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The Foldable iPhone Is Basically an iPad Mini That Folds in Half

Watching videos and playing games is going to be so much more immersive.
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We already know that the foldable iPhone will be shorter and wider than any iPhone that Apple has ever released. Now we know that its inner screen—the one that folds—will be roughly the size of an iPad mini’s display.

YouTuber Vadim Yuryev, who runs the Max Tech channel, acquired some dummy models of the upcoming foldable iPhone that’s expected to be announced in September with the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max. The metal mockups give us the closest look at the device’s dimensions so far.

On X, Yuryev shared the above post comparing the foldable iPhone’s footprint with an iPad mini. As you can see, Apple’s first foldable will have a screen that’s almost the same as the 7.8-inch mini. While not a working model, the YouTuber suggests the foldable iPhone will be great for “playing games like Call of Duty with on-screen controls.” As somebody who has played a stupid amount of CoD on his sixth-generation iPad mini, I can attest that the size is indeed great for assuming the fabled “claw grip.”

It’s widely believed that Apple will primarily market the foldable iPhone as a more immersive screen for consuming content. Think watching videos, playing games, scrolling TikToks, and even reading.

In another X post, Yuryev also shows how much larger the foldable display will be compared to an iPhone 17 Pro Max. For content in 16:9 aspect ratio, you’d be getting a significantly larger viewing area.

Here are a few screenshots shared from Vincent Zhong’s review of the Huawei Pura X—a recently released foldable with slightly larger but similar dimensions to the foldable iPhone—that best demonstrates how much larger your content looks in portrait orientation.

And if you haven’t seen the foldable iPhone’s dimensions, Yuryev has a short video on what that looks like in the hand:

Apple’s first foldable, potentially called the “iPhone Ultra,” will be soon-to-be new CEO John Ternus’s first iPhone announcement. With a rumored starting price of at least $2,000, the foldable iPhone won’t be for everyone. Its success or failure will set the tone for the company’s future and whether hardware is indeed “back, baby” or not.

Gone are the days of a new iPhone coasting its way to sure-fire sales. Even with certain compromises, the iPhone Air was a technology marvel, and yet sales were reportedly poor. Turns out people aren’t pining for super-skinny phones no matter how great they feel in the hand. Consumers prefer a thicker phone, like the iPhone 17 Pro Max, for its better features such as longer battery life, bigger screen, and more versatile cameras.

Apple will also face strong competition when its foldable iPhone launches. In China, Oppo and Huawei have been making best-in-class foldables for years. They’re now several generations in and have all but mastered reducing the visibility and feel of the crease that runs down a foldable’s inner screen. Samsung, whose foldables like the Z Fold 7 dominate outside of China, is reportedly preparing to launch a direct competitor to the foldable iPhone, too. The design of the “Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide” leaked in March. And just today, its alleged dimensions were shared on X by Ice Universe, a user who has accurately leaked information on unreleased devices.

But the cult of Apple is very strong. An Apple logo and the iPhone brand could be enough to make the company’s first foldable phone a hit.

 

 

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