While Apple hasn’t announced the possibility of an iPhone Flip, that hasn’t stopped experts from speculating it will happen. Release date speculation ranges anywhere from Ross Young saying it could come as early as next year to Ming-Chi Kuo saying not to expect a foldable iPhone till 2025.
But will it look like a foldable tablet? Or will it be a clamshell foldable phone?
The latest concept renderings of the rumored iPhone Flip point towards the latter type of design. 4RMD, who has done renders of rumored iPhones in the past, has provided us with new renders of an iPhone 15 Flip and they look gorgeous.
The clamshell foldable 4RMD is proposing has an inner 6.8-inch Super Retina XDR display that can last up to 200,000 folds and a small outer display to show the time and key notifications (size not given).
As gorgeous as it looks, the design and specs aren’t exactly groundbreaking. The design looks largely like an iPhone 14 Pro with the telephoto camera removed to make room for the secondary display. That leaves it the iPhone 14 Pro’s 48MP main camera with an f/1.8 aperture and 12MP ultrawide sensor with an f/2.2 aperture.
This concept also has the rumored A17 Bionic that we are expecting to see on next year’s iPhone 15 Pro, Pro Max and/or iPhone 15 Ultra models (the Ultra could replace Pro Max or be its own offering).
An iPhone Flip doesn't necessarily need to be groundbreaking. It could just fold and not be too off the pace of the best phones. Competitors like Samsung and Oppo accomplish essentially that with their latest offerings, and this iPhone 15 Flip render shows how Apple could do the same.
What's missing from this video are use cases. The No. 1 comment we see from Tom's Guide readers is that they simply don't need something like this. So it would have been nice if the video showed off some usage scenarios instead of just specs.
If the rumored specs come to fruition, Apple’s foldable phone would be even closer to its flagship phone than the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 is to the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, which would be a win for iPhone users. However, we would not be surprised if an iPhone 15 Flip was based more around the base model than the Pro variant. That would mean an A16 Bionic processor and a 12MP main camera — not that those specs would be bad, just a little disappointing.
Still, with all the reports around a delayed foldable, we would not count on an iPhone 15 Flip, and maybe not an iPhone 16 Flip either.
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