Foldables are sort of boring now — and that’s great news for Apple

This has slowly begun to change. Huawei was the first to push new designs, starting with its Mate XT trifold , then followed by a wider Pura X flip phone , and this year the Pura X Max , wider still. Samsung launched its own Galaxy Z TriFold late last year, and last month shifted its Galaxy Z Fold 8 to the same squat shape as the Pura X Max.

Durability has improved to the point where Google’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold was able to introduce an IP68 rating; Honor’s Magic V6 has since one-upped that with IP69. That phone is also the thinnest foldable on the market, and the one with the largest battery, two feats that have been made possible by silicon-carbon battery designs , a more energy-dense technology that enables smaller batteries with larger capacities. The latest foldables are barely thicker than flagship slab phones when closed, and almost as thin as the USB-C port when open, while packing batteries that last a day or two per charge.

Oppo’s Find N6 is almost as thin and long-lived as the Honor phone, but has another trick up its sleeve: an almost invisible crease. It’s still possible to see and feel the point where the inner screen folds, but only if you really hunt for it, and even then it can often be difficult to find depending on the light.

As for cameras, this remains the one area where foldables still have work to do, but not too much. Recent foldables from Oppo and Vivo have had triple rear cameras capable of impressive quality, comparable to some slab flagships. But they still lag behind the top tier of Ultra handsets, while costing substantially more. Still, this may be one area where foldables never fully catch up — cost and design constraints likely mean that the best of the best cameras will be limited to regular phones for the foreseeable future, with foldables always a step or two behind.

Despite all these improvements, foldable phones remain an undeniably niche proposition: according to Counterpoint , they made up just 1.6 percent of the smartphone market in 2025.

What happens next

The tech behind foldable phones is now mature enough for even Apple to trust it: The first foldable iPhone is widely expected to debut next month alongside the iPhone 18 Pro models. The looming launch will be “a turning point for the foldable segment,” according to IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo, in a report predicting Apple will claim 34 percent of the foldable market by value in its first year.

What remains to be seen is whether Apple will have the influence to grow the foldable market, drawing in customers who were skeptical until now, or simply waiting for a foldable that runs iOS. This could be the tipping point that pulls foldables from a niche to the mainstream, though assuming Apple prices the phone at a premium, there will still be pretty strict limits to its reach.

Even before its first sale, the foldable iPhone has already had an impact. Remember Huawei and Samsung’s wider folds? It’s probably no surprise that they appeared just months before Apple’s foldable, which leaks suggest will be similarly wide. More companies are likely to jump on the bandwagon, with leaks pointing to wider folds from both Oppo and Honor on the way. The next 12 months will be the test of whether this form factor is truly more popular with users, or if Android manufacturers will regret hopping on the Apple bandwagon.

It’s less clear if more manufacturers will be making trifolds, or even whether Huawei and Samsung will stick with that form factor. Huawei has made bullish claims about the sales success of its two Mate XT phones, so there’s hope it will stick with the design. Samsung, on the other hand, pulled its TriFold from the market after less than three months, though it’s unclear if that was down to low sales or simply a small manufacturing run. Rollables and other experimental form factors will likely have to wait a few more years before being commercialized.

This is a moment of major change for foldable phones. The standard models have gotten so good that they’ve become a bit boring. Outside of new form factors, the annual releases have settled into a rhythm of minor iteration, and price is now the only real reason for consumers to resist them. Foldables are undeniably good enough now, and Apple’s arrival will either open the market up more widely, or prove once and for all that most phone buyers simply don’t care about phones that fold — or at least not at the prices being charged.

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