Apple Needs to Launch Its Flip Folding iPhone in 2026. Here’s Why

I love Apple’s cosmic orange iPhone 17 Pro — even when I managed to turn mine pink — but I’m disappointed not to see the company’s long-rumored foldable iPhone Flip. Almost all major Android phone makers, including Samsung, Google, Motorola, OnePlus, Xiaomi and Honor are now multiple generations into their foldable phone systems, with the hardware continuing to get more refined with each update. Oppo is now in its fifth year of folding and its latest Find N6 is the result of those years of development. Apple isn’t even on the first step and it’s starting to feel like it’s late to the party. That could be a problem.

Apple dominates the premium phone segment, but foldables — which enter the premium space in terms of price — are already nipping at its heels, with Motorola telling CNET that 20% of customers buying its foldable Razr have jumped ship at Apple. Meanwhile, Samsung is on the seventh generation of its Flip and Fold series. As Lisa Eadicicco discovered during a visit to Seoul, “folders are everywhere” in Samsung’s home country of South Korea.

With almost all major Android phone makers entering the foldable market, Apple is at risk of losing potential customers. It also runs the risk of letting a competitor like Samsung or Motorola become a household name, which could make it difficult for Apple to make an impact when it finally launches its device. In addition, early adopters drawn to foldable technology may be more entrenched in the Android ecosystem by the time Apple’s phone arrives looking to switch to iOS.

Apple probably won’t mind. It is estimated that almost 20 million cases from all manufacturers will be sold worldwide in 2023, and Apple is reported to have sold 26.5 million iPhone 14 Pro Max in the first half of that year alone. In 2024, foldable sales were flat – and 2025 didn’t fare much better, according to analysts at CounterPoint Research, although Samsung reported pre-order numbers for its latest foldable. Apparently, Apple feels it hasn’t missed the boat yet.

Apple has been finding success in biding its time, looking at the industry and launching its own take on the product when it’s ready. Apple didn’t invent phones, tablets, smartwatches or computers, but it found ways to take existing products and make them more useful, more relevant to everyday life and — dare I say it — more fun. That’s why the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac lines dominate the market today.

For me, I need to see Apple’s take on the foldable phone. I’ve written before about how disappointed I am in folders. I’ve been a mobile journalist for over 14 years and phones have become as dull as they come together with little variation on the same rectangular slab.

Read more: The best Flip Phone of 2026

The folders promised something new, something fresh, something that briefly sparked excitement in me, but over the years, that excitement has waned and died. Great products and while I love the novelty of the bendable screen, it’s not revolutionary in the way we interact with our phones. Not like the arrival of the touchscreen when we were still pressing buttons to write texts.

I was hoping that Google’s Pixel Fold would be the next folding phone to kickstart, and while the latest Pixel 10 Pro Fold — the second generation of Google’s foldable — offers great reviews, it hasn’t delivered any kind. change. Instead, it sounds like “me too” from Google. Ditto for the OnePlus Open. So I’m left to look to Apple, a company with a history of product innovation, to create a new take on a brand that truly advances the way we use our phones.

That innovation will not come from product design. Apple works closely with its third-party software developers, and it’s that input that could help the foldable iPhone become a real utility. My biggest complaint about the wrap right now is that while the hardware is decent, the devices are actually running standard versions of Android thrown in with some UI tweaks. Normal phones just bend.

Few Android developers embrace the rolling format, and it’s not hard to see why; users are not in sufficient numbers yet to justify the time and expense of adapting their software to various screen sizes. The many existing wrapper formats mean that Android wrappers suffer from the same fragmentation problem that has plagued the platform since the beginning. Android-based folders are a more difficult platform for developers to build on than standard phones. Apple will be able to change that, as it proved with the iPhone and iPad.

Given Apple’s close relationship with top-tier developers — not to mention their large engineering team — I expect that eventually Apple will bend to offer innovations that make it more than just a foldable iPhone.

And I really hope it does. I want to look forward to the introduction of technology again. I want to feel the excitement of getting a new gadget in my hands and feel that “wow” moment as I do something revolutionary for the first time.

In short, I don’t want to be bored by technology anymore. Apple, it’s over for you.