Future TechnologyiPhone Ultra Foldable Price: What Apple Is Asking on Wednesday, and What You Get
Key takeaways
- Apple's event runs Wednesday 9 September at 10:00 Pacific under the tagline "Surprise and shine"
- The foldable, widely expected to be called iPhone Ultra, opens from a 5.5 inch outer OLED to roughly 7.8 inches in a book-style layout
- Price estimates cluster from 1,999 dollars at the entry configuration up to around 2,500, which would make it the most expensive iPhone ever sold
- There is no standard iPhone 18 this autumn, breaking a release cadence Apple has held for a decade
Two thousand dollars. That is where the first foldable iPhone is expected to start when Apple opens its event on Wednesday 9 September at 10:00 Pacific, under the tagline "Surprise and shine."
Reported estimates run from 1,999 dollars for the entry configuration to around 2,500 dollars higher up the range. Either figure makes it the most expensive iPhone Apple has ever sold, and by a margin that is not close.
What the iPhone Ultra foldable price is buying
The device, widely expected to carry the Ultra name, uses a book-style layout rather than a flip. A roughly 5.5 inch OLED outer display opens into about 7.8 inches, which puts the unfolded state closer to a small iPad than a phone.
The frame is titanium. The body is described as ultra-thin, and the hinge and display layer stack have been engineered around a single goal: making the fold line effectively invisible. Face ID does not survive the transition. Touch ID moves into the power button instead, alongside two front cameras and a dual rear system.
That last detail matters more than it sounds. Apple has spent eight years telling people Face ID is the secure default. Dropping it on the halo device is a hardware constraint the company would not accept unless the alternative was worse.
How it reads against the Galaxy Z Fold7
Samsung has been shipping book-style foldables since 2019. The current Galaxy Z Fold7 with 512GB of storage is the obvious comparison point: 12GB of memory, a 200MP main camera, a 4,400 mAh battery, and a design Samsung has already thinned across seven generations.
So the useful question on Wednesday is not whether Apple's version folds. It is whether seven years of Samsung iteration has left anything meaningful for Apple to fix. The crease is the tell. Every reviewer will run a fingertip down that screen inside the first ninety seconds, and the footage of them doing it will decide the category's reputation for the next year.
The rest of the event
Alongside the foldable: iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, new Apple Watches, and new AirPods.
Missing from that list is a standard iPhone 18. Apple has released a non-Pro flagship every autumn for a decade, and this year it does not. Read alongside a 2,000 dollar foldable, it looks less like an omission and more like the range being pulled upward at both ends.
What to watch
Foldables have existed for seven years without becoming normal. Samsung sells them, reviewers like them, and most people still buy a slab. Apple arriving late with the most expensive device in the category is either the moment that changes or the moment it is confirmed as a niche with very good marketing.
The number worth watching is not the launch price. It is what the second-hand market does to it by March. Devices that people genuinely want hold value. Devices bought as statements do not.
For context on where the rest of the industry is putting its money, see our coverage of Gemini passing one billion monthly users and what running a local model actually costs in VRAM.
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