation I felt like I needed something like an iPad. Throw in that this looks like it will be the size of a Mini vs the 13" pro that I use now, it puts it in an awkward position. And I could justify the rumored $2k cost to replace 2 devices that cost more than that combined.
It will be interesting to see how it does in practice, but also what it does to the separation of iOS and iPadOS.
Reminds me of a billboard I saw where Apple was touting the alleged privacy of the iPhone with a guy wearing clothes nearly the same color as his skin. I know iPhone isn't really private, and I'd rather not have a phone that isn't repairable, but I can appreciate the clever marketing in both cases.
How about phones that you can attach one to another and have as much of a phone as you want? Buy two phones - simple foldable. 4? That's almost a tablet worth of screen estate. Want more? Only your budget is the limit. Go as far as 85" TV if you want.
More than that, it forces iPhone-only devs to get with the program and make their apps usable on larger screens too.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if next year they dissolve the iPhone/iPad distinction on the App Store altogether and maybe even remove the Catalyst toggle on the Mac App Store. If you make an iOS app, it’s also a full fledged iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS app too.
I certainly wouldn’t mind. On my Mac there are some needlessly heavy electron apps I’d swap out for their iOS counterparts in a heartbeat if that were possible, as well as some games that would run fine on macOS but their devs don’t tick the checkbox for unclear reasons.
> I wouldn’t be surprised at all if next year they dissolve the iPhone/iPad distinction on the App Store altogether
I hadn't thought about it but it makes sense and it makes me wonder how far this would reach throughout the rest of the OS. If the iPhone can fold out into an iPad Mini, will it get the rest of the iPadOS features? The iPad used to run iOS but they rebranded the version that runs on iPad to iPadOS to distinguish that it has a handful of unique features only for big screens, mainly pertaining to multitasking. But if the line is being blurred and iPhones will have big screens with multitasking, will they go back to just calling it iOS on all mobile devices?
You're just arguing about marketing. Apple has moved to a One device, one OS dichotomy they will not rethink because the foldable iPhone gets a version of the iPad's multitasking. And engineering-wise, when they moved the naming to iPad OS, nothing changed behind the curtain. The iPad still runs the same codebase it did before the marketing switch. They didn't fork anything.
I think they’re going to continue to make some features device-specific. They probably want to position the foldable iPhone as a midway compromise device rather than a full iPad and flagship iPhone replacement, targeting customers who prefer breadth over depth and capability when it comes to features.
The software opportunity is what's interesting. Apple making an iPhone that becomes an iPad could finally make multitasking on mobile actually work. Hardware is table stakes, the UI decisions are what will matter.
Really intrigued to see what Apple's design chops brings to this form factor. I'd love more screen real estate so I can travel without a damn laptop. The big question is how thick will it be?
i’ve been waiting a few years for iphone fold, im excited that they’re releasing it this year.
its both iphone mini (yay!! mini iphone again) and ipad mini (yay!! hueg screen for bedtime youtube) in one device presumably with a cpu powerful enough to run cyberpunk 2077. what a world :)
I think you'll be very surprised at how successful this is.
Do you remember the Microsoft prototype for a folding tablet? It would have two different apps running, and you could use the spine to pull data between them, a kind of visual clipboard.
I don't think that workflow is as important now, but having two apps open (one on each side of a device) is going to be killer, and it's something they're clearly hinting at with some of their asks for developers (and with their iPad OS).
I can't see myself paying for foldables, but I think they are incredibly neat. I spend a ton of time on my phone, and the idea that the screen could get much bigger really tempts!
That said, I really wonder if this could be a shark jump move. I think one of iOS app's biggest wins is that developers have a relatively narrow set of form factors to target, that making bespoke interface layouts is the obvious choice & that that really allows careful crafting. I'm overselling this case a bit, but it feels like Apple is saying: ok, now make your apps responsive. Add more. Some folks will figure out each layout nicely, but I feel like in many cases, the responsive layouts are going to be less well crafted, not have such thought out intracacies.
I love responsiveness, but it generally pushes layout complexity down, requires simpler / plainer design languages, in my view. This pushes away from bespoke careful craft, and towards mechanized systems, and there's some design loss in this push.
The thing I liked most about the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 I had for a while was that I met a lot of interesting people because of it.
It broke like four times under warranty because the crease got gummed up with their glue strips in the summer or it got brittle when I travelled to Greenland because of the cold in the winter, it felt uncomfortable and often moved in the pocket you put it into in a way that would annoy you every time you sat down somewhere.
But once you pull it out, something magical happens. Foldables are still one of those items you will rarely see in the wild, and it peaks the curiosity of people in a way that will make them come over and ask questions.
You see them touch it really carefully and open it really, really slowly because they are afraid they might break it, and suddenly you have this magical, foldable screen right in front of you that turns this heavy slab into a form factor known by anyone who ever held a book in their life.
When it snaps open or shut with the satisfying noise and haptic feedback, it makes them genuinely happy and smile, and watching different people having the same experience over and over again is kind of satisfying and in a way justified the price for me alone.
I am sure the Apple foldable will have its downsides and is heavily overpriced, and if you buy it in the EU, you won’t be able to use half the features, but I am still going to get one because I will have a lot of joy watching people interact with new technology for the first time when I travel, and I love listening to how they think it could improve their life or how and for what they would get one themselves.
I can't imagine they'd release a crappy folding thing like the Samsung, I think it's more likely to be effectively dual-screen that can be unfurled into something where the two screens are side by side.
This is the only phone I've seen people move away from iPhone to get, I know at least 3 women who switched from iPhone to android to get the folding clamshell Samsung and all love it.
The triple folding phone is interesting to me but I still am not at the point where I feel comfortable having a $2K phone. Where you can get a Motorolla with 12GB of RAM for $80
I mention RAM as Android with 4GB of ram is almost unusable.
Are you citing subsidized prices, or used prices? I can only find $80 Motorolas used or locked, e.g.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D323V72S and that's 4GB
12GB seems to get up into $200+, and that's still a lot of "renewed" listings.
You can find quirky little loss-leader deals here and there sometimes but I don't think you're getting 12GB of RAM for $80 on a routine basis.
Anyway it's certainly not the same phone as a flagship folding phone but for daily everyday needs more than adequate, I even was able to run multiple gig apps eg. DoorDash/Uber Eats on the 8GB model.
I will say what people consider "worth the money" varies since I bought a $1,000.00 radar detector and it's like who buys that...
I'm 100% certain it will sell out at the release and you will have to wait few months to get it. I don't know where people get the idea that only few people will be able to afford that phone.
Apple has used this kind of blurry resizing animation in the past. For example, circa macOS 10.14 Mojave resizing windows in Split View would have the same effect: https://youtu.be/KDDMUxBtnkI
current view transition stack on ios was built for static transition between two well know layouts, like portrait to landscape rotation change. i would like live reflow too but i suspect 99% of existing apps aren’t ready to reflow at 120hz when they’ve been written around tween(start layout, end layout) style for decades
UIKit apps can already resize fluidly on Mac Catalyst and iPadOS. I suspect the issue here is more related to the video encoding / streaming used for iPhone Mirroring.
