Right now, a lot of people are bored with the iPhone, or just smartphones in general, because they’ve just kind of looked the same since they came out. It’s been the same slab of glass with a screen on the front, a camera on the back, that fits into the palm of your hand.
Even though it’s evolved over the years to look a lot different than the first iPhone, I mean, when you strip it down to the essentials, it’s the same thing. So, recently, Apple started working on something different.
A new type of smartphone that’s bigger, bolder, and more expensive than anything they’ve ever tried before. Yeah, the foldable iPhone is happening, and it’s happening way sooner than I thought.
Today, I want to give you your first and early look at iPhone 17 Ultra, which is what Apple is going to be calling this thing. And by the end of this article, I think you’ll see exactly why it’s going to live up to that name. Interestingly, on and off for years, we’ve heard about Apple’s work on two different looks for the folding phone.
The first is the flip design, which is sort of taking a standard iPhone, cutting it down the middle, and having it fold in towards you. Where the fold style is a completely different form factor, and the phone opens up from left to right, similar to a book that you’d be opening.
Now, for years, the rumors were ping-ponging back and forth. Apple’s doing the flip, no, Apple’s doing the fold. No, they’re doing the fold, now they’re doing the flip. And we didn’t know what they were going to settle on until recently.
Three sources have now confirmed that Apple has decided on the final design, and it is 100% going to be the fold book style option.
And to me, this absolutely feels like the right call, because while the flip phone is kind of cool for a couple minutes, it’s just a normal iPhone that folds up and down at the end of the day, where the fold style, the book, is a completely new form factor.
It seems like this would open the doors for Apple to do a lot more with this, and that’s exactly what we’re hearing. Which is why I want to show you the three big things that Apple is accomplishing with their fold design, different from everybody else, and way different for the iPhone.
Thinnest iPhone Ever Made
First, the iPhone Ultra is going to be the thinnest Apple product ever made when it’s unfolded. And I don’t just mean of the iPhone, I mean of any Apple product in history.
Rumors say that at the thinnest point, it’s going to be just 4.5 millimeters. For context, the current thinnest Apple product is the 13-inch iPad Pro coming in at 5.1 millimeters.
That means the iPhone 17 Ultra is going to be about 12% thinner than that. Which is kind of insane that there will also be an entire smartphone in those 4.5 millimeters.
Dual Screens
Second, the iPhone Ultra is going to be the first iPhone with two different displays on it. Because this is a folding phone, you’re not always going to be using it while it’s open.
So on the outside, Apple’s going to be putting a massive 5.5-inch screen, or the same size screen that you could find on an iPhone 8 Plus.
That’s just going to be the screen when you’re not using the main screen. Because when you open the iPhone Ultra up, you’re going to be greeted with a 7.8-inch screen, similar to the form factor of an iPad.
It’s actually been already compared to the 8.3-inch screen of the iPad Mini. And while of course, side by side, there is an obvious size difference, 7.8 inches is massive.
The current largest iPhone screen is 6.9 inches. So almost an inch larger than that. And in a square type form. Think of it as two iPhones side by side. It’s a massive screen.
And one that I believe is going to enable all kinds of new functionality and a completely different version of iOS. But more on that in a bit. Man, this design looks so good, it’s starting to make me thirsty.
No Display Crease
Without a doubt, it’s the third change that Apple’s making on their iPhone Ultra that, to me, makes this more interesting than any other foldable we have ever seen. And that’s because we’ve heard that Apple is going to fix the number one issue with every folding phone that has ever existed.
The giant crease that goes down the middle of the screen that makes the product look incredibly cheap. Every foldable that’s ever been made has had one that is super noticeable, and yeah, it’s gotten better over time, but it’s still there.
You can see it in most light, and it doesn’t look great, right? Would Apple ever release a very expensive product that looked like this? I don’t think so. See, according to one report, Apple’s figured out a way to solve this, or at least mostly solve it.
One source is saying that Apple has found a way to eliminate the visible crease entirely, and that in development, they’ve been working to eliminate this at all costs, regardless of how expensive it is.
Although, to be fair, other sources have been way more conservative, saying that Apple has been working a lot to eliminate it, but that if you do look closely, there will absolutely still be a crease there.
It’s just going to be better than any other phone out there. It’s going to be the best-looking fold crease, and if that doesn’t explain Apple in a nutshell, I don’t know what does.
Rear Cameras
As we start to get into some of the specific features, the cameras, the batteries, and everything else Apple’s changing, things get weird really fast. Like for starters, the camera system on the back is only going to be a dual lens setup.
Apple’s going to be using the same two cameras that are currently found on the iPhone 16, and although they’ll be their latest 48 megapixel sensors on both, the fact that there’s not going to be a third lens on Apple’s most expensive phone is weird.
Front Camera
If anything, I think the iPhone Ultra should have a fourth lens on here, not lose the third one. But things get even more interesting when you look at the front-facing selfie camera.
While it will be placed in likely a smaller dynamic island, giving the phone a pretty futuristic look, it’s not actually going to be the same face ID camera system that Apple’s been using on iPhones since 2017.
Touch ID Returns
According to rumors, and I know this is hard to believe, Apple is actually not using face ID on this iPhone at all. Instead, Apple said to be going all the way back to 2016 and adding the touch ID button back to the iPhone.
