The layout of the iPhone Fold means Apple has to come up with a way to handle portrait iOS apps on a wide screen. The iPad shows the way forward.
The use of a large internal folding screen means the iPhone Fold, also referred to as the iPhone Ultra, has a squarer aspect ratio than available in previous models. That can cause problems for typical iPhone apps, displayed in full screen, as they could be visually distorted on the landscape iPhone Fold.
However, according to one May 31 post on Weibo by Fixed Focus Digital, Apple has already come up with a solution. The leaker says that Apple is working on a "parallel view" for iOS to solve the problem of landscape adaption.
This is described by the leaker as being how the iPad handles apps like Weibo, but with not much further explanation.
While we are working from somewhat mangled machine translations here, it seems that the leaker is referring to Split View. This is a way of arranging two full-screen apps side-by-side on a landscape-orientation iPad display.
This is a feature chiefly framed as a productivity aid, since users can use and work in two apps at the same time. It has the byproduct of allowing both apps to operate in portrait orientations, closer to a normal, narrow iOS app.
A render of what the iPhone Fold could look like - Image Credit: AppleInsider
Fixed Focus Digital concludes their post by saying that iOS is "excellent" but that its large-screen adaptation has been "relatively weak."
Weibo leakers like Fixed Focus Digital don't have the best reputation for rumors and leaks. This is in part due to reusing rumors sourced from elsewhere, as the accounts have to feed content to their massive following.
Fixed Focus Digital is one of the more prominent Weibo leakers, but still has a middling level of accuracy with their posts. In this case, there's no sourcing or explanation of where the claim stems from, making it hard to verify.
Flipping obvious
What works in their favor is that Apple's need to create such a feature for the iPhone Fold is painfully obvious. So much so that this was already talked about by Mark Gurman in March.
At that time, Gurman wrote that Apple will bring side-by-side multitasking to iOS, specifically for the iPhone Fold. The in-app sidebars of iPadOS apps will also be usable in iOS as part of the same update.
However, it was insisted that this wasn't going to be the iPhone Fold running iPadOS. It will still use iOS, but with some features ported from the iPad's operating system.
Even without Gurman's previous reporting on the topic, the overall claim is something that could easily be an educated guess.
We know that the iPhone Fold will have a large display, with leaks indicating it will measure about 7.8 inches when completely unfolded. It will also be landscape in orientation when opened out from its normal portrait orientation.
For a screen that large, there has to be some form of software changes to take the massive width into account. Indeed, putting apps on each side of the central hinge is a fairly easily thought-about feature.
As with any product Apple makes, it takes time to marry the software and hardware together into a cohesive whole.
It has no choice but to adapt iOS to work with the new aspect ratio.
