Not a fan of foldables, if I am honest. Just a personal opinion. I do not like the it feels in the pocket bc the device needs to double its thickness when folding over.
When a mobile device manufacturer (samsung, hauwei, now apple) makes a foldable, I get the impression they're running out of ideas with the "slate" form factor and are trying to stimulate sales.
Personally, I would want that R&D spend and innovation to go to more sustainable materials, longer lasting devices, and easily repairable parts to extend the devices useful life.
Or, alternatively, they feel like they finally cracked the code and think they can do it better. That's when Apple finally enters a market.
Consider how much money they put in to building a car to cancel it when they decided they couldn't, in fact, do it better. I'm sure there are hundreds - maybe thousands - of failed prototypes along the way.
You and me both, but I also recognize others disagree so ultimately, we'll see what the market decides.
Apple's annual gross profit was $195B last year against an R&D budget of around $35B. So, they've got more than enough spare change to throw around. I'm sure whatever they're spending on foldables isn't impairing them financially in any way.
I'm more concerned for what it means for focus, fragmented ecosystems, user experience, etc.
From Jobs:
"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done."
Tbh I think the microsoft neo (or was it the duo?) was the "best" - have 2 (or more) screens but put them on a hinge. You can get one big screen with whatever panel quality you like (hell, make it a cheap or transflective if you want), or you get a smaller screen if you wish.
There's a reason the Asus Duo is so much cheaper than the ThinkPad Fold X1 and all other OLED "folding" screen devices.
That is likely what it will be. The iPhone Air was probably just a test to see if all the super-thin components could work. Now they'll throw a hinge in the middle and a screen on the back. It'll end up being 2 or 3mm thicker, because of the bonus screen.
I think discussion here are missing that most people do not own a PC/laptop, or barely ever opens one, and not because they can't afford it, but it just didn't fit into their daily lives. This is obviously entirely different from the HN crowd.
And in that case, a folding phone is huge! Having played with one that my parent use, it's such an upgrade for reading/scrolling experience. When we all are spending so much time on the phone (that's a separate discussion, but it is the reality).
A foldable iPhone will definitely solve one of the biggest problems at Apple. Foldable phones won't last 5-10 years. I can see Apple making all iPhone offerings foldable down the road
I've been dailying a pixel fold 9 pro for a while now and love the thing. Seeing Apple finally join in is exciting as heck. I wouldn't hold your breath for a non visible crease though, nor for it to necessarily be class leading in its screen tech. I doubt any of it matters though, the Pixel Folds aren't exactly class leading in these regards either and the fold is just not a concern at all once you're using it. it's practically invisible from head on, and the "plastic screen protector" worries are really not an issue either. The durability of the inner screen is actually much better than you'd expect since it spends most of its pocketed life protected from external scratches. Mines still in great shape, even though I do not use a case nor any other form of protector.
Where apple has a significant opportunity here is the software side though. Google unfortunately doesn't seem to be too interested in exploring UI concepts with the Fold, leaving that to OnePlus and Samsung, both of which have imo better multitasking experiences than the Pixel Fold. Apple making an iPhone that becomes an iPad would probably be enough for them to win significant marketshare, but I hope they use this opportunity to do some interesting things with UI beyond what the iPad can do.
I have a Pixel 8a, and I have to use a case for it, because it appears to be designed to be as slippery as possible. Every edge is round and there's nothing to grip - it feels like an aluminium/glass bar of wet soap.
The 10 feels like it should be more slippery, but for some reason, it isn't. It stays stuck in your hand like glue, despite the back feeling like another glass screen. Something special in is coating
I've gone all the way around and came back. The Samsung Fold was awesome and convenient. But carrying an ipad mini and a phone is not that big a deal. It's quite nice that the ipad mini does not have whatsapp or SMS plugged into it, so I can use it exclusively for reading books or playing music.
The cost of the iPad Mini + my phone was like $600 and the folds - even the 6th gen and above - are super unreliable, so right now that seems like the best play.
iPad mini is awesome for reading however, it took forever until Apple powered it up.
Personally, as someone being used to the Motorola Razor foldable, which happened to present back then. It was really good and cool as well. I hated the ever smaller getting Ericson smartphones.
