iOS 27 Code references Foldable iPhone
In more news from my old editor, Ryan Christoffel, at 9to5 Mac, he reports Beta 1 of iOS 27, released by Apple yesterday following the keynote presentation, contains code pertinent to the unannounced yet anticipated foldable iPhone. The code was discovered by spelunker Sam Henri Gold, who posted their findings on X/Twitter.
“Apple released the first iOS 27 developer beta today, and code for the update includes references to features that can only belong to a foldable iPhone… 9to5Mac has verified the existence of these references, which were not present in iOS 26 at all. The references can be found not only in developer frameworks, but also in the code for the iOS 27 beta,” Christoffel wrote on Monday after the WWDC keynote finished.
I’m covering this news primarily because it’s a good conduit for expressing some thoughts that have lingered in my brain about the purported “iPhone Ultra,” as the rumor mill has coined the device. Of course the foldable iPhone’s software story is important, and will be interesting to ponder, but there’s one element of the product that’s predictably missing from the conjecture on podcasts and in blog posts: accessibility! Software notwithstanding, the make-or-break attribute of Apple’s foldable phone will be how accessible it is to, well, fold and unfold. However cool it may well be, its utility to a disabled person for whom, say, motor skills are suboptimal, the foldable iPhone’s appeal will be sullied. Why get one if you can’t open it? Indeed, it will be interesting to see what Apple’s hardware engineering group has done here; I imagine opening and closing the device will be a two-handed affair, which means prying it open takes hand-eye coordination and a good measure of muscle tone to pull off successfully. That’s not trivial for everyone, and I would presume a notion Apple’s industrial design team took into serious consideration while developing the phone.
The cynical, albeit pedantically correct take, is to shrug and suggest a person with disabilities who foresees future friction (👋🏼) simply should avoid getting the iPhone Ultra. Okay, sure, that’s why Apple’s iPhone line is stratified. But what if, for instance, said person wanted one device that’s effectively both an iPhone and an iPad mini? Instead of schlepping around two discrete devices—a potential accessibility issue unto itself—that person can have the two-in-one, best of both worlds experience. The salient point is simply this: hardware accessibility matters as much as software and should be acknowledged as such. I guarantee you the tech YouTubers and mainstream reviewers, yours truly included, will spill much digital ink on the foldable’s software side. What’s equally guaranteed, in my opinion, is these same people will say shit about how easy (or not) it is to open and close the device—not out of malice, mind you, but because 99.9% of people are capable and take such actions for granted every day.
