Patently Apple has been covering Apple's intellectual property regarding possible future foldable devices since 2014 with some of the patent figures presented below). So this isn't anything new for Apple's engineers. Our foldable device patent archives has dozens of foldable related patents to review. Apple has worked on various of hinge designs, the use of polymer fillers to support the bending portion of the display, thin glass layers for foldables; Crack Resistant Display Cover Layers for Future Foldable Devices; Self-Healing Display Layers for Future Foldable Devices and so much more.

We also covered Samsung's foldable patents that began in 2012 with a trifold being one of their first designs as noted below. Prior to calling our other site Patently Mobile, we called it Patent bolt.


In the end, Samsung was first to market in 2019 with a modern foldable device with their Galaxy Fold (not an old-style flip phone with mechanical buttons(. Samsung was years ahead of Apple with Phablets. Apple's Phil Schiller embarrassingly mocked Samsung's Phablets in a 2012 Keynote. While Apple resisted what techies really wanted, they caved in 2014 and introduced the iPhone 6.

In this case, being first with the Galaxy Z Fold gave them credit on paper, but the format was extremely expensive, had disastrous display issues, had a crazy deep crease in the fold and repairs will costing fans as much as buying a new smartphone. While book-style foldable are evolving quickly, there are many issues to iron out and get the pricing down to where high-end iPhones are today. That will take time. So in this case, rushing to market to challenge Samsung or Huawei wouldn't have been too successful.

Apple's barrage of patents is clearly illustrating how they're trying to avoid many of today's drawbacks while hoping to bring innovative solutions to market.

Today, Mark Gurman's 'Power On' newsletter focused an entire segment on future foldables. Gurman stated that " Apple designers are developing something akin to a giant iPad that unfolds into the size of two iPad Pros side-by-side." It should be noted that in a 2021 continuation patent, Apple added new legal patent claims to their foldable device patent, that revealed, for the first time, that Apple was considering a foldable laptop.  You could brand it a side-by-side iPad or what Apple described as a foldable laptop. Apple's device, could of course, be both, but their engineers called it a foldable laptop for the record.

Apple’s goal for a foldable device is to avoid the crease that current products have when they’re in the open position. And the company has made progress on this front: Prototypes of this new product within Apple’s industrial design group have a nearly invisible crease. But it’s too early to tell if Apple will can get rid of it altogether. Samsung Electronics Co., which launched its first foldable phone five years ago, has tried unsuccessfully to remove the crease.

It’s not yet clear what operating system the Apple computer will run, but my guess is that it will be iPadOS or a variant of it. I don’t believe it will be a true iPad-Mac hybrid, but the device will have elements of both. By the time 2028 rolls around, iPadOS should be advanced enough to run macOS apps, but it also makes sense to support iPad accessories like the Apple Pencil.

It is my impression that much of Apple’s current work on foldable screen technology is focused on this higher-end device, but it’s also been exploring the idea of a foldable iPhone."

Ha! They've been filing patent after patent on a foldable iPhone for years. Of course they'll have a foldable to fend off all of the Chinese OEMs that are pushing foldable devices. This is just a given and you don't need a rumor to confirm it.

Gurman takes a shot in the dark and thinks Apple will have a foldable in 2026 at the earliest It's a guess.

For more, read the Bloomberg report (behind a paywall) that also touches on a possible revamp of the Magic Mouse which is ridiculously outdated, AirTags that will have longer ranges and more.  

When the Mac community press was writing about whether Apple would double RAM for a Mac, Patently Apple was writing patent reports about an iPod with telephony which turned out to the be the iPhone a decade before it arrived. It takes a long time for any major concept to come to light and the foldable device segment is one of those long-range projects. For some, the fun is following the evolution of a potential product via patents. Rumors are great in the last mile of a product coming to market with leaks about materials and so forth. In the end, foldable devices from Apple coming to market in the future is certainly nothing new.