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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1525170
Could an ‘iPhone Flip’ Arrive in 2026 By Jesse Hollington A special thanks to iDropNews for republishing permission. Images provided by iDropNews. Be sure to visit them at idropnews.com Reports of Apple’s research into a foldable iPhone go back to at least 2016, years before its biggest Android rivals released their own versions. However, in all that time, we’ve never heard of any concrete plans by Apple to release a foldable iPhone at all, even as its competitors have zipped ahead with foldables and flippables of their own. In fact, news on that front has been pretty quiet over the past few years. That doesn’t mean that Apple has given up on the idea entirely, although several reports over the years suggested some Apple executives saw the concept as a passing fad. Still, some analysts were sure Apple was on the cusp of releasing its first foldable iPhone after it began testing foldable displays in late 2020. Many trumpeted 2021 as the year of the folding iPhone, and veteran Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted Apple would sell 20 million foldables by 2023. All those reports seem quaint in retrospect, and after reading Apple’s plans so badly, it’s probably not surprising that many analysts got pretty quiet. However, the rumor mill heated up again earlier this year when The Information’s Wayne Ma reported that Apple was prototyping two “clamshell” iPhone models. The two were said to be in the very early stages of development, which meant it wasn’t even clear we’d see them materialize at all, much less anytime soon. After all the years of misfires, it seemed too early to get our hopes up yet again. However, Ma has returned with more information