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

By Dean Blake - News

Published: 4 Aug 2025

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Readtime: 6 min

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• Apple’s foldable iPhone is rumoured to drop next year for USD$1,999
• 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 everyone focusing their attention on the heavily-rumoured iPhone 17 Air, you’d be forgiven for thinking that a slimmer iPhone is the main thing Apple’s ‘secretly’ been working on in Cupertino. And yeah, that’s big news, but you know what’s going to be bigger news? All signs are pointing to Apple getting into the foldables game.

The iPhone Fold, as we’re expecting it to be called, 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 USD$1,999 (or AUD$3,099). That’s obviously much more expensive than even the iPhone 16 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 18 Fold’ Look Like?

The Fold is rumoured to drop in September next year, 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 18 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 18 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 livesm 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 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 are beginning to 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—as is the thinner Air model.

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.

To me, having Apple’s phone line-up move forward delivering a thinner Air model for most users, a beefy Pro model for people that need the extra oomph, and the larger Fold model aimed at content consumption and bridging the gap between the iPhone and iPad makes a lot of sense.

When is the ‘iPhone 18 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.