I am looking forward to Apple's copy of Samsungs foldable smartphones. After all, I don't want to carry an iPhone as well as an iPad mini around with me.
And I see the foldable more as a replacement for the iPhone ultra max phones. No matter how large the screensize they have, they never beat the iPad mini on readability, even being stuck with the old one for many years.
> It's quite nice that the ipad mini does not have whatsapp or SMS plugged into it, so I can use it exclusively for reading books or playing music.
Both a phone and a tablet can come with WhatsApp, it's a user choice whether they are there and the frequency of checking them. Global muting the apps is also an option.
I understand your point, but it is a point mitigated by user intervention. Now, if we want to say reading on a bigger screen than a phone is a better user experience, I'm on board with that.
How timely, I'm writing this from a Pixel 10 Pro Fold I bought in January.
Last night I opened it to find the inside screen having dead pixels in the center by the bend.
I love foldable phones. I use it all the time in both modes, but now I'm currently procrastinating looking up my best buy warranty plan specifics.
For a small percentage of mobile superusers, I really do believe foldables are the future. Having the ability to use desktop mode by default, or multitask, is huge.
For me at least the screen size isn’t the limiting factor the lack of a keyboard is. I don’t know why I’d choose this device over a Neo or Air + non-folding phone.
Mentions of the resizable iOS apps seem to signal a desktop dock mode, which ties into your concern.
We know Apple is bringing a folding iPhone through manufacturing leaks. A desktop mode is less likely to be leaked, since it would be mostly software and (a lot) less reliant on third parties.
The software opportunity is what's interesting. Apple making an iPhone that becomes an iPad could finally make multitasking on mobile actually work. Hardware is table stakes, the UI decisions are what will matter.
I don't think I get foldable phones. When is the extra space necessary? I mean most of them turn from a somewhat 9:16 aspect ratio to 1:1. You don't earn anything in space to consume media content. The only real improvement might be for multitasking?
The foldable iPhone will have an aspect ratio very close to 3:2 for the outer display (like the original iPhone) and of 1.41:1 (between 3:2 and 4:3) for the inner display (similar to an iPad).
I mean you can see more at once but now your typing experience is worse. I have an iPad and it's by far my least productive device unless it's connected to a physical keyboard. Typing on a giant touchscreen is so much more tedious than my phone's screen.
Really intrigued to see what Apple's design chops brings to this form factor. I'd love more screen real estate so I can travel without a damn laptop. The big question is how thick will it be?
More than that, it forces iPhone-only devs to get with the program and make their apps usable on larger screens too.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if next year they dissolve the iPhone/iPad distinction on the App Store altogether and maybe even remove the Catalyst toggle on the Mac App Store. If you make an iOS app, it’s also a full fledged iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS app too.
I certainly wouldn’t mind. On my Mac there are some needlessly heavy electron apps I’d swap out for their iOS counterparts in a heartbeat if that were possible, as well as some games that would run fine on macOS but their devs don’t tick the checkbox for unclear reasons.
> I wouldn’t be surprised at all if next year they dissolve the iPhone/iPad distinction on the App Store altogether
I hadn't thought about it but it makes sense and it makes me wonder how far this would reach throughout the rest of the OS. If the iPhone can fold out into an iPad Mini, will it get the rest of the iPadOS features? The iPad used to run iOS but they rebranded the version that runs on iPad to iPadOS to distinguish that it has a handful of unique features only for big screens, mainly pertaining to multitasking. But if the line is being blurred and iPhones will have big screens with multitasking, will they go back to just calling it iOS on all mobile devices?
i’ve been waiting a few years for iphone fold, im excited that they’re releasing it this year.
its both iphone mini (yay!! mini iphone again) and ipad mini (yay!! hueg screen for bedtime youtube) in one device presumably with a cpu powerful enough to run cyberpunk 2077. what a world :)
I can't imagine they'd release a crappy folding thing like the Samsung, I think it's more likely to be effectively dual-screen that can be unfurled into something where the two screens are side by side.
This is the only phone I've seen people move away from iPhone to get, I know at least 3 women who switched from iPhone to android to get the folding clamshell Samsung and all love it.
The triple folding phone is interesting to me but I still am not at the point where I feel comfortable having a $2K phone. Where you can get a Motorolla with 12GB of RAM for $80
I mention RAM as Android with 4GB of ram is almost unusable.