Wow seriously? To me it looks like a throwback to Windows 95 lightweight settings or some lightweight WM of the early 2000s like Fluxbox/OpenBox which didn't implement proper resizing to save on resources.
> This is the PSOTU’s message, which states clearly and plainly: stop thinking about creating software for a specific piece of hardware. Design software to be adaptable across a range of screen sizes and aspect ratios.
I remember so many Apple developers saying this was why Apple was better than Android. The HN archives are full of such comments.
Not that I care for either company, as they both lord over our lives and limit our freedoms.
Apple hasn't "invented" most things, from the personal computer, MP3 Player, or smart phone. They tend to revolutionize the things by making them work extremely well.
if by 'revolutionize', you mean 'let everybody else spend time, effort and money developing the idea, and once they've proven the market they buy an interesting company in the space with tons of patents, shut down everything they'd done before and make their interesting and take credit for the revolution, meanwhile, their new presence in the area mutes actual innovation, because they use all of the oxygen in the room'... sure, yeah, they do that... but the revolution was coming whether Apple participated or not.
Before Apple Silicon, who was making equivalent laptops? Highly competitive performance, great battery life, instant wake from sleep, pristine build quality, etc.
Forget before Apple Silicon, who's making an equivalent laptop now?
Exactly, they deliver products that are better than their competition and thanks to that they got extremely rich. It's a great example of capitalism working as intended.
Hey, if they can get the hinge working better it might improve the category at least. You'd expect Apple to do well at manufacturing for that kinda stuff
Agree, their "innovations" usually involve taking an existing concept or idea and executing it better. Hopefully they can pull that off and raise the bar for foldable electronics
They also buy a lot of their innovations. See Intrinsity, a fabless semi company Apple bought which lead to their Mobile Arm chips and eventually the M series.
Current foldables are fragile, require a built-in plastic screen protector, and have a visible crease. Apple is very unlikely to be willing to accept those compromises. We'll see, but I think their entry into the field will change things.
15 years ago, I would agree that Apple might not have been willing to accept those kinds of issues. I'm not sure about the Apple of today. That is not a slight against any Apple leadership, but I do feel that, for a variety of reasons, the level of minimum QC has notched back a bit in the pursuit of marketshare.
Apple fumbled on QC with software this past year, but have they with hardware? I've found their hardware (both computer and physical builds) has been very high quality still.
Sure this isn't just nostalgia / rose-tinted glasses speaking? In the 2010s, Apple shipped MacBooks with GPUs that fried themselves to death, and iPhones that bent in your pocket and lost cell signal if you held them wrong. Today's Apple does have some software quality issues, but their hardware is the best it's ever been.
Could be nostalgia for sure, but the issues you are describing were not anticipated or immediately obvious on initial launch (at least as far as I recall).
From what I have seen of folding screens today, they come with some significant trade offs (creases, wear, etc). Over time, I expect these to be solved, but I don't think folding screens are a luxury item today as much as they are a tech novelty. But, the cell phone market has kind of stagnated in terms of hardware, and it looks like folding screens might be the thing to drive some upgrade purchases. During the peak iphone growth phase I believe Apple would have labelled these screens as not ready yet, but today I think they risk losing market share and are potentially somewhat forced to build a folding iphone.
The iPhone camera bump is the "jumped the shark" moment for me when Apple went from unwilling to accept that level of quality to "I'm not sure... they might". Speculative to be sure, but I believe that if Jobs was alive we'd have a paper thin camera sensor because the bump would have been a nonstarter.
Same regarding your comment... I agree, the minimum QC does feel like it notched back a bit.
"hey guys remember that screen technology that came out seven years ago and has had plenty of time to mature? Well our 65 year old CEO just discovered it and has found a way to make it stratospherically more expensive than its ever been before!"
I think discussion here are missing that most people do not own a PC/laptop and if they do barely ever opens one, and not because they can't afford it, but it just didn't fit into their daily lives. This is obviously entirely different from the HN crowd.
And in that case, a folding phone is huge! Having played with one that my parent use, it's such an upgrade for reading/scrolling experience. When we all are spending so much time on the phone (that's a separate discussion, but it is the reality).
What's huge about it for someone who doesn't own a PC laptop?
Every example I've seen or tried using a fold-able was just a regular smartphone with a screen that displayed apps that looked like the app doesn't fit on the phone very well. The few that did fit didn't seem to provide any real advantage.
That and the fold-able users I know all run into reliability issues with screens breaking over time.
With my foldable, I find that I hardly use the full display and just use the main screen.
I thought exactly this until I used it for >2 hours.
That doesn’t really answer the question.
Exactly. Considering you could buy an iPhone and a MacBook Neo for roughly the same cost … will be very interesting to see this device in action. Can iOS replace MacOS for a user that doesn’t need a local Xcode? Can I spend $2k for the device I use in my pocket and on my desk… and put the rest of my money into cloud/server infrastructure if I have that need?
I worked a corporate job for 6yrs off an iPad Pro.
To be fair, where this applies is specific countries outside the US, not just outside tech. Very few Americans own a smartphone and not a computer, and they are mostly poor and not in the market for an ultra-luxury phone. You’re describing affluent counties that became so recently, like China, South Korea, and Japan, and indeed that’s where foldables are currently doing well.
Especially in asian countries where PC penetration is lower.
Yeah, to support this point I'd also like to point that mobile gaming is larger market than both PC and console gaming.
I've been dailying a pixel fold 9 pro for a while now and love the thing. Seeing Apple finally join in is exciting as heck. I wouldn't hold your breath for a non visible crease though, nor for it to necessarily be class leading in its screen tech. I doubt any of it matters though, the Pixel Folds aren't exactly class leading in these regards either and the fold is just not a concern at all once you're using it. it's practically invisible from head on, and the "plastic screen protector" worries are really not an issue either. The durability of the inner screen is actually much better than you'd expect since it spends most of its pocketed life protected from external scratches. Mines still in great shape, even though I do not use a case nor any other form of protector.
Where apple has a significant opportunity here is the software side though. Google unfortunately doesn't seem to be too interested in exploring UI concepts with the Fold, leaving that to OnePlus and Samsung, both of which have imo better multitasking experiences than the Pixel Fold. Apple making an iPhone that becomes an iPad would probably be enough for them to win significant marketshare, but I hope they use this opportunity to do some interesting things with UI beyond what the iPad can do.
>pixel
>I do not use a case
I have a Pixel 8a, and I have to use a case for it, because it appears to be designed to be as slippery as possible. Every edge is round and there's nothing to grip - it feels like an aluminium/glass bar of wet soap.
I have a 9 pro and it was very slippery at first. I put it face down on a slanted table and it slid right off once.
Anyway, I took the case off after a while. It's not new anymore. Your mileage may vary, but despite dropping it a bunch, it hasn't shattered and the edge only shows some slight marks from falling.
Recently went from an 8 to a 10 pro fold
The 10 feels like it should be more slippery, but for some reason, it isn't. It stays stuck in your hand like glue, despite the back feeling like another glass screen. Something special in is coating
Interesting. That's been one of my main issues with my normal 8 Pro. Sometimes I'm tempted to go caseless but the damn thing is so slick.
