A report by a Chinese blogger with 1.7M followers says that Apple folding screen prototypes failed to pass tests set by the company.
They go on to claim that “the project has been temporarily shelved,” though this is almost certainly a misinterpretation of the most likely position …
Apple folding screen prototypes
A report earlier this month said that display suppliers Samsung and LG have for some time been sending folding screen samples to Apple for the company’s consideration – and that the latest of these are in the 7-8 inch range.
It’s unclear at this stage whether Apple is prioritising a folding iPhone or a folding iPad, and indeed the degree to which they might be described as one and the same. In our poll, the majority of you favored a device the size of an iPhone Pro which unfolds to a display the size of an iPad mini.
A subsequent report said that Apple has at least two “active” prototypes which fold like a clamshell, but that it was concerned about a visible crease.
Apple is said to be working on ways to reduce the crease in the middle of the display that appears after folding many times. The company wants the device to lie completely flat, allowing users to interact with the screen and freely draw on it with accessories like Apple Pencil.
Prototypes failed tests, ‘project temporarily shelved’
Chinese blogged Fixed Focus Digital, who has almost 1.7M followers, claims that the project has been put on hold for now.
Apple is speeding up the research and development of folding screen products and has purchased several devices sold by partners for dismantling research. However, it is said that the project has been temporarily shelved because the display failed to pass tests.
9to5Mac’s Take
The most cynical interpretation would be that there is no news at all here. Apple has been evaluating folding displays from its suppliers for years, and subjecting them to all kinds of tests, and isn’t yet happy with what it has seen. The fact that recent offerings have failed to satisfy the company is nothing new.
But a more generous reading would be that Apple isn’t satisfied with the crease in existing prototypes, and has asked its suppliers to go back to the drawing board and take a completely different approach to the fold. That would require more of a lull in the project on the Apple side, while it waits for new samples.
Either way, there’s no world in which the idea of Apple “shelving” the project makes sense, temporarily or otherwise. There will, quite obviously, be Apple foldables at some point, and the company will keep working on it until it has a solution which meet its standards.
Galaxy Z Flip 3 photo by Onur Binay on Unsplash. Report spotted by MacRumors.
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