Are you citing subsidized prices, or used prices? I can only find $80 Motorolas used or locked, e.g.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D323V72S and that's 4GB
12GB seems to get up into $200+, and that's still a lot of "renewed" listings.
You can find quirky little loss-leader deals here and there sometimes but I don't think you're getting 12GB of RAM for $80 on a routine basis.
Anyway it's certainly not the same phone as a flagship folding phone but for daily everyday needs more than adequate, I even was able to run multiple gig apps eg. DoorDash/Uber Eats on the 8GB model.
I will say what people consider "worth the money" varies since I bought a $1,000.00 radar detector and it's like who buys that...
Apple has used this kind of blurry resizing animation in the past. For example, circa macOS 10.14 Mojave resizing windows in Split View would have the same effect: https://youtu.be/KDDMUxBtnkI
current view transition stack on ios was built for static transition between two well know layouts, like portrait to landscape rotation change. i would like live reflow too but i suspect 99% of existing apps aren’t ready to reflow at 120hz when they’ve been written around tween(start layout, end layout) style for decades
UIKit apps can already resize fluidly on Mac Catalyst and iPadOS. I suspect the issue here is more related to the video encoding / streaming used for iPhone Mirroring.
> This is the PSOTU’s message, which states clearly and plainly: stop thinking about creating software for a specific piece of hardware. Design software to be adaptable across a range of screen sizes and aspect ratios.
I remember so many Apple developers saying this was why Apple was better than Android. The HN archives are full of such comments.
Not that I care for either company, as they both lord over our lives and limit our freedoms.
Apple hasn't "invented" most things, from the personal computer, MP3 Player, or smart phone. They tend to revolutionize the things by making them work extremely well.
if by 'revolutionize', you mean 'let everybody else spend time, effort and money developing the idea, and once they've proven the market they buy an interesting company in the space with tons of patents, shut down everything they'd done before and make their interesting and take credit for the revolution, meanwhile, their new presence in the area mutes actual innovation, because they use all of the oxygen in the room'... sure, yeah, they do that... but the revolution was coming whether Apple participated or not.
Hey, if they can get the hinge working better it might improve the category at least. You'd expect Apple to do well at manufacturing for that kinda stuff
Agree, their "innovations" usually involve taking an existing concept or idea and executing it better. Hopefully they can pull that off and raise the bar for foldable electronics
They also buy a lot of their innovations. See Intrinsity, a fabless semi company Apple bought which lead to their Mobile Arm chips and eventually the M series.
Current foldables are fragile, require a built-in plastic screen protector, and have a visible crease. Apple is very unlikely to be willing to accept those compromises. We'll see, but I think their entry into the field will change things.
15 years ago, I would agree that Apple might not have been willing to accept those kinds of issues. I'm not sure about the Apple of today. That is not a slight against any Apple leadership, but I do feel that, for a variety of reasons, the level of minimum QC has notched back a bit in the pursuit of marketshare.
Apple fumbled on QC with software this past year, but have they with hardware? I've found their hardware (both computer and physical builds) has been very high quality still.
Sure this isn't just nostalgia / rose-tinted glasses speaking? In the 2010s, Apple shipped MacBooks with GPUs that fried themselves to death, and iPhones that bent in your pocket and lost cell signal if you held them wrong. Today's Apple does have some software quality issues, but their hardware is the best it's ever been.
The iPhone camera bump is the "jumped the shark" moment for me when Apple went from unwilling to accept that level of quality to "I'm not sure... they might". Speculative to be sure, but I believe that if Jobs was alive we'd have a paper thin camera sensor because the bump would have been a nonstarter.
Same regarding your comment... I agree, the minimum QC does feel like it notched back a bit.
"hey guys remember that screen technology that came out seven years ago and has had plenty of time to mature? Well our 65 year old CEO just discovered it and has found a way to make it stratospherically more expensive than its ever been before!"
Not a fan of foldables, if I am honest. Just a personal opinion. I do not like the it feels in the pocket bc the device needs to double its thickness when folding over.
When a mobile device manufacturer (samsung, hauwei, now apple) makes a foldable, I get the impression they're running out of ideas with the "slate" form factor and are trying to stimulate sales.
