A Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst claims the iPhone of the near future will feature a radical redesign, CNBC reports-- Apple is supposedly working with Asian partners on a foldable smartphone.
"We expect the iPhones this fall to be largely unchanged for the OLED versions although size changes have proved to be a catalyst in the past," analyst Wamsi Mohan says. "Our checks also suggest that Apple is working with suppliers on a foldable phone (that potentially could double up as a tablet) for launch in 2020."
In other words, the iPhone for 2020 might be a device with a big iPad-style display one can fold into something iPhone-sized-- a "pholder," if one is up for unlikely device category names. Companies such as Lenovo and Samsung have worked on such devices, but so far none of them have made it further than the prototype stage.
The CNBC story brings to mind an October 2017 The Korea Herald report stating Apple is working on a foldable phone. Interestingly, the newspaper says Apple is collaborating with LG (not iPhone X OLED supplier Samsung) on the device, possibly to due fears of technology leaks to the rival giant. LG Display is supposedly working on the foldable OLED display, while part maker LG Innotek has a team developing a rigid flexible printed circuit board (RFPCB).
However making flexible mobile devices is a difficult task-- in a recent TechRadar interview, Qualcomm product manager of display technology Salman Saeed says the components powering the individual pixels making a display "are not flexible enough" to withstand frequent bending.
“I think it’s possible for them to do it [bring foldable phones to market]," Saeed adds. "All of the tier 1 phone manufacturers are working very hard on this. The big phone makers all have these devices in their labs, but it’s just a reliability issue at this point.”
Go Apple is Working on a "Foldable" iPhone for Release in 2020 Says Bank of America (CNBC)
Go Apple Teams Up With LG Display for Foldable iPhone (The Korea Herald)
Go Why We May Not See the Foldable Galaxy X Any Time Soon (TechRadar)