The iPhone Fold doesn’t stand a chance unless Apple includes these 3 features in iOS 27

Source Domain: www.tomsguide.com

Apple’s busy working out the kinks with its long-rumored iPhone Fold, but while a lot of the recent leaks focus on the company perfecting the hardware, like achieving a crease-less display, I think it’s going to be the software that ultimately decides its fate.

With WWDC 2026 right around the corner, the iPhone Fold doesn’t stand a chance in making a deep impression on smartphone users hungry for something new and different without the right software behind it. There’s going to be a battle brewing over the best foldable phones on the market, but there are key things that iOS 27 definitely needs to reveal.

Apple doesn’t sell hardware, it sells you on the experience — and the iPhone Fold should be no different. Here are the three biggest iOS 27 features that will make or break its foldable device.

Apps need to scale accordingly

(Image credit: Tom’s Guide)

Considering that the iPhone Fold is tipped to be a notebook-style foldable that opens up to reveal a 7.8-inch main display, apps will certainly need to adapt from how they’re laid out now. That’s why iOS 27 needs to prove that Apple’s software is ready to tackle the phone-meets-tablet experience, especially when users move from the smaller outer screen to the larger canvas of the inner display.

Mind you, this won’t be as simple as copying the optimizations Apple made for the iPad, seeing how renders and leaked dummy units show us that the Fold is meant to be primarily used in landscape mode — as opposed to the portrait orientation of the iPad Mini. There’s undoubtedly going to be a larger canvas, which means that apps will need to scale accordingly.

Apple needs to ensure that apps look good both ways: vertical and horizontal. I suspect that in vertical mode, apps will simply look the way they normally do on the outer screen — but I would like to see far more optimization when the device is held horizontally. This…

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