Personally, I would want that R&D spend and innovation to go to more sustainable materials, longer lasting devices, and easily repairable parts to extend the devices useful life.
The new Samsung fold 7s while folded are less than a mm thicker than an iPhone 17.
Or, alternatively, they feel like they finally cracked the code and think they can do it better. That's when Apple finally enters a market.
Consider how much money they put in to building a car to cancel it when they decided they couldn't, in fact, do it better. I'm sure there are hundreds - maybe thousands - of failed prototypes along the way.
You and me both, but I also recognize others disagree so ultimately, we'll see what the market decides.
Apple's annual gross profit was $195B last year against an R&D budget of around $35B. So, they've got more than enough spare change to throw around. I'm sure whatever they're spending on foldables isn't impairing them financially in any way.
I'm more concerned for what it means for focus, fragmented ecosystems, user experience, etc.
From Jobs: "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done."
Careful what you wish for. Making devices easily repairable increases thickness.
Tbh I think the microsoft neo (or was it the duo?) was the "best" - have 2 (or more) screens but put them on a hinge. You can get one big screen with whatever panel quality you like (hell, make it a cheap or transflective if you want), or you get a smaller screen if you wish.
There's a reason the Asus Duo is so much cheaper than the ThinkPad Fold X1 and all other OLED "folding" screen devices.
The purpose of a foldable is to reduce the lifespan of a device, and therefore sell more devices
Apple's MO has never been to make junk that breaks. They're as valuable as they are largely because of their reputation for high quality products.
Perhaps Apple is also running out of ideas.
To be fair, they ran out of ideas in 2010, if not before.
I want a foldable to make the device smaller in my pocket. Like an iPhone Air that could fold in half like a fliphone.
That is likely what it will be. The iPhone Air was probably just a test to see if all the super-thin components could work. Now they'll throw a hinge in the middle and a screen on the back. It'll end up being 2 or 3mm thicker, because of the bonus screen.
You mean like a Galaxy Flip?
I think discussion here are missing that most people do not own a PC/laptop, or barely ever opens one, and not because they can't afford it, but it just didn't fit into their daily lives. This is obviously entirely different from the HN crowd.
And in that case, a folding phone is huge! Having played with one that my parent use, it's such an upgrade for reading/scrolling experience. When we all are spending so much time on the phone (that's a separate discussion, but it is the reality).
Yeah, to support this point I'd also like to point that mobile gaming is larger market than both PC and console gaming.
A foldable iPhone will definitely solve one of the biggest problems at Apple. Foldable phones won't last 5-10 years. I can see Apple making all iPhone offerings foldable down the road
I've been dailying a pixel fold 9 pro for a while now and love the thing. Seeing Apple finally join in is exciting as heck. I wouldn't hold your breath for a non visible crease though, nor for it to necessarily be class leading in its screen tech. I doubt any of it matters though, the Pixel Folds aren't exactly class leading in these regards either and the fold is just not a concern at all once you're using it. it's practically invisible from head on, and the "plastic screen protector" worries are really not an issue either. The durability of the inner screen is actually much better than you'd expect since it spends most of its pocketed life protected from external scratches. Mines still in great shape, even though I do not use a case nor any other form of protector.
Where apple has a significant opportunity here is the software side though. Google unfortunately doesn't seem to be too interested in exploring UI concepts with the Fold, leaving that to OnePlus and Samsung, both of which have imo better multitasking experiences than the Pixel Fold. Apple making an iPhone that becomes an iPad would probably be enough for them to win significant marketshare, but I hope they use this opportunity to do some interesting things with UI beyond what the iPad can do.
>pixel
>I do not use a case
I have a Pixel 8a, and I have to use a case for it, because it appears to be designed to be as slippery as possible. Every edge is round and there's nothing to grip - it feels like an aluminium/glass bar of wet soap.
Recently went from an 8 to a 10 pro fold
The 10 feels like it should be more slippery, but for some reason, it isn't. It stays stuck in your hand like glue, despite the back feeling like another glass screen. Something special in is coating
I've gone all the way around and came back. The Samsung Fold was awesome and convenient. But carrying an ipad mini and a phone is not that big a deal. It's quite nice that the ipad mini does not have whatsapp or SMS plugged into it, so I can use it exclusively for reading books or playing music.
