The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple was so desperate to ship a foldable without that sad-screen trench that it has been cribbing notes from Oppo.
For those who came in late, Apple was slammed by its fans for dropping the ball on foldables and allowing rivals to not only invent the idea but also take the field away from it. The Tame Apple Press has been hyping Apple’s belated entry into the field, claiming that the iPhone Fold is tipped to use ultra-thin, flexible glass with varying thicknesses to help deliver a crease-free inner display.
However, this was a design Samsung showcased at CES 2026, and now it appears that Job’s Mob might not even have kicked off its foldable push without a Chinese handset showing what “thin and smooth” was supposed to look like in the first place.
Weibo tipster Fixed-focus claims the benchmark phone was the OPPO Find N5, a previous-generation foldable flagship whose main party trick is the build, not the silicon.
It is said to hit 4.2mm when fully unfolded, with a crease that is supposedly hard to beat, even though it packs a Snapdragon 8 Elite. Apparently, Job’s Mob bought a Find N5, pulled it apart and used it as the reference point for the iPhone Fold.
Apple produced multiple display samples but could not match the Find N5’s inner-screen smoothness, which is a bit awkward for a firm that sells polish as religion.
Those panels are thought to be early prototype attempts, with the iPhone Fold also rumoured to drop Face ID in favour of a side-mounted Touch ID because the frame is too thin for the usual sensor stack.
The idea of a foldable iPhone launching with a visible crease still sounds like brand heresy, which is why the leaks keep leaning on “exceptional efforts” rather than hard proof.
None of this is unusual in the phone world, where everyone buys rivals’ kit, strips it down and tries to ship a shinier copy with better PR.
Samsung, often treated as the foldable form factor’s origin story, is rumoured to be eyeing a passport-style exterior later this year, so the design tug-of-war is getting crowded and messy.