Yeah, it's one of those things that's hard to describe, but the 10pf, despite being thicker and heavier, seems to be easier to hold
Since I sometimes like to walk and browse, I ordered one of the Qi rings that goes on the back of the device, since it's just magnetic, I can remove it for pocketing and such
Yeah I use a case with a magsafe compatible ring embedded in it and I have one of the magnetic popsockets on there for extra ease of grabbing. Glad that's showing up in the next gen of pixels maybe by the time I upgrade it'll still be there or in way more phones too.
How timely, I'm writing this from a Pixel 10 Pro Fold I bought in January.
Last night I opened it to find the inside screen having dead pixels in the center by the bend.
I love foldable phones. I use it all the time in both modes, but now I'm currently procrastinating looking up my best buy warranty plan specifics.
For a small percentage of mobile superusers, I really do believe foldables are the future. Having the ability to use desktop mode by default, or multitask, is huge.
I've gone all the way around and came back. The Samsung Fold was awesome and convenient. But carrying an ipad mini and a phone is not that big a deal. It's quite nice that the ipad mini does not have whatsapp or SMS plugged into it, so I can use it exclusively for reading books or playing music.
The cost of the iPad Mini + my phone was like $600 and the folds - even the 6th gen and above - are super unreliable, so right now that seems like the best play.
It depends I guess. I really like my foldable. Got it for 500€ on a special deal.
It's really nice to have a tablet always with you. I live in a warm country so I don't usually wear a coat or a big bag.
Also, on android there's really no good small tablets. They're all 10" and bigger.
> But carrying an ipad mini and a phone is not that big a deal.
For you maybe, but for most it is, or we'd all be doing it.
Or not. Some of us are okay with phones the size they are so we are not tempted to stare at them even more.
Some of us wish minis were still be made.
What do you mean? iPad Minis are totally still made...
i_Phone_ minis
Although there might be a /s missing from your post lol
I'd forgotten the phone mini even existed and the last mini in the thread was the pad mini.
If my eyesight were better, I would 100% want a mini
Foldables are a niche market, so that's not a good argument.
It is a pain to carry an iPad and a phone if you are walking. You need either large pockets or a handbag. If it is warm then you don't want either,
iPad mini is awesome for reading however, it took forever until Apple powered it up.
Personally, as someone being used to the Motorola Razor foldable, which happened to present back then. It was really good and cool as well. I hated the ever smaller getting Ericson smartphones.
I am looking forward to Apple's copy of Samsungs foldable smartphones. After all, I don't want to carry an iPhone as well as an iPad mini around with me.
And I see the foldable more as a replacement for the iPhone ultra max phones. No matter how large the screensize they have, they never beat the iPad mini on readability, even being stuck with the old one for many years.
> It's quite nice that the ipad mini does not have whatsapp or SMS plugged into it, so I can use it exclusively for reading books or playing music.
Both a phone and a tablet can come with WhatsApp, it's a user choice whether they are there and the frequency of checking them. Global muting the apps is also an option.
I understand your point, but it is a point mitigated by user intervention. Now, if we want to say reading on a bigger screen than a phone is a better user experience, I'm on board with that.
> But carrying an ipad mini and a phone is not that big a deal
I did this way back when the first iPad mini was released, and it's not bad.
But these days, the big iPhone is 7 inches to the iPad mini's 8 inches... the phone is big enough for most iPad mini use cases
The thing I like about the iPad Mini is that it's an optional carry. I don't need an 8" device every time I leave the house. And maybe that's going to be the appeal of the foldable.
Another benefit of the foldable over the ipad mini + regular phone is managing internet connectivity is a lot easier. Also no need for 2 separate sessions on whatever apps/websites you're currently using. As much as syncing states works fine nowadays, it'll never match just sticking to one device and not having separate browsers / note taking apps for your phone + the ipad.
I also don't foresee ipad minis going down that much in size, whereas foldables are constantly being made in smaller sizes (in height, thickness, weight, and even a variety of aspect ratios).
Price is the final real hurdle for most of these things IMO.
In general, managing a single device is always going to be easier than managing multiple -- fewer things to keep charged, fewer updates to run, less stuff to carry, etc.
Yeah, I got used to the big phone, and it's nice to have the big screen around when you are stuck at the bus stop watching YouTube. But I know its an awkward carry for lot of people.
How do you carry your iPad mini? Does it fit in pockets?
I have a small shoulder bag which also holds wet wipes, a bottle of water, raincoat in case it rains etc... can't really go back to just using my pockets now.
It fits in a front pocket if you wear Dockers or equivalent, which have notoriously large pockets. It fits well in the front of a backpack. It's most akin to a slightly wide paperback book.
> It's quite nice that the ipad mini does not have whatsapp or SMS plugged into it, so I can use it exclusively for reading books or playing music.
Eh, iOS has profiles that let you disable whatever apps you wish to. Better than a whole other piece of hardware, IMO
The iPad Mini is such an underrated device. For years they have been my primary computing device. The form factor is so close to a paperback book that it's easy to carry with you. Heck, it even fits in the front pocket of my Dockers. Toss in in the front compartment of my backpack.
A big thing about the form factor is the perception. If you are in a meeting and pull out a full size iPad or your laptop to look something up, it certainly feels different than using your mini. Same at a restaurant.
At the park with the dog I can carry it like a paperback, sit on the grass and read. It's perfect for everything except phone calls.
Also, one of the session videos illustrated the content with an app for keeping track of one's fleet of paper airplanes.
And another was about origami.
Not a fan of foldables, if I am honest. Just a personal opinion. I do not like the it feels in the pocket bc the device needs to double its thickness when folding over.
When a mobile device manufacturer (samsung, hauwei, now apple) makes a foldable, I get the impression they're running out of ideas with the "slate" form factor and are trying to stimulate sales.
Personally, I would want that R&D spend and innovation to go to more sustainable materials, longer lasting devices, and easily repairable parts to extend the devices useful life.
You and me both, but I also recognize others disagree so ultimately, we'll see what the market decides.
Apple's annual gross profit was $195B last year against an R&D budget of around $35B. So, they've got more than enough spare change to throw around. I'm sure whatever they're spending on foldables isn't impairing them financially in any way.
I'm more concerned for what it means for focus, fragmented ecosystems, user experience, etc.
From Jobs: "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done."
> we'll see what the market decides
The market && apple's choice of either pricing it aggressively or pricing it so that nobody can afford it. Both have equal weighting here.
The Z fold has succeeded enough that I see it out and about even outside tech-circles. Oppo and Google have had multiple generations of well-recieved folables too, despite not nearly having the marketing machine of someone like Apple.
The new Samsung fold 7s while folded are less than a mm thicker than an iPhone 17.
And it feels like a regular phone when folded. Not noticeably thick at all.
Some folks just have to complain for the sake of complaining, must give them a little dopamine hit or something.
Or maybe they haven’t held the very latest. The 6 was notably thicker.
Even if you haven't, searching up dimensions on the current foldables takes all of 15 seconds.
It should be obvious to anyone who cares about phone hardware even a little that older foldables won't be the end-all of how thin the packaging is ever going to get.
The assumption that even future foldables will feel like holding two typical 7-8mm phones together is just an obivous case of no research and stereotypical hn complaining.