Now, not in the form of a home button that sits on the front of the display, but over on the side of the phone, similar to the implementation that we’ve seen in something like the iPad mini or the iPad Air.
So I looked into why Apple was doing this, and apparently the rationale goes that the inside of the phone, because it’s so thin, is too cramped to fit face ID. Apple just straight up ran out of space in there.
So in order to have some form of authentication, they had to go back to touch ID. But I don’t know, man, just make the phone a bit thicker and then you can fit it in there just fine.
It seems like I’m already starting to notice the trend on this phone, that Apple is giving themselves constraints and then making up solutions to their own problems.
To be fair, we are still more than a year off of Apple releasing this phone, so something could definitely change, but I don’t know. I almost believe this one because that phone just looks so thin.
Battery Life
I don’t actually know how you would fit an entire face ID array in there. Now, next up, what about the battery life on iPhone Ultra? If it’s not just the thinnest iPhone, but the thinnest Apple product ever, and Apple’s having a hard time fitting certain components, there’s no way this phone would have good battery, right? Well, apparently Apple has thought through this, and this is another top priority for them.
They’re going to be using this new type of battery that is a high density cell. There’s not a ton of info about this battery tech specifically, but my understanding is that Apple has found a way to pack more battery material in a smaller area, in a much thinner area at that.
So my current understanding is that while the iPhone Ultra won’t break records for the best battery on an Apple product, it also probably won’t be the worst we’ve ever seen and will actually be usable throughout a day.
Software Features
Looking at the hardware of the iPhone Ultra, it is quite a mix of some of the latest cutting-edge technology and a few things that certainly feel like a step back, and if that is the case, I think Apple’s going to have to do something really special in the software, and all the evidence is already pointing there.
See, up until this point, the iPhone has never been anything but a rectangle. From the very beginning, it’s been a small rectangle and it’s gotten bigger, but it’s been the same overall rectangle design that apps fit into.
But now, well, now you’re gonna have two of these rectangles side-by-side, which is going to basically double the amount of screen real estate as before.
Slit-screen Apps
The iPhone Ultra is where we’re gonna see Apple unveil split-screen apps without a question. They’re probably gonna be able to scale iOS apps that exist currently side-by-side, similar to how split-view on the iPad works right now, where you can drag apps from your dock and put them side-by-side.
I could see this multitasking being a huge appeal. And a classic feature that Apple was a decade late to that Android had, and then when it was the right time, then they showed it off to the world because they thought they had perfected the design.
iPadOS Software
A foldable iPhone also means that iOS and the software that runs on this is gonna look completely different. I mean, there are early comparisons to the iPad in general.
Could we possibly see a variation of iPad OS or a dumbed-down version that Apple brings to the iPhone just because there is so much space? And if I had to guess, I’d also bet that Apple copies a good amount of existing foldable features.
Foldable Gimmicks
The big one that comes to mind is being able to set up the foldable on an angle and kind of use the screen as a DIY tripod for something like a selfie.
To be clear, I think this is mostly a gimmick and not all that particularly useful, but it could be a cool use case that Apple shows you only get on the iPhone Ultra. But again, with all of this still being so early in the rumor cycle, nothing is confirmed, and as we get closer, we’ll hear more about the specifics.
Although, one thing that we have heard from the very beginning is that this is not going to be a new iPhone.
Price
This is going to be Apple’s new most expensive iPhone ever made. iPhone Ultra is said to start at 2,700,000 naira, which means that out the door, the cheapest this phone could be about 3,000,000 naira or twice the price of a current pro iPhone, which at its core makes sense.
You’re sort of getting two iPhones side by side. I can imagine the manufacturing for this is ridiculously complicated, and it’s going to cost Apple probably twice as much to make these.
The thing is, I want to be honest here in saying that while parts of the iPhone Ultra look cool, I think parts of a folding phone can be kind of dope. I think broadly, they’re kind of silly.
Since the very first Samsung Fold came out in 2019, which I actually made a video on at the time, I’ve thought of these as just a symptom of boredom, that folding phones, while they might add a little bit extra, don’t actually make the smartphone experience that much better.
It’s why in the six years that folding phones have been on the market, they still have not cracked 5% market share.
They are still less than 5%. When Apple releases one, it is absolutely going to make that number increase a lot.
But how much and for how long? To me, the iPhone Ultra just feels like a gimmick. It’s something that’s going to have our attention for a little bit, and then a decade from now, everybody’s going to forget ever existed.
Because again, to beat this design that just slips in your pocket, fits in one hand, it’s simple, it’s reliable. I think that’s why smartphones have had the staying power that they have.
Conclusion
I think that’s why this design has had the staying power that it’s had. For the iPhone Ultra to be a proper success for Apple, they wouldn’t just have to fix all the problems with foldables, they’d have to give us a reason to use one in the first place.
And I mean a reason other than it looks cool or it seems like the future, because we all know how Apple Vision Pro is going.
That’s another crazy expensive Apple product with a super limited use case that nobody’s really bought.
And to be clear, I’d love to be wrong, I am fascinated to see this thing at the end of the day, to see Apple on stage actually announcing a folding iPhone. I thought it