2025 has been a great year for foldable smartphones. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 shows just how far the technology has developed; Motorola is easing the devices into a more wallet-friendly position; and Huawei’s amazing tri-fold Mate XT is pushing them in a whole new direction. Foldables are ready for prime time. All we need now is Apple to join in.
It’s Time for the iPhone Fold
TheGalaxy Z Fold 7 is a really impressive-looking smartphonethat could scarcely be more different from the original Fold from 2018. Back then, the Fold was clunky and thick, and couldn’t even fold flat. Now, it’s sleek and stylish, less than 9mm thin, and is a really classy-looking piece of kit.
The Huawei Mate XT is in some ways even more impressive (althoughnot everyone is convinced), and Samsung is set to match it with its own tri-fold devicelater this year. For the first time, perhaps, foldables feel less like experiments and more like the finished article. That means it’s time for Apple to join in, and I can’t wait.
If, as expected, Apple launches an iPhone Fold in 2026, it’ll be seven years since foldables first appeared. But it won’t be some sort of Apple Intelligence-style debacle that leaves the company scrambling to catch up. It fits the MO perfectly.
Vision Pro aside, Apple rarely enters markets without ensuring there is demand and that the technology is ready. In a sense, it’s happy to sit back and let other companies beta test hardware and hardware designs in public. That leads to somewacky Android phones, but it’s also how we’ve gone from a 17.1mm Galaxy Z Fold to an 8.9mm Galaxy Z Fold 7.
The company pegged the iPhone at 3.5 inches for far longer than it should have been, thanks to Steve Jobs’widely reportedinsistence that nobody would buy anything bigger. The market eventually demanded a change.
And while Android phones moved to hole-punch displays in 2018, Apple stuck doggedly to its notched approach until 2022. Butwhen the iPhone did go notchless, it introduced the Dynamic Island as well, a practical solution to a design compromise that was immediately ripped off by any number of Android manufacturers.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
Samsung’s thinnest and lightest Fold yet feels like a regular phone when closed and a powerful multitasking machine when open. With a brighter 8-inch display and on-device Galaxy AI, it’s ready for work, play, and everything in between.
Apple’s Secret Sauce
It isn’t the hardware that makes a potential iPhone Fold so intriguing. Android manufacturers are doing just fine there. Foldable devices have developed to the point where they no longer feel like concepts. There are even signs that next year’s phones will finally solve the problem with the crease, something that would surely have been a deal-breaker for Apple.
What foldables need is Apple’s secret sauce: the user experience. Just as we saw with the Dynamic Island, which took a piece of dead space on the screen and turned it into something useful, orMagSafe, Face ID, or any other innovation, Apple has a real knack for rethinking how we use our devices in ways that add real value. There’s a good chance it’ll do the same for foldables.
At the moment, the book-style foldables are part phone and part tablet, and their benefits mostly come from improved multitasking. Samsung’s version of this is a big improvement over what you can do on a phone, or arguably even an Android tablet, and iPadOS isset up in a similar way.
But would Apple want the iPhone Fold to just be a glorified iPad? Based on the company’s record, it’s unlikely. It’ll reimagine what foldables can be, functionally and creatively, and make the case for them even stronger. And if Apple nails it, the Android world will follow quickly.
On top of that, there is the cachet that comes from Apple’s sheer popularity. Dare I say, Apple entering a market gives that market a sense of validation, and the iPhone Fold will become a mainstream device in a way that Samsung, Huawei, and Motorola simply cannot achieve. It would be, for many people who don’t follow tech, their first experience of a foldable device, and it’s likely that the non-tech media would report on it in the same way.
That can only benefit Android. The wider attention will filter through to the Android ecosystem. Even though the iPhone Fold is expected to be a book-style device, it should bring more attention to the Android world’s flip phones as well. And that could lead to ever more affordable models. It’s unlikely that they’ll be in the budget realm any time soon, but certainly, mid-range foldables are not impossible.
The iPhone Fold Will Benefit All Foldables
So, the iPhone Fold will bring new hardware, new software experiences, and a much greater level of publicity. Android can benefit from all of it. The manufacturers will happilycopy any bits they like(just as Apple copies ideas from Android), and more attention should finally help the phones move beyond their niche status.