I don’t know why you’re so uncharitable toward someone who holds a different opinion than you. The idea that someone needs to research device dimensions in order to share their personal experience with foldables is a bit much. Instead of accusing them of complaining for the “dopamine hit”, you could have said “hey, your experience is out of date”.
That’s what jayd16 did, and then you rolled in with a complaint about people who complain, which is pretty rich.
Maybe because on hacker news, you expect slightly higher quality comments. Or at least a more forward-thinking opinion on consumer hardware.
Holding a different opinion is great, but dismissing on a modern cutting edge form-factor, one that has lots of love (as you can see even just in this thread), one that has painfully obvious benefits for reading, all because of "thickness" is daft considering the current crop of foldable.
Price would make 100% sense. But thickness? C'mon.
Some people genuinely go online just to complain. If he'd made a reasonable argument, I'd happily respond charitably.
> Some people genuinely go online just to complain.
This is literally you in this thread.
Nice mate. Everything I said has been in support of apple, or anyone else, pursuing and developing a foldable. I'm 100% a fan of foldables, and my point was that they're just going to get thinner. Thus making the "thickness" complaint even more of a non-issue than it already is with the currently available foldables. Almost entirely <11mm across the industry btw.
If you think that's just complaining, I don't know what else to tell you.
But its a samsung. Deal breaker.
> When a mobile device manufacturer [...] are trying to stimulate sales
> more sustainable materials, longer lasting devices, and easily repairable parts to extend the devices useful life
What they are doing, like all for-profit companies, is focusing on profits, for better or worse.
What you are suggesting (and what I'd like to) directly works against the goal of making more profits, literally all of those things will lead to less income for them.
I also want those things, but realistically, because of the economic systems we have, those things will never be the focus, because the market doesn't reward those things, and doesn't seem likely that'll change either.
I don't know what the solution is either, status quo simply sucks, with no escape in sight. Seems to be getting worse in fact.
The solution is legislation and regulation.
In a capitalist system, those are the only ways to get for-profit companies to care about externalities (which is what sustainability and longevity address).
It's definitely not due to running out of ideas. I have a Galaxy Fold and love it. I owned it for about two months before my wife went out and bought one for herself. And everywhere I go people want to look at it and play with it - quite remarkable.
I haven't encountered any issues with apps not supporting the wider aspect ratio. It's one of those cases in which Android's up-front investment in more flexible software paid off. Android apps were harder to write up front because they had to support resizable layouts from the get go, but by the time stuff like foldables were introduced the software library was already ready for it all.
Think it'll last 5 years? I don't strongly care one way or the other about the form factor, but if it's more expensive, less durable, and has a worse camera, then I'm perfectly happy to have a one-piece phone.
I don't know but honestly I tend to lose, destroy or want to upgrade phones within five years anyway. So I'm not that sensitive to how long they last. I don't remember when I bought this one but it's probably 2-3 years old now and so far there haven't been any issues with it.
For me the ability to read on a bigger screen is the selling point. I flip it open to read things all the time. Feels like a small book.
Electric car drivers have range anxiety, and I assume foldable phone users have fold anxiety. Do the OS integrate some counter versus Mean Folds to Failure?
The issue with repairability is always the conflict between water resistance, thickness and feel vs the compromises to that needed to make removable batteries or back cases work. There are ways around it but the vast majority of the market prefers solid near glued together phones so that's what companies make.
> I get the impression they're running out of ideas with the "slate" form factor and are trying to stimulate sales.
I think we've just reached the local maximum of the phone design and adding folding gives two different branches to go down: 1) same size screen unfolded but smaller folded size or 2) folded with an external screen roughly the same size as a normal phone today but it expands to a much larger one unfolded. We'd kind of reached the peak size that people can reasonably pocket so option 2 allows for even bigger screens for people willing to pay without having to have a second device (something like a tablet).
The folds do add functionality and I think there's an impulse that leads people to say they don't see the point of something just because they're not interested in it personally.
> the vast majority of the market prefers solid near glued together phones so that's what companies make.
the vast majority of companies only make solid near-glued together phones, so that is all anyone buys.
if apple made a phone with replaceable batteries with a bit more thickness and some compromises on water resistance vs. cost, you'd actually see the consumer preferences play out.
> The folds do add functionality and I think there's an impulse that leads people to say they don't see the point of something just because they're not interested in it personally.
you're going to have to go through some real mental contortions to support foldable phones as consumer choice while treating repairability/replaceability as inherently not worth it because you like slim designs.
> if apple made a phone with replaceable batteries with a bit more thickness and some compromises on water resistance vs. cost, you'd actually see the consumer preferences play out.
We already went through the period of offering both and people preferred the thin hard to repair slabs we have now. There were quite a few phones made during the transition to the current state and the overwhelming purchasing choice was eliminate replicable batteries.
I'd love it if we could make slightly thicker phones (I put cases on my phone still I'm not chasing absolute thinness contrary to your assumptions) with the same battery capacity and feel, but there's a lot more of a trade off than just a little thickness when you go back to the old replicable battery. You lose a lot of capacity vs volume when you make the battery removable because it needs it's own plastic shell and you have to have a water resistant cavity to insert it into. Both of those eat up probably 10-20% of the capacity you can place in the same area with a bare(ish) lithium polymer pack that goes into the current design.
It's nice to believe people would agree with you if only they had the choice companies have stripped away from them to make again but it's not like people didn't have a chance to buy repairable smartphones over the current version already.. Most people just don't really think about replacing their phone's battery ever until it's a problem.
> the compromises to that needed to make removable batteries or back cases work
Seems like they are going to have to make that compromise, at least in the EU market. User-replaceable batteries from 2027 onwards, unless they are willing to quit the market (probably still requiring screwdrivers, but hey, its something)
Unlikely because the law includes this out for manufacturers, manufacturers are exempt from the user-replacement rule if their devices are waterproof (IP67 or higher) and utilize ultra-durable batteries that retain 83% capacity after 500 cycles and 80% capacity after 1,000 charge cycles. That's skipped over in a lot of the headlines about the law.
A lot of phones these days are at least IP67 if not better. My Pixel 8 is IP68 so it comes down to the battery capacity retention and how well they can game that measurement (slower charging etc for the measurement) but most phones are pretty good at that afaik.
> but most phones are pretty good at that afaik
I clearly haven't had good luck on this front. My iPhone is showing a battery health of "service", and a maximum capacity of 77%, after just 357 cycles.
You could try draining it to zero and recharging it without using it. Sometimes the battery life calibration gets a little off and reports bad numbers. There's not a perfect way to monitor battery health a lot of it is based on the voltage curve of the battery and that's somewhat variable from battery to battery in a way that can mess with the battery health estimate.
There's also the chance you get a slightly bad battery and just got screwed on the lottery.
Tbh I think the microsoft neo (or was it the duo?) was the "best" - have 2 (or more) screens but put them on a hinge. You can get one big screen with whatever panel quality you like (hell, make it a cheap or transflective if you want), or you get a smaller screen if you wish.
There's a reason the Asus Duo is so much cheaper than the ThinkPad Fold X1 and all other OLED "folding" screen devices.
Or, alternatively, they feel like they finally cracked the code and think they can do it better. That's when Apple finally enters a market.
Consider how much money they put in to building a car to cancel it when they decided they couldn't, in fact, do it better. I'm sure there are hundreds - maybe thousands - of failed prototypes along the way.
