New partners enter the frame
Part of what makes this possible is a new metal plate tech supplied by South Korea’s Fine M-Tec, which Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo last year said would make something similar for the iPhone. These metal plates help mitigate the stress on the display hinge, enabling the display material to avoid becoming visibly creased. It seems to be significant that the purported Apple partner last year announced a $12 million investment in new equipment and facilities to expand production of these metal plates for folding smartphones. These laser-drilled components are likely to be rolling off the production line now, and will be used by both Apple and Samsung.
The metal plate design is only part of the display innovation Apple and its Samsung manufacturing partner have had to achieve to reach this point. It’s also important to think about the other half of the equation in play with folding iPhones, which is what people will do with these things. We kind of know the answer to this now each time we open an iPad mini, which offers just slightly more display (8.3-inch) than the 7.8-inch we expect from the iPhone Fold.
The 120.6mm-by-167.6mm (unfolded) device will use an Apple 5G modem, TouchID, eSIM, and four cameras in a device that folds out to be around as thin as a 5.6mm iPhone Air. (I consistently refer to the device as iPhone Fold, but we don’t yet know what Apple will actually call it.)