The cost of the iPad Mini + my phone was like $600 and the folds - even the 6th gen and above - are super unreliable, so right now that seems like the best play.
> But carrying an ipad mini and a phone is not that big a deal.
For you maybe, but for most it is, or we'd all be doing it.
Or not. Some of us are okay with phones the size they are so we are not tempted to stare at them even more.
It depends I guess. I really like my foldable. Got it for 500€ on a special deal.
It's really nice to have a tablet always with you. I live in a warm country so I don't usually wear a coat or a big bag.
Also, on android there's really no good small tablets. They're all 10" and bigger.
It is a pain to carry an iPad and a phone if you are walking. You need either large pockets or a handbag. If it is warm then you don't want either,
iPad mini is awesome for reading however, it took forever until Apple powered it up.
Personally, as someone being used to the Motorola Razor foldable, which happened to present back then. It was really good and cool as well. I hated the ever smaller getting Ericson smartphones.
I am looking forward to Apple's copy of Samsungs foldable smartphones. After all, I don't want to carry an iPhone as well as an iPad mini around with me.
And I see the foldable more as a replacement for the iPhone ultra max phones. No matter how large the screensize they have, they never beat the iPad mini on readability, even being stuck with the old one for many years.
> But carrying an ipad mini and a phone is not that big a deal
I did this way back when the first iPad mini was released, and it's not bad.
But these days, the big iPhone is 7 inches to the iPad mini's 8 inches... the phone is big enough for most iPad mini use cases
How do you carry your iPad mini? Does it fit in pockets?
> It's quite nice that the ipad mini does not have whatsapp or SMS plugged into it, so I can use it exclusively for reading books or playing music.
Eh, iOS has profiles that let you disable whatever apps you wish to. Better than a whole other piece of hardware, IMO
> It's quite nice that the ipad mini does not have whatsapp or SMS plugged into it, so I can use it exclusively for reading books or playing music.
Both a phone and a tablet can come with WhatsApp, it's a user choice whether they are there and the frequency of checking them. Global muting the apps is also an option.
I understand your point, but it is a point mitigated by user intervention. Now, if we want to say reading on a bigger screen than a phone is a better user experience, I'm on board with that.
How timely, I'm writing this from a Pixel 10 Pro Fold I bought in January.
Last night I opened it to find the inside screen having dead pixels in the center by the bend.
I love foldable phones. I use it all the time in both modes, but now I'm currently procrastinating looking up my best buy warranty plan specifics.
For a small percentage of mobile superusers, I really do believe foldables are the future. Having the ability to use desktop mode by default, or multitask, is huge.
For me at least the screen size isn’t the limiting factor the lack of a keyboard is. I don’t know why I’d choose this device over a Neo or Air + non-folding phone.
Mentions of the resizable iOS apps seem to signal a desktop dock mode, which ties into your concern.
We know Apple is bringing a folding iPhone through manufacturing leaks. A desktop mode is less likely to be leaked, since it would be mostly software and (a lot) less reliant on third parties.
> a desktop dock mode
This needs to come to ALL iPhones. You plug in a usb c cable to your monitor and bang, iPad Neo.
But Apple being Apple will software block it...
The software opportunity is what's interesting. Apple making an iPhone that becomes an iPad could finally make multitasking on mobile actually work. Hardware is table stakes, the UI decisions are what will matter.
I don't think I get foldable phones. When is the extra space necessary? I mean most of them turn from a somewhat 9:16 aspect ratio to 1:1. You don't earn anything in space to consume media content. The only real improvement might be for multitasking?
You get more to see.
Maps are too narrow on phones.
Books also are easier to read.
The foldable iPhone will have an aspect ratio very close to 3:2 for the outer display (like the original iPhone) and of 1.41:1 (between 3:2 and 4:3) for the inner display (similar to an iPad).
Multitasking would be huge. One reason I hate doing anything "real" on my phone is because I can't see more than one thing at a time.
I mean you can see more at once but now your typing experience is worse. I have an iPad and it's by far my least productive device unless it's connected to a physical keyboard. Typing on a giant touchscreen is so much more tedious than my phone's screen.
Really intrigued to see what Apple's design chops brings to this form factor. I'd love more screen real estate so I can travel without a damn laptop. The big question is how thick will it be?