A lot of the iPhone design decisions have generally had the nature of something I didn't like that some market research must have shown to be in demand. And so the iPhones have kept getting bigger, even though I've held on to my 4, 5S, and SE's for dear life.
People seem to want them, so Apple end up selling them. We're probably in the minority, and I can't fault Apple for not turning down the money.
Although I do wonder how the hell cases and screen protectors work for foldables.
Opposite opinion. I have the Huawei trifold, and it's by far my favorite phone I've ever used. I'm typing this on that phone right now, half-unfolded to square mode.
I don't care that it is a few mm thicker than other phones when it's in my pocket. It's so much better than a regular phone for everything from reading books to writing email to watching YouTube, and it's also a slightly thicker regular phone. It also has a pretty good UI for moving apps to side-by-side mode, which I use so often that I'm 100% sure I will never go back to a regular phone.
I think it's because they're running out of ideas too BUT the current generations of foldables (galaxy fold 7 for example) are essentially indistinguishable from non folding phones when closed. Yes, that means they could have made a thinner phone over all - the Galaxy Fold is the same thickness as the iPhone 17 pro max but both are twice as thick as the air - but I think consumers have gotten use to thick heavy phones - its why the SE and air don't sell as well IMO
Me neither, but I see a lot of foldables in the wild and I'm far from any tech hotspots, like the Bay Area and Austin.
I guess a foldable phone that unfolds to be that large kind of competes/kills the market for iPad, so this kind of user probably expects to store the device in a bag instead of pocket, and use bluetooth / smartwatch / siri to interact hands free instead of pulling the phone out all the time.
The iPad lineup has forked into two classes that seem to be drifting in the direction of “alternative laptop” or “portable television” respectively. A big folding phone would maybe eat into that second case somewhat, but I still view it as a distinct specialization. The difference would probably be clearer if they set up iPadOS to be viable as a shared multi-user/family device instead of assuming it must have a single owner.
My two favorite Apple products are the iPhone Mini and the iPad Mini. This foldable iPhone looks like it might give me both?
Personally, I think it's nice that companies make products that appeal to different kinds of people.
I just want to be able to use my apple pencil in my phone :(
The last two Apple products I purchased for myself were:
- OPENSTEP 4.2 --- for use on a NeXT Cube w/ a Wacom ArtZ tablet
- Newton MessagePad
I've been waiting for Apple to make a product which I want to use since the Newton was shut down, making do w/ a succession of Windows tablets and a Wacom One display attached to my MacBook, and a Kindle Scribe (recently upgraded to a Coloursoft), and a Galaxy Note 10+ --- being able to use the same stylus on all of my devices is quite nice.
not necessarily, some foldables are almost as thin as a usual phone even when folded. But as much as I like flip phones aesthetics, I do agree there lot of other meaningful areas where the R&D spend is actually needed
Careful what you wish for. Making devices easily repairable increases thickness.
Not neccesarily: https://www.ifixit.com/News/113171/iphone-air-teardown
The irony here is that the iPhone Air is exactly the test device for their foldable, so their foldable will probably be just as repairable.
Try the RAZR style folding phones. It trades length for thickness which is a godsend for me. I hate how unpocketable phones has been ever since like 10 years ago.
Perhaps Apple is also running out of ideas.
Their ideas have rarely been about form-factors or product categories (every knew what a tablet was before the iPad).
To be fair, they ran out of ideas in 2010, if not before.
Apple Watch and AirPods were certainly category-defining products, some people would also argue that the iPad was. So 2010 or before is certainly not fair.
> Personally, I would want that R&D spend and innovation to go to more sustainable materials, longer lasting devices, and easily repairable parts to extend the devices useful life.
Does the broad market care about sustainable materials? What does that even mean? Almost no one buys something because of sustainable.
For longer lasting devices, people like buying new phones. The iPhone has pretty much not changed in the last 5 years. People just like buying the new and best
Same thing w/ repairable parts. People just like buying new things. And it's not a conspiracy theory, it's just observed behavior.
So I'm glad they're trying something, because as much as you would like these other things, the broader market of consumers don't care. Yes profits are a useful proxy for value people place on your activities. Not perfect but in the long run if you provide a shitty experience you're likely to lose.
I want a foldable to make the device smaller in my pocket. Like an iPhone Air that could fold in half like a fliphone.
That is likely what it will be. The iPhone Air was probably just a test to see if all the super-thin components could work. Now they'll throw a hinge in the middle and a screen on the back. It'll end up being 2 or 3mm thicker, because of the bonus screen.
I was hoping for a small phone as well since I’ve read rumours about the display being 5.3in when folded. However it also said 7.8in unfolded, which implies 4.1in × 3.3in folded… quite big and squarish.
You mean like a Galaxy Flip?
I considered the Z Flip many times, because I want something that is smaller by default. But people who have used one have regular display issues. I'm hoping that Apple somehow nailed this better than the competition.
The thinness and low weight of the Air is also great though. I hope that Google makes a Pixel like that, so that I can have a phone with GrapheneOS that is this thin/light.
The purpose of a foldable is to reduce the lifespan of a device, and therefore sell more devices
Apple's MO has never been to make junk that breaks. They're as valuable as they are largely because of their reputation for high quality products.
They made the worst laptop keyboard of the last 3 decades, and put it in their $1000 laptops, AND then refused to update it until 2019 when it could've been fixed a whole year earlier.
Straight junk, forced onto all of their laptop buyers for multiple model-year updates.
Sure, they have a reputation for quality today (in general), but that wasn't even a decade ago and you've already forgot. Classic apple discourse.
But they still make repairs very difficult in case of accidental damage, random failure, or inevitably battery wear.
Glued batteries, soldered storage, keyboards and screens that absolutely aren't designed to be swapped out in the event of damage. There's still an element of planned obsolescence even if reliability/quality generally seems better than the competition.
For an end user the “very difficult” repair process is to go to an Apple Store and either get it repaired under warranty or pay a parts and labor fee for it. It’s not actually planned obsolescence so much as tighter control over the supply chain of device parts.
Are you talking of Apple Records? They're mostly valuable because of the Beatles. Vinyls rarely break under normal usage.
I'm sure you're not referring to the flaky accessory company.
> Apple's MO has never been to make junk that breaks.
Have you never used their cables? I don't think I've seen a single Apple cable lasting more than a few years if they're being used daily, the only ones that last are the ones that are kept static for the entire time.
Their computing hardware is great otherwise, no disagreement there. But their cables are the polar-opposite of whatever engineering methodologies they use for their computing hardware.
So because their cables were subpar at one point (hint: they were bad because they got rid of insidious chemicals you don't want in your house), that means that's not their MO?
Failure at a mission statement does not mean you have a different mission statement.
> So because their cables were subpar at one point
What do you mean at one point? We bought a laptop for my wife a year ago, cable is almost broken already, behind the connector. They really don't seem to know how to make cables today or before.
> Failure at a mission statement does not mean you have a different mission statement.
Ok? MO or no MO, the cables have useless durability even compared to cheaper cables.
This is a pet hate of mine. My whole family has iPhones but only my wife and daughters cables break because they use the phones while they are plugged in. The cable gets bent sharply where it joins the connector causing it to break.
