Flip phones? Awesome. Book-style folding phones? Yawn!
When I first heard the iPhone Fold, which may now be called the “iPhone Ultra” would have a 5.5-inch outer display, I was ecstatic. That’s just a little larger than the iPhone 13 mini, and they might get it by simply removing the bezels! I didn’t even care that it would fold open like a book or passport. Who cares? The outer screen would be all I’d use. I just want a pro-level iPhone mini.
But with leaks over the body shape coming out, I’ve been disappointed. The outer screen may be 5.5 inches, but it will reportedly be short and fat, meaning it won’t be easier to hold than the iPhone 13 mini. It will likely be a squat phone that’s awkward to hold that unfolds into… a small tablet that likely won’t even have Apple Pencil support or a textured screen that makes writing tolerable if it does. It’s starting to sound like a bad iPhone that unfolds into a bad iPad. The iPhone 17 Pro Max has a 6.9 inch screen. This will be a 7.7-inch display, smaller than an iPad mini, but not even a full inch larger than the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Who is this for?
Is Apple wasting their time with a folding iPhone instead of a flip iPhone?
Why Would Anyone Want a “Passport-Style” Folding iPhone?
Exclusive First Dummies of what the final size of the iPhone Fold, iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max will look like.
— Sonny Dickson (@sonnydickson.bsky.social) April 7, 2026 at 2:00 AM
Leakers say Apple’s grand feature for the iPhone Ultra foldable will be a “crease-free” display. This would be a display that doesn’t deform over time, getting an indentation. As someone who has been using a Motorola Razr for years now, I feel like this isn’t that great of a win. I stopped noticing the crease quickly.
I was using a folding smartphone before they even came out. I had brief access to the original Samsung Z Fold before the rest of the market because I’m a software engineer and a Samsung representative came to my company to show it off. One of the things that struck us was the inner screen was larger, it just didn’t give enough space to make a wildly different design in our app. It was just a little too narrow for the standard tablet experience. That’s changed over time, but at the time, we didn’t know how to make the extra screen space exciting. The representative almost seemed disappointed. I felt bad.
I’ve made apps that can adjust to screen sizes and screen size changes as someone unfolds a device, but the only time it’s been useful has been for my Razr. You just don’t know how much space you’ll have when you unfold a foldable, as they’re all different sizes, so it’s hard to figure out exactly what designs work on all those sizes. As such, the inner display experience is usually just a blown up outer display experience, with the exception that you can have two apps open if you’d like.
Pocket-sized and full-sized, best of both worlds!
The win here might be that it goes from something that’s almost like a compact iPhone into an iPad mini. For that you’ll have to unfold it and likely spin it for portrait orientation for most apps. That’s a lot to do just to get something that’s like an oversized iPhone experience. Of course, iPad apps are great, but the best part of an iPad isn’t the fact that it’s a big iPhone, but the versatility of the iPad. This will just be like an original iPad, with no Apple Pencil support because the thin glass foldable devices use wouldn’t work with a stylus. This won’t even have Magsafe, so it’s not as though you can easily accessorize it either.
Then there’s the price. It’ll reportedly be around $2,000. For that you’ll get one fewer camera than the iPhone Pro model, so a worse camera, a squat phone that’s awkward to hold and doesn’t have the right dimensions for any of your apps, and a lousy tablet experience. You’d be better off buying an iPhone 18 Pro and an iPad mini 7 for the same price. You’d get a much better iPhone, a much better tablet, and, sure, the tablet won’t fit in a pocket unless you’re like me and wearing cargo pants all the time, but who cares? Carry a small bag! It fits in a bunch of hip slings. Why would you want a worse tablet or a worse iPhone anyway? Do you really think you’ll be unfolding the iPhone on the train? While walking and answering texts? When it’s charging on your night stand? When you’re driving in the car with it in a mount? No! You’ll use it closed. And that closed view won’t be great either because Apple made it such a strange size.
The iPhone Ultra will probably do fine for sales. Apple will market the hell out of this thing, more than they did for the best smartphone they’ve made, but I doubt they’d have many sales of the second version next year.
Do People Even Like Folding Phones?
As I’m listing all the reasons folding phones are worthless, I came to think to myself, have I seen anyone using them? Maybe once a while back a friend had one, but I don’t see them in regular use. I’ve seen plenty of my friends with flip phones like the Samsung Z Flip and Motorola Razr, but no one using a folding passport or book style phone. Even online, you’ll hear people talk about liking the larger screen size, but that’s such a small benefit for something that’s fixed by using a tablet or laptop instead, or just a tablet-sized smartphone, like most smartphones today.
I have an iPad mini, and carry bags that could fit it frequently. I think it’s my favorite iPad. Despite this, when I want to take notes on the go, I bring a small Leuchtturm A6 notebook with me. I don’t bring my iPad mini. I couldn’t even replace that notebook with a ReMarkable. I’ll bring it on trips so if I’m working on anything I have my iPad for notes and my MacBook Neo for working, but otherwise, my iPhone is my only digital companion. I just don’t see the need for a tablet when I’m out, and I use a tablet all the time at home.
I doubt anyone else does, just going off of how few people I see with them.
The Flip Phone is a Better Phone
Sure, a tablet can do that, but do you want to carry a tablet for a walk in the woods?
There’s a reason I’ve seen far more people with a flip phone. They’re far more useful. While the folding phone may be the worst of both worlds, the flip phone feels like the best of two different phones. You get a small pocket-friendly phone that also fits perfectly in your hand for reading, quick texts, or adding a keyboard for a Blackberry-like experience. Then you open it for a full screen that’s large enough for content, video, full-screen apps, reading full pages of text, whatever you want. It’s a large phone that can become a small phone. That’s perfect.
More than that, the shape gives it some additional capabilities. You can set it up on a table partially folded to take tripod-like photos. You can see yourself on the outer screen with the full resolution back camera. You can use it in tent mode to play music. Hold it like a camcorder to get more of the shot in view and get a better one-handed grip on your phone while shooting video. The flip phone isn’t just a small phone and a large phone in one, it adds to the capabilities of both. In fact, the only drawback I can think of is how I’d have to give up my MagSafe wallet for one. But that’s a price I’d pay to have a phone that’s even smaller than my iPhone 13 mini when I don’t need a large phone, and a full screen the few times I do.
The only thing I can hope for the folding “iPhone Ultra” is a failure spectacular enough that Apple decides not to waste all the research they did on those foldable screens and tries a flip iPhone. I’m happy to be proven wrong. If Apple comes up with a way to make this an extraordinary device, I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe I’ll even buy it! Maybe a some people will actually love foldable phones when Apple does it? However, if I’m making a prediction for my phone choice this year, I think I’ll be keeping my iPhone 13 mini again, even as Apple sabotages it with every iOS release.