If you wait for the first folded iPhone and feel it will never come, don’t worry. Half of it just did in the form of iPhone air. Now we just have to wait for the other half to show up in 2026.
The so-called iPhone fold has been rumored to be significantly longer than the air, and the waiting time has at times been dishonest. The foldable market as a whole is now mature: Samsung kicked things out with the Galaxy Fold more than six years ago, and these days each has respecting Android producer a folding phone to offer. But Apple refuses to release a foldable until it can get it right.
It is a questionable decision, because in many ways the best way to learn how to make good folding phones is to launch a bad one. (Just look at Samsung’s journey from day-a-break to the top of the class.) Customers can complain, reviewers can hand out devastating reviews, but mass negative feedback is a strong catalyst for growth. As long as a project is limited to the “one day, possibly” the Moonshot department, it moves at a snail pace. Tell the team they need to send this year no matter what and you get three things: complaints, mistakes and progress.
Apple needs progress. But it is apparently unwilling to accept any of the obvious options: to launch a defective folding phone and iterate from there or never launch a folding phone at all. Instead, it seems that the company has come up with a third way. Which is to launch half of the components of the iPhone folded under the guise of something else.
After all, what else could it have in mind with iPhone Air? After Apple’s strict standards, it feels like a big strategically wrong mistake. It is extremely good for one thing (being incredibly thin) that most customers would not consider a highest priority, while compromising in other areas they would (battery life, extra cameras). No Need Their phone to be 5.6 mm thick and it seems unlikely that many people will be prepared to pay for it with lower battery life, weaker camera performance and a high price.
But the device makes much more sense when you see it as part of a continuously developing product ecosystem rather than isolated. Unlike conventional smartphones, foldable needs to fit a work screen within a super-slim body because half the time is closed and effectively doubling the thickness. (When I made a list of objects that iPhone Air is thinner than, I set up folding phones because it felt like an unreasonable comparison: like opening a book and counting only half the pages. But their unfolded thickness can be as low as 4.2 mm.) The development and victims created to create iPhone air will prove their value when they give Apple to build an opportunity for the to fit in a pocket.
Apple
In fact, the funny thing about iPhone Air Design is that in many ways it is A phone divided into two joint sections. Look at “Plateau” at the back, one of the most bold marketing pieces I’ve seen from a company’s legendary for its marketing skills. It is a grotesque camera module that distorts the phone’s proportions and looks at first impression at least, straightforwardly ugly. And its main purpose is to enable Apple to cheat on the dimensions by stuffing half of the components in a section of the chassis, we are not allowed to measure. It is the design equivalent of sweeping garbage under the rug and then inviting guests to wonder about your brand new “Indoor Hill.”
But I’ll take off. The plate, as ugly as I find it, is proof that Apple’s engineers have figured out how to divide the iPhone’s essential component and shift elements of the intentional about the matter. The 5.6 mm part of the air is ready and is waiting to serve as iPhone Fold’s main display; All Apple has to do now is to expand the plate and give it another screen … and then train the hinge, which is the hardest part of the equation, but is believed to be well underway. Once sorted, you have yourself a foldable iPhone that combines hype and lack of pre -predictions of a brand new product with the learning benefits of the second generation. It is the best of both worlds.
And iPhone Air? Maybe I’m wrong and it will sell well enough for Apple to keep it around. But my suspicion is that it’s just a springboard. One theory that explains why Apple went after the branding rather than the expected iPhone 17 air is that the company intends to be a disposable. It is found outside the normal version cycle. And when its purpose is met, the air will be quietly phased out in favor of the folding apple was not quite ready to launch this time.