I'm not sure if the newer braided cables are better or not as they don't have them.
I have never needed to replace mine as when the phone is plugged in and charging I don't use it.
> cables break because they use the phones while they are plugged in.
Is that something Apple advise iPhone users not to do, or why would that be a problem? Other cables can handle being bent sharply, Apple's cables break way faster than other's.
That makes sense. I have always wondered how people manage to break their cables. I’ve also never had a problem with them over 16 years.
Anecdotal, but for what it's worth, only two of my Apple charging cables have broken since 2007. I always hear about people having issues with them, so maybe I've been lucky with all of mine, or maybe I just don't treat them like I expect them to be indestructible.
People beat the hell out of cables. People yank on cables to unplug instead of the connectors, wad them up in the bottom of a bag and drop books on them, etc.
I don’t think I’ve ever had an Apple cable fail, all the way back to the 30 pin.
I know people who put up with Android because they want a foldable phone, to be able to read documents more easily without carrying two devices. They're clearly not for everyone, but the relative sales of Pro vs Air or Mini suggest that these will be more popular than this suggests.
iPhone useful life is already pretty great. I'm using one regularly from 2020 (as a work device) - better than any laptop I've ever owned including classic-era Thinkpads have lasted as a daily driver.
> bc the device needs to double its thickness
Considering how many people are dailying >6.8 inch phones (already massive in the average sized pocket), complaining about a thickness of 11mm* is just small brain behavior. I guarantee the weight is what you're noticing more than the thickness.
As someone who's into foldables but doesn't use one, the benefits are very real, especially if you read a lot of articles/blogs. Only reason I'm not using one is I can't afford the ones I want. How is a smaller phone, that's ideal for 1-handed use while having an expansive screen available at any moment, "running out of ideas"??? I like large screens, and I like being able to fit it in a small chassis. That's all it is.
* Samsung, Oppo, and Google's currently available foldables are all under 11mm
I instead see these sort of things (add the AppleVision Pro as well) as Apple feeling obliged to respond to "the public" (shareholders?).
"Samsung has this cool foldable phone—they seem to be taking the design mantle away from Apple these days."
"I hear this VR thing is the future of computing. Why isn't Apple in this space?"
I suspect even in the Jobs-era you might point to the iPad as Apple being pressured into responding with a product in the tablet space.
The Apple Watch a reaction to the Pebble?
Once the little square iPod Nano existed a watch was inevitable -
https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/a-new-era-for-design
I don't believe it's really that, but the fact that Apple 1) is profitable 2) holds a lot of cash, and 3) has a proven capability to execute new products.
So by not attempting to enter market niches, they could be potentially leaving a lot of money on the table, while the downside of the product failing to get traction doesn't really kill them.
A foldable iPhone will definitely solve one of the biggest problems at Apple. Foldable phones won't last 5-10 years. I can see Apple making all iPhone offerings foldable down the road
Are they really having any issue getting people to upgrade? At least here in Canada, carriers harass everyone to upgrade with deals where you can get a new phone for $0 once your contract is up to keep you renewing your contract.
My non-techie parents pretty much always get the latest non-Pro iPhone every couple years because their carrier calls them and practically begs them to take a new phone.
It's extremely rare to see anyone with a phone older than like 4 years.
Do you actually know how many people are holding onto their iPhones for 5 to 10 years? I would bet it’s not that many.
I love the little showmanship touches Apple does like this. Seeing a trillion dollar company going "wink wink nudge nudge" is just funny.
For me at least the screen size isn’t the limiting factor the lack of a keyboard is. I don’t know why I’d choose this device over a Neo or Air + non-folding phone.
You can pair a Bluetooth keyboard to any iPhone or iPad.
This, for instance, combines a battery and compact physical kb https://www.clicks.tech/products/powerkeyboard
Mentions of the resizable iOS apps seem to signal a desktop dock mode, which ties into your concern.
We know Apple is bringing a folding iPhone through manufacturing leaks. A desktop mode is less likely to be leaked, since it would be mostly software and (a lot) less reliant on third parties.
> a desktop dock mode
This needs to come to ALL iPhones. You plug in a usb c cable to your monitor and bang, iPad Neo.
But Apple being Apple will software block it...
I doubt it (though I would love this as well). FTA:
> A third discovery was arguably more specific: a new system key that returns the total count of *built-in* displays on a device
(emphasis added)
Foldables are life changing - everyone I know who's got one, doesn't go back.
It's all the benefits of a tablet with the weight/thickness of a cell.
Example: maps shows both the map and listing detail.
Example: messaging/email apps show the message/channel list and the current message
Example: virtual keyboard has plenty of space for punctuation, emojis, etc.
Example: games and multimedia are perfectly pleasant to view, even for hours.
Example: I used the remote-control app to take photos from my Sony and Fuji cameras, and the live preview was large enough to easily check for tack-sharpness, which is hard even in the camera viewfinder.
I don't think I get foldable phones. When is the extra space necessary? I mean most of them turn from a somewhat 9:16 aspect ratio to 1:1. You don't earn anything in space to consume media content. The only real improvement might be for multitasking?
You get more to see.
Maps are too narrow on phones.
Books also are easier to read.
The foldable iPhone will have an aspect ratio very close to 3:2 for the outer display (like the original iPhone) and of 1.41:1 (between 3:2 and 4:3) for the inner display (similar to an iPad).
Running two full size apps at once is pretty nice. Text conversation and website, things like that. Or copying and pasting credentials out of a password manager
You can read more Hacker News comments per screen without having to scroll.
Multitasking would be huge. One reason I hate doing anything "real" on my phone is because I can't see more than one thing at a time.
I mean you can see more at once but now your typing experience is worse. I have an iPad and it's by far my least productive device unless it's connected to a physical keyboard. Typing on a giant touchscreen is so much more tedious than my phone's screen.
It's not perfect, but there are plenty of things I do where I'm not typing very much, but I am swapping back and forth between apps or web pages quite a bit.
> stop thinking about creating software for a specific piece of hardware. Design software to be adaptable across a range of screen sizes and aspect ratios
This is right, of course, and pretty obvious I think. But a part of me also thinks that we're still not good at it (or are not good at it anymore). At the very least, the tradeoff is a huge increase in UI complexity. It was so, so easy to design UIs with Hypercard when you knew it was going to run on a 512×342 display.
Everyone I know over 70 would love something that works like a phone when folded but like a tablet unfolded -- big enough for text to be big, small enough to carry, and without fiddly interface -- and at a reasonable price for those anchored in 1980 prices.
(If those under 17 got attached to foldables, it would be an enduring franchise.)
For those of us in between, I'd love it if my foldable when unfolded were finally the OS of choice - iPadOS or iOS or even macOS. It would be the hub for hub-and-spoke devices...
It's an impossible ask, but perhaps....
The OS of choice may be an “impossible” ask from Apple. However with the Neo running on the A18 I don’t think we’re far from seeing something along those lines.
> Starting price reportedly around $2,000.
I'll guess it won't be a Vision Pro level disaster, but most people will skip this device unless the price drops substantially.
It'll be backordered for moooonths. They won't be able to make enough to meet the demand it'll get.
A lot of people said the same thing about Vision Pro. The only way to actually know is to wait.
