Chinese YouTuber Beats Apple To Make The First Foldable iPhone

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By Rahul Srinivas/Nov. 9, 2022 3:57 pm UTC

Foldable smartphones have been around for a while now, and Samsung is leading the charge with its Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip lineup. Other smartphone brands, including Motorola, Oppo, Vivo, and Huawei, have also jumped onto the foldable smartphones bandwagon over the past few years — albeit with limited success. However, one company that has stayed away from the foldable fanfare is Apple. Despite coming across multiple reports claiming Apple has been toying around with the idea of a foldable smartphone, it is now evident that the company has no such immediate plans. This was even corroborated by noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who, earlier this year, claimed that there is little chance of Apple making a foldable iPhone before 2025 (via Twitter).

Apple's reluctance to launch a foldable smartphone soon is understandable, given the sheer number of issues companies faced with their first-generation foldable phones. It is almost as if Apple wants to wait for folding smartphones and related technology to reach some level of maturity before finally taking the jump. Unimpressed by the company's apparent lack of interest in making a foldable iPhone, a Chinese YouTuber and his engineer friend decided to take matters into their own hands. After 200 days of labor and spending thousands of yuan, the duo successfully made the world's first (unofficial) foldable iPhone.

A Chinese YouTuber who goes by KJMX and runs a YouTube Channel called Technological Aesthetics recently posted a detailed video showing how he and one of his engineer friends went about making the first-ever iPhone with a foldable display. KJMX's initial goal was to build a foldable iPhone retaining as many original parts as possible. The biggest problem that lay ahead of him and his friend was getting an original iPhone to fold. Finally, after days of trials and after destroying several iPhone screens, they eventually got the iPhone display to fold. The second piece of the puzzle was to develop a hinge mechanism suitable for their iPhone. 

Given the complexities involved in designing a hinge from scratch, they first thought of sourcing it from a Galaxy Z Flip — only to realize that it wasn't a proper match. Instead, the duo finally honed in on a modified hinge lifted from the Motorola Razr. To ensure all functional parts of their foldable iPhone could be accommodated inside the redesigned foldable shell, the duo had to invert the positioning of several internal components.

They even designed a custom 1,000 mAh battery, which significantly reduced the battery capacity of the foldable iPhone. Components that had to be removed included one speaker, the wireless charging coil, and all parts connected with MagSafe connectivity. The duo even installed a custom version of iOS that had several optimizations for foldable panels. As highlighted earlier, the entire process of building this foldable iPhone took the duo well over 200 days. While their final product is far from usable, it is incredible that the pair could actually pull this off.