YouTuber Creates Fully-Functioning Foldable iPhone

YouTuber Creates Fully-Functioning Foldable iPhone

A team of budding creators have made a foldable iPhone that took 300 days of development. It works well, however it has some notable features missing.

Called the “iPhone V”, a name that I absolutely adore, this phone uses a hinge from one of the modern touchscreen Motorola Razrs.

That’s a foldable smartphone mind you, and is one of the only foldable phones available on the market. The other foldable phones that are widely available are the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip and Z Fold. Most other foldables are constrained to a single market.

This foldable iPhone these creators have made, however, feels like somebody playing God.

From YouTube Channel KJMX, or 科技美学 (which roughly translates to Technological Aesthetics), the team started by detaching the screen from an iPhone X and stripping down the layers of the screen, including the OLED panel, the 3D touch module and the screen digitiser.

“The goal is to preserve the original display and touch functions at the same time,” said NaYan, KJMX’s YouTube presenter, in the video (according to the English subtitles).

Over the course of the phone’s development, several iPhone screens were tested to see which ones work best with the folding screen tech.

Internally, components were completely rearranged to accommodate for the Razr folding module and after 300 days (and after buying thousands of dollars worth of components and phones), the iPhone V was completed. The operating system was also modified to allow for split screen functionality (like on an iPad), so that apps don’t warp and bend unnaturally on the curve.

Unfortunately, to compensate for the folding mechanism, the team had to work in some trade-offs. The largest of which, shown at 15:14, meant reducing the battery size to 1,000mAh, which NaYan said was “hard to last a day”. Additionally, after several days of folding, creases and bubbles started to show on the folding line. Wireless charging also had to go. Foldables aren’t easy.

Honestly, well done with this thing, guys. Profile-wise, it doesn’t really look like something Apple would ship, but this YouTube video is making me very excited for if Apple actually do a foldable phone.

So where are we with the official folding iPhone?

The foldable iPhone is still largely a rumour, with an expected launch for 2023 or 2024. Foldable iPads or Macbooks could also be on the horizon.

But there’s obviously nothing official just yet. We don’t even know what chassis it’ll use, but it’ll likely use USB-C.


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