That’s the same MSRP as the Samsung foldable.
That's not exactly flying off the shelves. To be honest I'm not even sure if Samsung is making any money on the entire foldable lineup.
I’m old enough to remember when everyone said the original iPhone would flop because it was too expensive…
I am not fully convinced that a foldable is really going to be something that most will want, but I think it could find its niche. Given that from another article it seems that in the simulator it is using the iPad view it could be useful for some people.
Though, I have yet to find myself in a situation that I wanted to use an iPad and I was not already in a position to be carrying one. I use mine for work and I am already carrying a laptop, throwing in an iPad is a very small addition to my bag.
Any time I have just been out, was never a situation I felt like I needed something like an iPad. Throw in that this looks like it will be the size of a Mini vs the 13" pro that I use now, it puts it in an awkward position. And I could justify the rumored $2k cost to replace 2 devices that cost more than that combined.
It will be interesting to see how it does in practice, but also what it does to the separation of iOS and iPadOS.
Reminds me of a billboard I saw where Apple was touting the alleged privacy of the iPhone with a guy wearing clothes nearly the same color as his skin. I know iPhone isn't really private, and I'd rather not have a phone that isn't repairable, but I can appreciate the clever marketing in both cases.
How about phones that you can attach one to another and have as much of a phone as you want? Buy two phones - simple foldable. 4? That's almost a tablet worth of screen estate. Want more? Only your budget is the limit. Go as far as 85" TV if you want.
I wonder how they'll address the crease.
My guess is one of two ways. Not address it at all. Or tell you that you don't see what you really see.
They'll likely use what Samsung showcased at CES in January (https://www.sammobile.com/news/samsung-crease-less-foldable-...), or something very close to it.
I think Oppo is the first to visibly eliminate the crease with their Find N6.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/i-tried-oppos-latest-foldable-pho...
Why would they bring attention to it at all?
What company has ever highlighted the crease in their foldable for any reason other than to say it's improved from the previous year?
Huawei's crease is virtually invisible.
Don’t you think that’s the first thing they would look at before green light?
> Or tell you that you don't see what you really see.
?
iPhone Dynamic Crease (tm)
Besides the new form factor, resizable apps are also meant to further bridge the gap between macOS and iOS right?
More than that, it forces iPhone-only devs to get with the program and make their apps usable on larger screens too.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if next year they dissolve the iPhone/iPad distinction on the App Store altogether and maybe even remove the Catalyst toggle on the Mac App Store. If you make an iOS app, it’s also a full fledged iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS app too.
I certainly wouldn’t mind. On my Mac there are some needlessly heavy electron apps I’d swap out for their iOS counterparts in a heartbeat if that were possible, as well as some games that would run fine on macOS but their devs don’t tick the checkbox for unclear reasons.
> I wouldn’t be surprised at all if next year they dissolve the iPhone/iPad distinction on the App Store altogether
I hadn't thought about it but it makes sense and it makes me wonder how far this would reach throughout the rest of the OS. If the iPhone can fold out into an iPad Mini, will it get the rest of the iPadOS features? The iPad used to run iOS but they rebranded the version that runs on iPad to iPadOS to distinguish that it has a handful of unique features only for big screens, mainly pertaining to multitasking. But if the line is being blurred and iPhones will have big screens with multitasking, will they go back to just calling it iOS on all mobile devices?
You're just arguing about marketing. Apple has moved to a One device, one OS dichotomy they will not rethink because the foldable iPhone gets a version of the iPad's multitasking. And engineering-wise, when they moved the naming to iPad OS, nothing changed behind the curtain. The iPad still runs the same codebase it did before the marketing switch. They didn't fork anything.
I think they’re going to continue to make some features device-specific. They probably want to position the foldable iPhone as a midway compromise device rather than a full iPad and flagship iPhone replacement, targeting customers who prefer breadth over depth and capability when it comes to features.
I'd guess that they're meant to bridge the gap between iOS and iPadOS, if anything.
The software opportunity is what's interesting. Apple making an iPhone that becomes an iPad could finally make multitasking on mobile actually work. Hardware is table stakes, the UI decisions are what will matter.
Really intrigued to see what Apple's design chops brings to this form factor. I'd love more screen real estate so I can travel without a damn laptop. The big question is how thick will it be?
Holy mother of clickbait titles.
I think OP might want to change title of article:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's a pretty good homographic pun, honestly
Agreed. The content is not what I was expecting to read.
WWDC = Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.
Seeing this literally after my foldable full on broke through the axle after not even half a year makes me concerned for Apple
An apple foldable phone would be the first phone I bought apple care for.
This will be really cool. iPhone really need change. All versions have same form factor for so long now
i’ve been waiting a few years for iphone fold, im excited that they’re releasing it this year.
its both iphone mini (yay!! mini iphone again) and ipad mini (yay!! hueg screen for bedtime youtube) in one device presumably with a cpu powerful enough to run cyberpunk 2077. what a world :)
I don’t quite understand this new product strategy.
I usually am a pro Apple consumer but how many high end users actually want this form factor?
I think you'll be very surprised at how successful this is.
Do you remember the Microsoft prototype for a folding tablet? It would have two different apps running, and you could use the spine to pull data between them, a kind of visual clipboard.
I don't think that workflow is as important now, but having two apps open (one on each side of a device) is going to be killer, and it's something they're clearly hinting at with some of their asks for developers (and with their iPad OS).
I can't see myself paying for foldables, but I think they are incredibly neat. I spend a ton of time on my phone, and the idea that the screen could get much bigger really tempts!
That said, I really wonder if this could be a shark jump move. I think one of iOS app's biggest wins is that developers have a relatively narrow set of form factors to target, that making bespoke interface layouts is the obvious choice & that that really allows careful crafting. I'm overselling this case a bit, but it feels like Apple is saying: ok, now make your apps responsive. Add more. Some folks will figure out each layout nicely, but I feel like in many cases, the responsive layouts are going to be less well crafted, not have such thought out intracacies.
I love responsiveness, but it generally pushes layout complexity down, requires simpler / plainer design languages, in my view. This pushes away from bespoke careful craft, and towards mechanized systems, and there's some design loss in this push.
The thing I liked most about the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 I had for a while was that I met a lot of interesting people because of it.
It broke like four times under warranty because the crease got gummed up with their glue strips in the summer or it got brittle when I travelled to Greenland because of the cold in the winter, it felt uncomfortable and often moved in the pocket you put it into in a way that would annoy you every time you sat down somewhere.
But once you pull it out, something magical happens. Foldables are still one of those items you will rarely see in the wild, and it peaks the curiosity of people in a way that will make them come over and ask questions.
You see them touch it really carefully and open it really, really slowly because they are afraid they might break it, and suddenly you have this magical, foldable screen right in front of you that turns this heavy slab into a form factor known by anyone who ever held a book in their life.
When it snaps open or shut with the satisfying noise and haptic feedback, it makes them genuinely happy and smile, and watching different people having the same experience over and over again is kind of satisfying and in a way justified the price for me alone.
I am sure the Apple foldable will have its downsides and is heavily overpriced, and if you buy it in the EU, you won’t be able to use half the features, but I am still going to get one because I will have a lot of joy watching people interact with new technology for the first time when I travel, and I love listening to how they think it could improve their life or how and for what they would get one themselves.
