A new video purporting to show the unboxing of an iPhone Fold months before it's even expected to be announced, is an excellent piece of work. It's also entirely false.
This isn't like the YouTubers who unboxed an M5 iPad Pro back in September 2025. As unlikely as that video had seemed, it turned out to be genuine when Apple released that iPad a few weeks later.
The iPhone Fold unboxing video doing the rounds is instead purporting to be of a product that has only just gone into manufacturing testing. It's also said to be having problems in that testing.
So while undoubtedly Apple has planned and probably prototyped the packaging, there is no possibility that a real-life iPhone Fold is in this video. And if you need proof, it's simple. The iPhone Fold is never turned on.
Original creator Johan Lelievre reached out to AppleInsider saying that he had done this video as an April Fool's one, but it was being reposted as genuine. The one circulating the most is a version he did for TikTok, but he has also now shared the fuller YouTube version which shows more.
Each of these various versions of the video claim to be complete, they each include the charging cable, but the person unboxing it does not turn it on. He chooses to dwell a lot on the packaging's card inserts, but not on using the iPhone.
It still does not show the iPhone Fold turned on and running iOS. It does, though, show the startup Apple logo, although it's positioned right on the fold where it appears to split as the device is closed.
This would all be because it doesn't turn on, because it is a fake.
There are also multiple details in the packaging that are suspicious. Then the oddly heightened audio makes the guy's obsession with rubbing the Apple logo sound somehow wrong.
All of which is giving far too much credence to a video which cannot be real. But it is well made. If the iPhone Fold were turned on at all, or if the packaging just said iPhone Ultra, there could even now be people at Apple Park being asked some awkward questions.
That said, there are even some pretty awkward questions being asked now about whether there is any point Apple making a foldable iPhone, especially when it is expected to start at over $2,000.
