Apple’s first “wide” iPhone fold ditches Face ID to stay stupid thin

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Apple’s first foldable iPhone is shaping up to be a super-thin, book-style “wide foldable” that ditches Face ID for side-mounted Touch ID and leans hard into hinge durability and big-screen flexing.​

According to Macrumors, the leak comes from Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station, who claims Apple is cooking up a horizontally oriented, book-style foldable with a large internal display instead of a Galaxy Z Flip-style clamshell.

Apple is reportedly obsessed with thinness here, making multiple design tradeoffs just to shave the chassis down.​

Bye Face ID, hello Touch ID

To keep the thing skinny, Apple is allegedly skipping 3D Face ID hardware entirely, along with any fancy under-display ultrasonic fingerprint tech.

Instead, the phone gets a very old-meets-new solution: a side-mounted Touch ID sensor baked into the frame, because those bulkier biometric systems would eat up too much internal volume.​

Screens, cameras, and the hinge

The current prototype supposedly packs a 7.58-inch internal display with an under-panel selfie camera, so when the screen is open you get a full canvas with no cutouts staring back at you.

On the outside, there’s said to be a 5.25-inch cover screen with a punch-hole camera using a HIAA design, which basically shrinks the dead space around the hole to keep it looking less janky, and it is still unclear what happens to the whole Dynamic Island schtick in this setup.​

Around back, Apple is reportedly going with a dual 48-megapixel camera system on a “large base,” hinting at physically larger sensors rather than just chasing megapixel marketing numbers.

The hinge is described as “very strong,” which tracks with Apple apparently trying to fix two of the most obvious foldable pain points: durability and that ugly display crease.​

Bigger picture for foldables

Digital Chat Station also claims this thing is part of a broader reset for foldables, saying the segment will be “reinvigorated” next year after a lull of boring, incremental updates.

Samsung is said to be toying with its own new wide-format foldable as well, so if this leak pans out, Apple might be less “inventing” the category and more kicking everyone else to actually try again.

Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com.