> Starting price reportedly around $2,000.
I'll guess it won't be a Vision Pro level disaster, but most people will skip this device unless the price drops substantially.
That’s the same MSRP as the Samsung foldable.
I’m old enough to remember when everyone said the original iPhone would flop because it was too expensive…
Besides the new form factor, resizable apps are also meant to further bridge the gap between macOS and iOS right?
More than that, it forces iPhone-only devs to get with the program and make their apps usable on larger screens too.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if next year they dissolve the iPhone/iPad distinction on the App Store altogether and maybe even remove the Catalyst toggle on the Mac App Store. If you make an iOS app, it’s also a full fledged iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS app too.
I certainly wouldn’t mind. On my Mac there are some needlessly heavy electron apps I’d swap out for their iOS counterparts in a heartbeat if that were possible, as well as some games that would run fine on macOS but their devs don’t tick the checkbox for unclear reasons.
> I wouldn’t be surprised at all if next year they dissolve the iPhone/iPad distinction on the App Store altogether
I hadn't thought about it but it makes sense and it makes me wonder how far this would reach throughout the rest of the OS. If the iPhone can fold out into an iPad Mini, will it get the rest of the iPadOS features? The iPad used to run iOS but they rebranded the version that runs on iPad to iPadOS to distinguish that it has a handful of unique features only for big screens, mainly pertaining to multitasking. But if the line is being blurred and iPhones will have big screens with multitasking, will they go back to just calling it iOS on all mobile devices?
I'd guess that they're meant to bridge the gap between iOS and iPadOS, if anything.
I wonder how they'll address the crease.
My guess is one of two ways. Not address it at all. Or tell you that you don't see what you really see.
Why would they bring attention to it at all?
What company has ever highlighted the crease in their foldable for any reason other than to say it's improved from the previous year?
They'll likely use what Samsung showcased at CES in January (https://www.sammobile.com/news/samsung-crease-less-foldable-...), or something very close to it.
> Or tell you that you don't see what you really see.
?
Huawei's crease is virtually invisible.
Don’t you think that’s the first thing they would look at before green light?
iPhone Dynamic Crease (tm)
This will be really cool. iPhone really need change. All versions have same form factor for so long now
WWDC = Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.
i’ve been waiting a few years for iphone fold, im excited that they’re releasing it this year.
its both iphone mini (yay!! mini iphone again) and ipad mini (yay!! hueg screen for bedtime youtube) in one device presumably with a cpu powerful enough to run cyberpunk 2077. what a world :)
Holy mother of clickbait titles.
I think OP might want to change title of article:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's a pretty good homographic pun, honestly
Agreed. The content is not what I was expecting to read.
"Please do a bunch of work to support a folding phone model only a few people will be able to afford"
I can't imagine they'd release a crappy folding thing like the Samsung, I think it's more likely to be effectively dual-screen that can be unfurled into something where the two screens are side by side.
> a crappy folding thing like the Samsung
This is the only phone I've seen people move away from iPhone to get, I know at least 3 women who switched from iPhone to android to get the folding clamshell Samsung and all love it.
The triple folding phone is interesting to me but I still am not at the point where I feel comfortable having a $2K phone. Where you can get a Motorolla with 12GB of RAM for $80
I mention RAM as Android with 4GB of ram is almost unusable.
Are you citing subsidized prices, or used prices? I can only find $80 Motorolas used or locked, e.g.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D323V72S and that's 4GB
12GB seems to get up into $200+, and that's still a lot of "renewed" listings.
You can find quirky little loss-leader deals here and there sometimes but I don't think you're getting 12GB of RAM for $80 on a routine basis.
I was listening to this ep/podcast on Hackaday about a 12GB $50 Motorola phone
https://hackaday.com/2026/05/26/linux-on-android-provides-in...
But yeah they're usually carrier locked, I personally use Verizon prepaid and my 8GB Motorola phone is above $80 but not $600 either, it's $200
https://www.verizon.com/smartphones/motorola-moto-g-power-20...
Anyway it's certainly not the same phone as a flagship folding phone but for daily everyday needs more than adequate, I even was able to run multiple gig apps eg. DoorDash/Uber Eats on the 8GB model.
I will say what people consider "worth the money" varies since I bought a $1,000.00 radar detector and it's like who buys that...
