Apple reportedly testing foldable iPhone prototype for September 2022 release
Apple’s plans for a foldable iPhone, or iPhone Flip, are an open secret due to an inflow of rumors and patent filings in latest weeks. Yet the newest leak means that Apple has progressed past the strategy planning stage and is actively engaged on its foldable cellphone prototype.
Economic Daily News (through MacRumors) reported on Monday that Apple has despatched a number of prototypes to its manufacturing provider Foxconn for testing. According to the report, Apple is aiming to make it able to withstanding at the least 100,000 folds, and is weighing whether or not to make use of an OLED or micro-LED show.
We additionally know when Apple will allegedly goal to release this new cellphone: September 2022, which might coincide, theoretically, with the iPhone 14. It’s not clear whether or not this cellphone would be the iPhone 14, or a separate mannequin launched concurrently.
We do not know extra about Apple’s prototypes but, however the firm has historically produced most of its iPhones on the Foxconn campus in Taiwan for years. That portion of the report definitely rings true, however we’ll have to attend for additional info earlier than accepting any of this info as truth.
A leak final week steered that this foldable iPhone would exchange the iPad Mini in Apple’s lineup, promote for $1,499 (round £1,100 / AU$2,100), sport 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM, and arrive in 2022. Yet the leaker in query does not have an awesome success fee with predictions, so take this info with a number of grains of salt.
What we all know and suspect in regards to the iPhone Flip
We’ve seen a number of patents from Apple regarding its foldable iPhone up to now two years. Yet simply as Apple has a number of prototypes in manufacturing, these patents solely present attainable avenues the cellphone may take, not insider info.
The first patent in early 2019 confirmed designs for a foldable iPhone with a single show that folds in on itself, together with one sketch for a twice-folding iPhone that might seem like a Z when closed.
An Apple Z-Phone appears particularly unlikely, however in line with a leak earlier this yr from Jon Prosser, the iPhone Flip may truly be made from two separate shows linked by a hinge, not a single foldable display.
A newer patent found in October means that Apple hopes to make this new cellphone out of a fabric that might mechanically restore any scratches or dents over time, utilizing ‘externally utilized warmth, mild, electrical present, or different sort of exterior stimulus.’
Similarly, one other October Apple patent confirmed the corporate has conceived of a protecting ‘hardcoat layer’ for foldable telephones that might each forestall cracks forming and fill in any micro-cracks that develop over time.