What the foldable iPhone would look like
(Picture: Apple iPhone)A foldable iPhone has been rumoured for years and is yet to be made by Apple, but a team of hobbyists at Tech Aesthetics have made one themselves.
This is no speculative render, it’s a working phone made of an iPhone X’s insides and components of the foldable mechanism of a Motorola Razr.
The end result is a scrappy-looking Frankenstein’s monster of an experiment in tech, but does offer a view of how a future foldable iPhone may look.
It took the team more than 200 days to make this fragile-looking prototype. They went through 37 phone screens in the process, as well as dismantling an expensive Samsung Galaxy Z Flip before deciding its hinge mechanism would not be suitable.
In the 17-minute video on its creation, the team concludes there aren’t any substantive uses for a foldable iPhone yet, as iOS just is not made with the design in mind. However, it does serve as a reminder of how tricky it is to produce a foldable phone.
A typical phone screen is covered by a rigid layer of protective glass, which is not fit for a foldable. Components have to be arranged into one half of the casing, making large back-filling battery cells an impossibility.
Even into its fourth generation of foldable, Samsung still has issues with the durability of its foldable phones, with daily use gradually making wear at the fold line appear more pronounced.
When is the real foldable iPhone coming?
The most recent Apple foldable rumour comes from the current king of foldables, Samsung. According to TheElec, Samsung believes Apple will release a foldable device in 2024, which it predicts will skyrocket sales in the category by 80 per cent year-on-year by 2025.
However, its suggestion is Apple will make a foldable laptop or tablet, not a foldable phone.
This tech has been explored recently by other companies. Asus unveiled the Zenbook Fold OLED 17 back in January at the CES 2022 tech conference. It has a 17-inch foldable OLED screen, just like that of Samsung’s phones.
When used folded up like a laptop, a virtual keyboard can be summoned on the bottom half, or it can be used with a keyboard accessory.
It may seem like future tech, but this laptop is available now, in the UK, for a cool £3,299.
