April 29 update: this post was updated with more details of the foldable iPhone and a new report that focuses on what it will be called.
That intriguing time of the year has arrived, when objects purporting to be dummies of upcoming iPhones leak into the public domain. Now, a video shows how the folding iPhone may look, comparing it to the iPad mini and upcoming iPhone 18 Pro. And a new report details the reasons for the timing of the CEO changeover coming at Apple. Meanwhile, there are now indications that the name iPhone Ultra could be the one that sticks. More on that below.
The iPhone Ultra Dummy Units Surface
These curious metallic lumps, sometimes stratified like igneous rock can provide clear ideas of what the final produce may be like. The video comes from YouTube channel Max Tech, where Vadim Yuryev excitedly describes the silver blocks as the real folding iPhone design.
The folding iPhone, thought to be called the iPhone Ultra or iPhone Fold — read more details on the name at the end of this post — is expected to be unveiled in September.
Part of Yuryev’s insistence that they are real comes from the fact that the dummies he showed last year turned out to be “spot-on” representations of the iPhone 17 series.
While that doesn’t prove the latest dummies will turn out to be accurate, it’s certainly a promising start.
Dimensions And The Passport Design
The iPhone Ultra’s shape, leaked by Sonny Dickson earlier in April (full details here), is replicated here in Yuryev’s dummy — though Dickson’s came in a fetching shade of pink — and shows a shape similar to a passport, wide and not that tall.
If legitimate, the new dummy confirms an external camera panel with two lenses that stretches across about three quarters of the phone’s rear.
Yuryev’s measurement of the phone says it’s 11mm thick when folded, 5.5mm when opened — both metrics ignoring the extra bulk from the camera bump. This would mean that each half of the iPhone Ultra is a little thinner than the iPhone Air (5.64mm).
Yuryev says the camera bump is massive, by the way, but also says that reports that the wider aspect of the phone would mean it couldn’t fit in a pocket easily have been exaggerated.
The dummy also has a Camera Control on it, something that it had been suggested wouldn’t be the case on something this thin.
iPhone 17 Pro Max And iPad Mini Comparisons
For a sense of the size of the internal display, Yuryev laid the open dummy along the long side of an iPhone 17 Pro Max and the Ultra’s width more or less matched the 17 Pro Max’s length. He also compared it to the iPad mini, pointing out that the open display is about the same height, but not as wide as the iPad mini.
Using the iPhone Ultra when it’s folded should be easy, if the video is anything to go by, as Yuryev’s thumb reached across the most parts of the display with ease.
This also revealed that while the folded Ultra looks excessively wide, that’s an optical illusion created by its stubby height: it’s not much wider than the iPhone 17 Pro Max display.
A new report from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg details more about what we should expect. It came in the latest Power On newsletter and explained that the timing for passing the CEO baton from Tim Cook to John Ternus was not coincidental.
“Less than two weeks later, he will introduce what promises to be the biggest new Apple product in a decade: the first foldable iPhone.
That timing is not a coincidence, I’m told. As part of Apple’s planning for the transition from Tim Cook to Ternus, the company wanted its new leader to be the one hosting the event to unveil the device — setting him up to become the face of what it believes will be a blockbuster new product category,” it said.
Gurman’s newsletter also said that the iPhone Fold launch will be one of around 10 new product categories expected to be launched by Apple in the next few years.
But there’s one device, also a foldable, which may never launch, a foldable iPad. While there have been reports of this product in the past, its future is unknown. “Apple has been working on a roughly 20-inch foldable iPad. This device has been a Ternus priority but may end up being a wacky experiment that doesn’t see the light of day, according to several people who have worked on it,” Gurman said.
The name of the new phone is still under wraps, of course, but it seems the rumor mill is leaning towards iPhone Ultra rather than the more pedestrian iPhone Fold. Perhaps, given the expected high price of the phone, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
New Details Of The Folding iPhone’s Name
The new information comes from Macworld. “While many members of the press have taken to calling this device the ‘iPhone Fold,’ Macworld has received information that corroborates reports that Apple will instead opt for the ‘Ultra’ brand for its new iPhone model,” the report said.
“According to a source familiar with Apple’s plans, the company seems set on expanding its Ultra branding with the new flagship iPhone arriving this fall. Furthermore, our source says Apple is also likely to bring the Ultra branding to the Mac as well,” it went on.
Of course, there’s also the advantage that it sets the folding iPhone apart from rivals like the Galaxy Z Fold7, and perhaps Apple felt that as Samsung has been using Fold for seven years that it needed something different.
If correct, it will mean the iPhone Ultra will join two other Apple products, the Apple Watch Ultra (now in its third generation) and the Mac chip which began as the Apple M1 Ultra.
Whether this proves correct or not, Macworld hits on another element of the naming that I am sure is right: it won’t have a number in the name.
“Our sources also told us that the iPhone Ultra won’t technically be part of the iPhone 18 lineup, which means it won’t have the number 18 in its name, similar to last year’s iPhone Air,” it reported
This seems logical. The iPhone Air was completely different from any other iPhone released last year. Where the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 14 Plus, for instance, were versions of the regular iPhone, that wasn’t true of the iPhone Air last year and it won’t be the case for the folding iPhone this time around.
