According to reports, Apple may release a folding iPhone next year. If Apple does introduce it at the company’s annual iPhone event, that would mean that the folding iPhone would ship nearly eight years after the Royole FlexPai, the first Android folding phone, and seven years after the first folding Galaxy phone.
Why has it taken Apple so long? The company has never made an official statement, but Apple has a history of not entering a market until it can make a product that meets its high standards. With folding phones, there is a concern about durability–not just with the possibility of a crease, but also with the hinges and other parts. It seems to be a concern that has taken many years for Apple to address.
While folding phones have improved in those eight years, durability concerns remain, so much so that YouTubers are addressing the issue with their own tests. For example, Korean YouTuber tech-it took a new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 and folded it over and over 200,000 times to see how well the device holds up. They did this manually–in other words, someone sat down and opened and closed it over and over, which took over eight hours. If you’re looking for something to watch as you wait for the next episodes of Chief of War to drop on AppleTV+, you can watch tech-it’s footage of the test below.
If you don’t have the time to watch the footage, tech-it has a Google Doc of its findings. Here’s what they noted:
tech-it
- A forced reboot error first occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 folds, and the same error repeatedly appeared at roughly every 10,000 folds afterward (e.g., around 16,000, 26,000, etc.).
- Around 46,000 folds, creaking noises started coming from the hinge.
- At 75,000 folds, an unknown black liquid came out of the hinge, but it has not appeared again.
- At 175,000 folds, all speakers (earpiece, top, and bottom) stopped working.
- The hinge has become smoother. Free-stop still works, but elasticity seems to be lost.
- No other abnormalities observed.
This all seems catastrophic–reboots, creaking, “black liquid” leaks, and broken audio? Yikes! But, as one YouTube commenter pointed out, tech-it’s test is extreme. No one is going to open and close a folding phone repeatedly like that for over eight hours. The test is putting stress on the device that isn’t typical, and the Galaxy Fold7 will probably be just fine after a couple of months of regular daily use.
But it does spotlight the durability concerns of foldable phones, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple found these results unacceptable, even if the test isn’t reflective of real-world usage. The stakes are high with this iPhone. Apple might even be performing a similar test, though with a robot doing all the work and not an unpaid intern. It’s all to ensure that Apple creates the best foldable iPhone possible–after all, if you’re going to pay over $2,000 for it (which might be less than expected), it better last.
For the latest on Apple’s efforts to build a folding phone, check out the iPhone Fold superguide.
Author: Roman Loyola, Senior Editor, Macworld
Roman is a Macworld Senior Editor with over 30 years of experience covering the tech industry, focusing on the Mac and other products in the Apple ecosystem. He is also the host of the Macworld Podcast. His career started at MacUser, where he received Apple certification as a repair technician (when Apple did that kind of thing). He's also worked for MacAddict, MacLife, and TechTV.