The iPhone 16 is living in the past. It needs to fold

Apple’s “Glowtime” event has come and gone, and all the iPhone 16 rumors have been either proven or put to rest. The iPhone 16 family offers some great improvements over past models, but for all intents and purposes, it’s still just an iPhone. Apple Intelligence is nice and the Camera Control button is a cool new feature, but compared to its competitors Apple is still living in the past when it comes to its vision for the iPhone.

The foldable phone isn’t a rare new kid on the block any longer. Google, Honor, Motorola, OnePlus, and Samsung have foldable models of their flagship devices that sell tens of millions of devices every year. Just hours after Apple announced the iPhone 16 family, in fact, Huawei unveiled the world’s first triple foldable phone.

Without any movement on folding screens, Apple seriously lags in recognizing mobile technology’s future. In short, it needs to fold.

Best of both worlds

Consumers and reviewers alike have praised how well the increased screen real estate of foldable phones improves their media consumption and gaming on the devices. It definitely makes sense—would you rather watch a YouTube video or play Cal of Duty on a screen the size of an iPhone 16 Pro Max or a widescreen 8-inch one?

Almost certainly you’d prefer the larger display, but as iPad users know, it’s not so much fun trying to carry such a behemoth around in your back pocket. Therein lies the beauty of the foldable phone. Looking at the OnePlus Open, for example, its 7.82-inch main display folds to a tidy 6.31-inch form factor. Huawei’s pocketable Mate XT Ultimate Design opens to a whopping 10.2-inch tablet, nearly as much screen real estate as the 10th-gen iPad.

Foldable phones offer the best of both worlds. They provide a large display when unfolded. This is perfect for multitasking, media consumption, and gaming, but the compact size, when folded, allows them to fit easily into pockets and bags. There are issues, of course, chief among them the visible crease in the center of the screen, but this is where Apple’s innovation can take hold and change the game. Apple has been perfecting the smartphone and leading the pack for nearly 20 years, and the iPhone 16 is the latest pinnacle of perfecting that original model. But folding screens open the door to so much more.

Multitouch on steroids

Foldable phones allow you to switch between different modes depending on the task at hand. You can unfold it for tablet-like productivity and fold it back up for a traditional phone interface. This flexibility enhances your experience in both productivity and entertainment.

Imagine being able to use split-screen mode, one of the multitasking features available on the iPad, on your iPhone. You’d never dream of trying that even on an iPhone 16 Pro Max in landscape orientation. Sure, that 6.9-inch display is the largest any iPhone has sported to date, but it still isn’t enough screen real estate to comfortably use two apps side by side, which is why Apple still hasn’t made Split Screen available in iOS 18.

A foldable iPhone could serve as a real game changer there, bringing the productivity advances of the iPad into your back pocket, just waiting for you to take advantage of them. You could run multiple apps simultaneously and never feel cramped by screen size. The same goes for the iPad’s other multitasking methods, including Slide Over and Stage Manager. With a fold-out screen, the iPhone won’t be limited by what can fit in our pockets. Folding phones open a world of opportunity for iOS and iPadOS with not just multitasking, but also app design, integration and interoperability.

Innovation calling

As candy bar cellphones reach the limits of what’s possible design-wise, Samsung, Huawei, Google, and other smartphone manufacturers are already seeing foldable phones driving innovation in the mobile industry. These devices shift away from the static design of the typical smartphone with increasingly thinner and sleeker designs.

Apple used to offer innovation like this with almost every new device. That just hasn’t happened lately. Like previous generations, the iPhone 16 is marked by incremental performance upgrades, internal camera upgrades, and under-the-display enhancements. Sure, the Action button and Camera Control are neat, but a new button is hardly exciting in the way folding phones are. Instead, Huawei stole Apple’s thunder with a phone that is truly innovative.

It’s clear why Apple has stayed on the sidelines thus far. Early folding phones had plenty of issues, were much thicker than other smartphones and tablets, and hadn’t solved a problem most people had. However, after years of development, the landscape is changing. As the foldable display technology has improved, the durability of these devices has increased. Innovations in flexible display materials and hinge mechanisms are helping streamline designs and address concerns about long-term wear and tear. And AI and interface advancements are giving folding phones a real purpose.

Apple has the resources and talent to propel these advances even further, and rumors have speculated that it has been experimenting with folding devices for a while. But the prevailing rumor is that Apple’s first folding device will be an iPad or MacBook that opens to a larger iPad rather than something that can fit in a pocket. That’s a mistake—a folding iPhone wouldn’t just be a high-priced niche device, it would catapult the iPhone into a new era of productivity.

A folding iPhone will reignite enthusiasm for Apple’s best-selling gadget with next-gen technology customers can see and feel, not just under-the-hood enhancements they may never need. Apple was once the scrappy startup that pushed the limits of what a PC can do and now it’s time to do the same with the iPhone. The iPhone 16 shows that Apple is more than capable of creating a fantastic phone packed with speed and features. But the future is calling.