It’s been over five years since Samsung released the first commercially available folding phone, but despite reviewing well, the form factor still isn't exactly mainstream.
With Apple making over half the smartphones sold in the United States, the company’s long-anticipated foldable debut could be a tipping point, and a new report suggests that it’s targeting one specific design bugbear ahead of its first release.
According to the Korean publication ET News, production on Apple’s first foldable will begin in the second half of this year. Crucially, the company has apparently made it its mission to eliminate the crease — the visible wrinkle that appears along the line where the screen folds.
“Apple has decided to eliminate the crease at all costs, regardless of price, to differentiate its foldable phone from existing models,” the site quotes an industry source as saying. “It is believed that a new material property has been developed to make the crease disappear.”
While it’s worth noting this is a machine-translated text (another one substituted the word “crease” for “wrinkles”), the meaning is pretty clear. Apple has set its sights on removing something that successive generations of Samsung, Huawei, Honor and Google handsets haven’t yet managed to eliminate.
Progress has definitely been made on minimizing the crease — it’s far less obvious on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 than it was on the troubled first-generation Galaxy Fold — it’s still clear to the naked eye, though most users say they stop noticing it after a while.
The report explains that while Samsung Display will be making the OLED panels for the upcoming foldable, the all-important hinge mechanism will be built by Amphenol, a company that has previously worked on hinges for MacBook laptops.
While rumors have previously suggested an iPhone Flip of similar appearances to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 or even a foldable iPad, recent leaks have pointed to something to rival the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 where a regular looking smartphone unfolds to reveal a larger tablet-style display. The unfolded screen could have a total size of over 12 inches, the report claimed, though the leaker Digital Chat Station has predicted a more conventional 7.74-inch inner screen.
With the units set to go into production later this year, the report believes that Apple’s first foldable will arrive in the second half of 2026. Unless the company decides to have a dedicated event, that means it could launch alongside the iPhone 18 in September 2026.
Notably, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman also said this weekend that Apple’s first foldable will arrive next year, so after many a false start it finally looks like the company will be joining the race to make the best foldable phones.
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