Might be ram boost that's bumping from 8 to 12GB
It would be very funny if Apple's next innovative flagship product is a Surface Duo
Is that blurry mess on the video seriously how resizing works on iOS or is it just a POC made by some dev?
That is how window resizing on iOS 27 apps streamed to macOS 27 works right now in the first beta, I reckon it won't change.
It gives me a headache. How could anyone look at it and think it doesn't need to change?
Apple has used this kind of blurry resizing animation in the past. For example, circa macOS 10.14 Mojave resizing windows in Split View would have the same effect: https://youtu.be/KDDMUxBtnkI
current view transition stack on ios was built for static transition between two well know layouts, like portrait to landscape rotation change. i would like live reflow too but i suspect 99% of existing apps aren’t ready to reflow at 120hz when they’ve been written around tween(start layout, end layout) style for decades
UIKit apps can already resize fluidly on Mac Catalyst and iPadOS. I suspect the issue here is more related to the video encoding / streaming used for iPhone Mirroring.
> This is the PSOTU’s message, which states clearly and plainly: stop thinking about creating software for a specific piece of hardware. Design software to be adaptable across a range of screen sizes and aspect ratios.
I remember so many Apple developers saying this was why Apple was better than Android. The HN archives are full of such comments.
Not that I care for either company, as they both lord over our lives and limit our freedoms.
Can we update the title for a bit more clarity?
Maybe like
WWDC 2026: Platform sample app hints at future foldable
Peak Apple "innovation" incoming!
Apple hasn't "invented" most things, from the personal computer, MP3 Player, or smart phone. They tend to revolutionize the things by making them work extremely well.
if by 'revolutionize', you mean 'let everybody else spend time, effort and money developing the idea, and once they've proven the market they buy an interesting company in the space with tons of patents, shut down everything they'd done before and make their interesting and take credit for the revolution, meanwhile, their new presence in the area mutes actual innovation, because they use all of the oxygen in the room'... sure, yeah, they do that... but the revolution was coming whether Apple participated or not.
Apple is great at winning capitalism.
This take is completely divorced from reality.
That's obviously not what they mean.
Hey, if they can get the hinge working better it might improve the category at least. You'd expect Apple to do well at manufacturing for that kinda stuff
Agree, their "innovations" usually involve taking an existing concept or idea and executing it better. Hopefully they can pull that off and raise the bar for foldable electronics
They also buy a lot of their innovations. See Intrinsity, a fabless semi company Apple bought which lead to their Mobile Arm chips and eventually the M series.
The idea is the easy part. Execution is the hard part.
folding butterfly keyboard on a folding phone would be a real comeback.
Current foldables are fragile, require a built-in plastic screen protector, and have a visible crease. Apple is very unlikely to be willing to accept those compromises. We'll see, but I think their entry into the field will change things.
15 years ago, I would agree that Apple might not have been willing to accept those kinds of issues. I'm not sure about the Apple of today. That is not a slight against any Apple leadership, but I do feel that, for a variety of reasons, the level of minimum QC has notched back a bit in the pursuit of marketshare.
Apple fumbled on QC with software this past year, but have they with hardware? I've found their hardware (both computer and physical builds) has been very high quality still.
"notched back" - I see what you did there.
Sure this isn't just nostalgia / rose-tinted glasses speaking? In the 2010s, Apple shipped MacBooks with GPUs that fried themselves to death, and iPhones that bent in your pocket and lost cell signal if you held them wrong. Today's Apple does have some software quality issues, but their hardware is the best it's ever been.
The iPhone camera bump is the "jumped the shark" moment for me when Apple went from unwilling to accept that level of quality to "I'm not sure... they might". Speculative to be sure, but I believe that if Jobs was alive we'd have a paper thin camera sensor because the bump would have been a nonstarter.
Same regarding your comment... I agree, the minimum QC does feel like it notched back a bit.
I disagree. The camera bump was functional pragmatism winning out over Jony Ive's increasingly form-driven ideals.
Even the Jobs Reality Distortion Field couldn't alter physics.
"hey guys remember that screen technology that came out seven years ago and has had plenty of time to mature? Well our 65 year old CEO just discovered it and has found a way to make it stratospherically more expensive than its ever been before!"