Trade · Berlins Today
Apple is about to unveil its first ever foldable iPhone – but there’s a catch. The device, rumoured to be known as the iPhone Ultra, is rumoured to feature a display on the outside but then can be folded out like a book, to make the screen twice the size. After years of speculation and months of rumours, the company is finally ready to show off the phone at its “Surprise and Shine” event, which will be held on Wednesday, 9 September .
It will also introduce a new iPhone 18 Pro. Apple has been rumoured to be working on a foldable iPhone for about a decade, and many of its competitors such as Samsung and Google have already released their own versions. The iPhone has taken longer to arrive in part because Apple wanted to ensure that the device was durable and that its display would not have to be compromised to allow it to fold, numerous reports have suggested.
But all of that development comes at a price. It is widely rumoured to be the first phone to cost more than $2,000 or £2,000, and might be difficult to actually find even at that price. Apple has already warned investors that it could face problems making enough of all of its iPhones , because of high demand and the AI industry’s demand for high-end chips making them difficult to procure for consumer devices.
That chip crisis – sometimes known as RAMagaddon – has already forced Apple to push up the price of most of its devices . A customer compares his old iPhone with the newly launched iPhone 17 pro max at an Apple retail store in Delhi, India, September 19, 2025 (Reuters) It remains unclear how exactly that will affect both the price and availability of the iPhone ultra. But the cost is certainly expected to be high, and supply of the new phone could be limited.
As well as its headline folding feature, the iPhone Ultra is rumoured to bring a new processor, 12GB of RAM, Apple’s own battery-saving C2 model and a big battery upgrade. Its folding and thin design might come with some compromises, such as using a TouchID fingerprint sensor to unlock rather than facial recognition, and the removal of the telephoto camera found in the Pro iPhones. Some of those same upgrades – such as the better chip, as well as exclusive features such as a new camera technology – are also rumoured to be coming to the iPhone 18 Pro.
The folding design for the Ultra will also bring a host of software changes. It will be the first Apple device with two separate main displays, for instance, which will mean that the operating system will have to switch between them – code found in early versions of the upcoming iPhone software suggests that Apple has added a host of changes to deal with that and other challenges. While it has been referred to inside Apple as the iPhone Ultra, it is still unconfirmed what the new phone will actually be called.
Apple has used the Ultra suffix for a number of other products – its chips and the premium Apple Watch – but it may still opt for something else entirely. Unlike many other aspects of the phone, such as its hardware design, the name only needs to be known within Apple, making it less likely to leak and giving the company the option of changing it at the last minute. The same applies to its rumoured price.
The design is likely to borrow heavily from last year’s iPhone Air . Even at launch, that phone was thought to have borrowed heavily from the technology developed for the foldable phone, and it was seen as a potential test for how such a slim device would stand up over time. The iPhone Air itself, like the base model iPhone 17, is not likely to be updated at the September event.
Apple is rumoured to be focusing only on the high-end phones this year, with the cheaper ones getting an update in the spring.
Source: The Independent
