Apple’s ‘iPhone Fold’ is (Probably) Coming Next Year: Here’s What We Know

By Dean Blake - News

Published: 27 Nov 2025

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Readtime: 6 min

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• Apple’s foldable iPhone is rumoured to drop next year for between US$1,999 and $2,500
• The phone will feature a 7.8” screen when unfolded, and a 5.5” external screen
• It’ll be driven by the upcoming A20-series chip, and will likely be announced September 2026

With effectively every other smartphone maker already well on the foldables train, you’d be forgiven for thinking Apple had simply decided it wasn’t interested in delivering a larger, folding iPhone. Well, guess again, because according to leakers, all signs are pointing to a 2026 launch for what I’ll be calling the iPhone Fold.

The phone will be a 7.8” foldable phone without a crease launching 2026, powered by Apple’s A20 chip, and it’s likely going to start around US$1,999 (or AU$3,099), though could go as high as US$2,500 (AU$3,800) . That’s obviously much more expensive than even the recently released and very good iPhone 17 Pro Max, but given this is Apple we’re talking about, that shouldn’t be all that surprising.

Obviously, until we have official confirmation from Apple everything in this article should be taken with a grain of salt, but if you’re keen to know more about what we know about the upcoming ‘iPhone Fold’, read on.

What will the ‘iPhone Fold’ Look Like?

The Fold is rumoured to drop in September 2026, and will deliver a 5.5” external display alongside a 7.8” foldable internal display–without a crease, if leaks are to be believed.

If that 5.5” outer display sounds compact, that’s because this phone will be quite a bit smaller than Apple’s contemporary devices, with most now sitting somewhere between 6.1” and 6.9”. In fact, according to some fan renders that build out the device based on the rumoured sizing, the Fold (when folded) will be closer to an iPhone 13 Mini than an iPhone 16 Pro Max in size.

That should make it a more comfortable device to use in one hand while folded, funnily enough, with more of the screen within reach of your thumb.

When fully unfolded, however, the iPhone Fold will absolutely become a two-handed affair. The 7.8” size puts it smaller than the 8” screens of its main folding competition (the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7, and the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold), and even puts it slightly shy of the current iPad Mini (8.3”), but it’ll be quite a bit bigger than even the biggest iPhone on the market today (that’s the aforementioned 16 Pro Max, which sits at 6.9”).

Whether the currently-iPad-locked Apple Pencil will be able to function with the Fold isn’t yet known, but it’d go a long way in helping the Fold fill the gap between the iPhone and iPad.

How this device’s existence will impact the iPad moving forward is anyone’s guess, but I can’t imagine the Mini would go anywhere considering it’ll be a similarly sized option, running iPadOS rather than iOS, at less than a third of the price.

What are the Specs of the ‘iPhone Fold’?

While there’s a lot that can be inferred about the iPhone Fold just based on what would it would require (at least 16GB of Ram, as a baseline), we’re only going to focus on what’s been backed up by multiple sources.

Given the Fold isn’t releasing until 2026, you can expect the device to be using the A20 processor, compared to the A19 we’re expecting to see in the 17 series this year. We don’t really know how much more powerful said A20 will be, but it’ll likely focus a bit more on battery efficiency than outright power gains—if the Air and Fold are as thin as we’re expecting, they’re unlikely to have massive batteries inside.

Here’s everything we know so far.

Why Release a Folding iPhone?

First off, it’s worth noting that while sales of the iPhone make up the majority of Apple’s hardware revenue each year, total iPhone sales have actually been slowing for the past few years. The brand did enjoy a pretty big jump in revenue in its most recent quarter, but the overall trend is still of an easing majority (at least here in Australia, where around 56 per cent of us use an iPhone in our daily lives according to StatCounter).

When you look at the pace of the iPhone’s technological change, the overall design of the iPhone hasn’t changed much in the past decade, and I think consumers are getting a bit bored of a simple black (or orange) rectangle. That’s not to say Apple’s phones aren’t getting better each year–of course they are–but consumers are increasingly looking for new, unique experiences with their everyday devices, and may see see foldables, or even dumb phones, as a path forward.

I wouldn’t ever expect Apple to launch a dumbified iPhone, but a foldable is a very attractive way to revamp the iPhone lineup.

In fact, Apple’s been working on the Fold, in one shape or another, for almost 10 years. The tech giant patented a foldable design (something closer to a clamshell than the current book-style fold) back in 2016, and has iterated on it for some time.

The main reason why the brand hasn’t released a foldable yet is simply because Apple’s engineers didn’t want to launch anything with a visible crease, so the rumours say. The brand had a breakthrough in 2020 and was granted a patent for a hinge mechanism that prevent the displays from creasing when folded and unfolded. We’ll likely see how it works in practice next year—new rumours suggest they’ve cracked it.

After the middling response to the iPhone Air, though, you have to wonder whether Apple will be willing to throw another first generation product out into its money-making iPhone line-up so soon. An iPhone 18, iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone Air 2 and iPhone Fold could make for a very interesting product line in late 2026, but the proof will be in whether people actually buy the thing.

At the moment foldable phones only make up a tiny fraction of phone sales, with competitor products largely struggling to find a market. A more expensive, late-to-the-party iPhone Fold could very well change that, or it could suffer the fate of the Air and land with a bit of a thud.

When is the ‘iPhone Fold’ Releasing?

Rumours suggest the iPhone Fold will likely launch in late 2026, most likely in September. Granted, some leakers have also put the release date as far back as 2027, so we’ll just have to wait and see.