Foldables have been here for a significant part of the past decade, but this past year was my first experience as a technology enthusiast with a foldable phone. Being an iPhone user for ages, the feeling has been nothing short of transformative, as I’ve continued using the OnePlus Open as my daily driver even at the time of writing this. And it’s this experience that makes me really optimistic about the foldable iPhone (or iPhone Fold) which is set to launch sometime in 2026.
What Apple must match
The biggest takeaway from my time with the OnePlus Open is definitely the display, and it’s what Apple must nail down with its own foldable iPhone. Although two years old at this point, the inner and outer LTPO AMOLED displays are colour-accurate, and they make for a smooth and immersive viewing experience.
From the moment I first opened the Open, this inner display has swept me off with its responsiveness. It’s equally bright, produces sharp colours and its bezels are pretty minimal even by today’s standards. Apple has been making top-tier Super Retina XDR OLED screens for its iPhones, and it remains to be seen how well their flexible inner screen fares against the current competition.
Another aspect that Apple should nail down is the iPhone Fold’s stamina. Compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 7, the OnePlus Open still holds its fort in the battery department with a 4,805mAh, significantly higher than Samsung’s latest offering. In fact, the newest iPhone 17 Pro Max has a similar capacity as the Open.
Since switching to the OnePlus foldable, the battery has fared fairly well over the course of these past six months, managing a consistent 6 hours of screen-on time between charges. The battery health has barely dipped since I started using the Open, as it has gone from 99% to 98%.
If Apple can somehow perfect the design to feature a strong battery inside a thin frame, I’m certain the iPhone Fold will be able to achieve a similar endurance. This could also be aided by a combination of Apple’s power efficient A-series silicon and software optimisation through iOS.
The Apple advantage
Ever since the first mainstream foldable, Galaxy Fold, came out, there’s one problem that still persists and that’s the visible crease that sandwiches the top and bottom halves. Personally, I barely notice the crease on the Open, unless I look for it against a source of light. But when it comes to interacting with, I don't usually feel it when swiping through with my fingers.
While brands like Samsung, Oppo and Vivo have made huge strides at minimising the crease, there’s no doubt that it’s still there. That brings us to the Apple advantage.
Like many preceding technologies that iPhones have featured in the past, Apple’s infamous waiting game might have worked its wonders to get rid of the crease once and for all. There have already been multiple reports that state that the foldable iPhone will likely have a near-invisible crease.
The Cupertino company is reportedly working with Samsung Display and Amphenol for manufacturing a custom internal metal plate for the hinge. This hinge is expected to be made using Liquid Metal for higher durability and a structural glass mid-frame for a minimal crease.
It’s not just the display where Apple is at an advantage, there’s the thickness. A lesson I learnt from my time using the OnePlus Open is that the thickness really matters, especially for book-style foldables. The thickness of the Open when unfolded is 5.8mm, and it makes for a comfortable holding experience when using it for consuming media or switching across a multitude of work apps.
But this foldable is two years old and in that time, we’ve seen that thickness go down to 5.2mm on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold and even 4.2mm on the Galaxy Z Fold 7. With the advent of slim phones, especially Apple’s very own iPhone Air, I’m quite hopeful that the first generation foldable iPhone will be super thin. Early reports suggest a 4.5mm thickness when unfolded and around 9.5mm when folded, which will put it right alongside Samsung’s foldable for thinness.
Apple may finally solve foldable durability
Foldable phones are many things, but durable is not one of them. With this year’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold breaking into half and smoking flames in the JerryRigEverything test, it was pretty clear that there’s a long way to go. The OnePlus Open that I’m daily driving has, touchwood, not shown any signs of wear, but that’s partly down to the fact that I’m no butterfingers.
However, I do carry a sense of fear having seen so many cases of broken foldables on my Reddit feed. But I’m cautiously optimistic about Apple’s upcoming device, simple because of how well the iPhone Air has handled durability concerns for a phone that’s just 5.6mm thick. The slim phone had sparked worry at launch for its thinness, but Apple executives scratched those concerns by putting the iPhone Air to durability test soon after.
If the iPhone-maker can nail down the same level of toughness for its foldable, it’ll certainly hold all the cards that might finally prompt users into getting a foldable.
Why iOS could be the ultimate differentiator
Ultimately, what made the foldable experience great for me was the software. A primary reason, I picked the OnePlus out of the all the foldables in the Beebom office was because of OxygenOS, and it’s got to do with one crucial functionality – Open Canvas.
It’s OnePlus’ version of dealing with multiple apps at once. Triggering it is easy as you can simply open one app and then drag a second one from the Dock’s app drawer. If two apps aren’t good enough for multitasking, Open Canvas has room for a third app that either slides underneath the two previous apps or leaves itself open as a floating window.
Not to forget the Open nails the tent mode every time, and the semi-unfolded laptop mode isn’t that bad either. The camera app has a nifty option to toggle on the outer display to use it for framing shots from the rear cameras.
The rest of the software has been impressive from OnePlus, considering this is their one and only foldable phone. Icons, elements and the overall layout is well-placed and polished instead of feeling spaced out and expanded from a phone-to-tablet view. One of the biggest OxygenOS 16 features has definitely been animations, and it has been carried out reasonably well when the Open is folded and unfolded.
With all that already out in the wild, Apple has a chance at developing a fork of iOS that feels natural on the iPhone Fold when it’s unfolded. It doesn’t have to be a blatant copy of iPadOS, but it should be developed with multitasking at heart.
And unlike Meta, which took years to come up with an iPad app for Instagram, iOS on the Fold should have native integration for app scaling and seamlessly switch from folded to unfolded view and vice versa. Since Apple already has cross-platform integration across its ecosystem, it gives me hope that the company’s foldable could finally make the compromises of current foldable phones feel like a distant memory. This brings me to…
iPhone Fold could set a new standard
If there’s one thing that many foldable phones compromised in the past, it’s the camera setup. Although Google and Samsung flagships have been camera kings, that’s not the case with their foldable phones. It’s precisely where the OnePlus Open still stands on top with a respectable set of cameras.
Yes, the Z Fold 7 has a 200 MP main camera, but its secondary telephoto and ultra-wide sensors are inferior 10 MP units. That’s the case with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold as well. On the two-year-old Open, you get a 48 MP main, 64 MP 70mm telephoto with 3x zoom and 48 MP 14mm ultra-wide sensors. The setup isn’t just good on paper, as it also performs well above current competitors.
With the iPhone 17 Pro setting a benchmark for mobile photography, I have high hopes about the cameras on the Fold. I’m equally cautious, at the same time, after seeing only a single main camera on the iPhone Air. But I think a foldable iPhone without a powerful camera array will be a tougher pill to swallow, especially if it lands in the reported price of around $2,500.
2026 will eventually be a game changer, not just for Apple, but for every other phone manufacturer that’s invested in the foldable scene. To attract early adopters, the Cupertino brand has to strike a balance between features and pricing and if it can solve the software struggles that has plagued previous foldables, the foldable iPhone could be a recipe for success.
