Apple’s foldable iPhone might be the most anticipated device in years and also one of the most polarizing. Early reports point to a starting price around $2,000, without some features you’d find on a phone that costs half as much.
The iPhone Ultra is expected to bring back Touch ID as its only method of unlocking the phone. Why? The device is reportedly just 4.5mm thin, which doesn’t leave enough room for the TrueDepth camera system that powers Face ID.
The last flagship iPhone to use Touch ID was the iPhone 7 back in 2016, so seeing it return on Apple’s most expensive phone ever is a twist nobody saw coming.
Accessory makers rely on dummy units, precise physical replicas of unreleased phones, to design cases and accessories before launch day. The foldable iPhone dummies recently shared online are already revealing a lot.
Compared to the iPhone 18 Pro dummies shown alongside them, two things stand out immediately: there are no MagSafe magnet indentations on the foldable model, and the Action Button is nowhere to be found.
MagSafe has become a core part of the iPhone experience for millions of users who rely on magnetic chargers and accessories every day. Losing it on a $2,000 device would be a tough pill to swallow.
The ultra-slim profile is likely the reason there simply may not be enough space inside the chassis to fit the magnet array.
The Action Button, which Apple first introduced on the iPhone 15 Pro and later brought to every iPhone model, also appears to be absent.
On top of that, the iPhone Ultra is expected to ditch the physical SIM card slot entirely, going eSIM-only just like the iPhone Air.
The dummy models also confirm what earlier rumors suggested: the iPhone Ultra will likely ship with just a wide and an ultra-wide camera.
There’s no telephoto lens in sight, meaning optical zoom is off the table. For anyone who upgraded to a Pro model specifically for zoom photography, that’s a real dealbreaker.
The volume buttons are also moving to the top edge of the device, shifted to the right side, a layout borrowed from the iPad mini, reportedly because the motherboard placement made routing cables to the usual left-side position impractical.
The iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099 and includes Face ID, MagSafe, a telephoto camera, the Action Button, and a physical SIM slot.
The iPhone Ultra is expected to start at $1,999 and skip all five of those things. Apple is betting that the novelty of a folding screen justifies every one of those trade-offs, and the fall launch will tell us whether buyers agree.