I can't imagine they'd release a crappy folding thing like the Samsung, I think it's more likely to be effectively dual-screen that can be unfurled into something where the two screens are side by side.
> a crappy folding thing like the Samsung
This is the only phone I've seen people move away from iPhone to get, I know at least 3 women who switched from iPhone to android to get the folding clamshell Samsung and all love it.
The triple folding phone is interesting to me but I still am not at the point where I feel comfortable having a $2K phone. Where you can get a Motorolla with 12GB of RAM for $80
I mention RAM as Android with 4GB of ram is almost unusable.
Are you citing subsidized prices, or used prices? I can only find $80 Motorolas used or locked, e.g.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D323V72S and that's 4GB
12GB seems to get up into $200+, and that's still a lot of "renewed" listings.
You can find quirky little loss-leader deals here and there sometimes but I don't think you're getting 12GB of RAM for $80 on a routine basis.
I was listening to this ep/podcast on Hackaday about a 12GB $50 Motorola phone
https://hackaday.com/2026/05/26/linux-on-android-provides-in...
But yeah they're usually carrier locked, I personally use Verizon prepaid and my 8GB Motorola phone is above $80 but not $600 either, it's $200
https://www.verizon.com/smartphones/motorola-moto-g-power-20...
Anyway it's certainly not the same phone as a flagship folding phone but for daily everyday needs more than adequate, I even was able to run multiple gig apps eg. DoorDash/Uber Eats on the 8GB model.
I will say what people consider "worth the money" varies since I bought a $1,000.00 radar detector and it's like who buys that...
Might be ram boost that's bumping from 8 to 12GB
It would be very funny if Apple's next innovative flagship product is a Surface Duo
"Please do a bunch of work to support a folding phone model only a few people will be able to afford"
I'm 100% certain it will sell out at the release and you will have to wait few months to get it. I don't know where people get the idea that only few people will be able to afford that phone.
The idea that most people can’t afford a $2,000 phone?
The idea that few people can.
foldable screen = new recurring revenue stream
Is that blurry mess on the video seriously how resizing works on iOS or is it just a POC made by some dev?
That is how window resizing on iOS 27 apps streamed to macOS 27 works right now in the first beta, I reckon it won't change.
It gives me a headache. How could anyone look at it and think it doesn't need to change?
Apple has used this kind of blurry resizing animation in the past. For example, circa macOS 10.14 Mojave resizing windows in Split View would have the same effect: https://youtu.be/KDDMUxBtnkI
current view transition stack on ios was built for static transition between two well know layouts, like portrait to landscape rotation change. i would like live reflow too but i suspect 99% of existing apps aren’t ready to reflow at 120hz when they’ve been written around tween(start layout, end layout) style for decades
UIKit apps can already resize fluidly on Mac Catalyst and iPadOS. I suspect the issue here is more related to the video encoding / streaming used for iPhone Mirroring.
Wow seriously? To me it looks like a throwback to Windows 95 lightweight settings or some lightweight WM of the early 2000s like Fluxbox/OpenBox which didn't implement proper resizing to save on resources.
> This is the PSOTU’s message, which states clearly and plainly: stop thinking about creating software for a specific piece of hardware. Design software to be adaptable across a range of screen sizes and aspect ratios.
I remember so many Apple developers saying this was why Apple was better than Android. The HN archives are full of such comments.
Not that I care for either company, as they both lord over our lives and limit our freedoms.
Can we update the title for a bit more clarity?
Maybe like
WWDC 2026: Platform sample app hints at future foldable
Peak Apple "innovation" incoming!
Apple hasn't "invented" most things, from the personal computer, MP3 Player, or smart phone. They tend to revolutionize the things by making them work extremely well.
if by 'revolutionize', you mean 'let everybody else spend time, effort and money developing the idea, and once they've proven the market they buy an interesting company in the space with tons of patents, shut down everything they'd done before and make their interesting and take credit for the revolution, meanwhile, their new presence in the area mutes actual innovation, because they use all of the oxygen in the room'... sure, yeah, they do that... but the revolution was coming whether Apple participated or not.
Apple is great at winning capitalism.
Before Apple Silicon, who was making equivalent laptops? Highly competitive performance, great battery life, instant wake from sleep, pristine build quality, etc.
Forget before Apple Silicon, who's making an equivalent laptop now?
> Apple is great at winning capitalism.
Exactly, they deliver products that are better than their competition and thanks to that they got extremely rich. It's a great example of capitalism working as intended.
This take is completely divorced from reality.
That's obviously not what they mean.
Hey, if they can get the hinge working better it might improve the category at least. You'd expect Apple to do well at manufacturing for that kinda stuff
Agree, their "innovations" usually involve taking an existing concept or idea and executing it better. Hopefully they can pull that off and raise the bar for foldable electronics
They also buy a lot of their innovations. See Intrinsity, a fabless semi company Apple bought which lead to their Mobile Arm chips and eventually the M series.
The idea is the easy part. Execution is the hard part.
folding butterfly keyboard on a folding phone would be a real comeback.
Current foldables are fragile, require a built-in plastic screen protector, and have a visible crease. Apple is very unlikely to be willing to accept those compromises. We'll see, but I think their entry into the field will change things.
15 years ago, I would agree that Apple might not have been willing to accept those kinds of issues. I'm not sure about the Apple of today. That is not a slight against any Apple leadership, but I do feel that, for a variety of reasons, the level of minimum QC has notched back a bit in the pursuit of marketshare.
Apple fumbled on QC with software this past year, but have they with hardware? I've found their hardware (both computer and physical builds) has been very high quality still.
Sure this isn't just nostalgia / rose-tinted glasses speaking? In the 2010s, Apple shipped MacBooks with GPUs that fried themselves to death, and iPhones that bent in your pocket and lost cell signal if you held them wrong. Today's Apple does have some software quality issues, but their hardware is the best it's ever been.
Could be nostalgia for sure, but the issues you are describing were not anticipated or immediately obvious on initial launch (at least as far as I recall).
From what I have seen of folding screens today, they come with some significant trade offs (creases, wear, etc). Over time, I expect these to be solved, but I don't think folding screens are a luxury item today as much as they are a tech novelty. But, the cell phone market has kind of stagnated in terms of hardware, and it looks like folding screens might be the thing to drive some upgrade purchases. During the peak iphone growth phase I believe Apple would have labelled these screens as not ready yet, but today I think they risk losing market share and are potentially somewhat forced to build a folding iphone.
The iPhone camera bump is the "jumped the shark" moment for me when Apple went from unwilling to accept that level of quality to "I'm not sure... they might". Speculative to be sure, but I believe that if Jobs was alive we'd have a paper thin camera sensor because the bump would have been a nonstarter.
Same regarding your comment... I agree, the minimum QC does feel like it notched back a bit.
I disagree. The camera bump was functional pragmatism winning out over Jony Ive's increasingly form-driven ideals.
Even the Jobs Reality Distortion Field couldn't alter physics.
"notched back" - I see what you did there.
"hey guys remember that screen technology that came out seven years ago and has had plenty of time to mature? Well our 65 year old CEO just discovered it and has found a way to make it stratospherically more expensive than its ever been before!"