Apple Quietly Fixed the iPhone Fold's Biggest Problem — And It's Still Coming in September

For months, the iPhone Fold's hinge has been the rumour mill's favourite punching bag. Noise after stress testing. Parts not fitting together quite right. Whispers of a slip to 2027. Every few weeks, a new "exclusive" claimed the hinge was the thing that would finally break Apple's first foldable.

Now a fresh supply chain report says the opposite: most of those problems are sorted, and Apple is moving straight into mass production. September is still the target.

What's Actually New Here

According to interviews the Korean outlet *The Elec* ran with supply chain officials, Apple has locked in the key specs for the iPhone Fold — display, casing, and the mechanical hinge assembly — and is now moving from trial production into mass production. Long-time manufacturing partner Foxconn is set to handle the first production run, with mass production expected to start at the end of July.

Which means: if you've been treating every iPhone Fold rumour as 50/50 whether the thing even ships this year, you can dial that back. Parts are being finalised and built right now, not "maybe sometime."

The Hinge Saga, Recapped

If you haven't been following along leak by leak, here's the short version of how we got here:

- **April:** Early testing reportedly hit snags — the first real crack in the "everything's fine" narrative. - **Mid-May:** Reports specifically pointed at the hinge — failures showing up after repeated open-close cycles in testing. - **Late May:** A Weibo leaker claimed Apple's hinge approach was good enough that rivals — and possibly Apple itself, for a rumoured iPad Fold — would end up copying it. - **Still late May:** A different problem surfaced: issues mounting components onto the circuit board. - **June 15:** Yet another report floated a 2027 ship date, with a fall 2026 announcement happening anyway. - **June 24:** The hinge issues are reportedly "mostly" resolved, and mass production is moving forward on schedule for a September launch.

Read that list back and the pattern is obvious: this is less "the iPhone Fold is in trouble" and more "engineering a hinge that survives hundreds of thousands of folds without a visible crease is genuinely hard, and we're watching Apple work through it in public via leaks instead of behind closed doors."

What "Mostly Fixed" Actually Means

Here's the detail worth sitting with: per a Taiwanese supply chain official, durability testing turned up a faint noise from the hinge after it was put through millions of open-close cycles, along with some manufacturing tolerances that ran wider than expected during assembly. Both are described as largely addressed now.

Two things follow from that. First, "millions of cycles" is the relevant number — that's Apple stress-testing for years of daily folding, not just checking if the thing survives the demo unit stage. Second, "mostly resolved" isn't the same as "perfect." A hinge that's 95% of the way to silent and tolerance-perfect can still ship — plenty of first-generation hardware does — but it's worth tempering expectations that the iPhone Fold's hinge will be flawless out of the gate.

Why This Report Carries More Weight Than Most

Not all leakers are created equal. *The Elec* has a solid track record specifically on supply chain reporting — production timelines, manufacturing partners, component sourcing. Where it's been shakier historically is on specific feature claims. That's a useful filter: treat the "mass production starting end of July" timeline as credible, and treat any granular feature specifics from the same rumour mill with more scepticism until multiple sources line up.

We're Entering iPhone Rumour Silly Season

There's a reason the iPhone Fold has generated this much back-and-forth in a single quarter: the stretch between WWDC and Apple's fall event is when the rumour mill goes into overdrive, because every claim about the September lineup is guaranteed clicks. Expect the volume — and the contradictions — to keep climbing right up until the actual announcement. Some of what surfaces will come from credible supply chain sources; a lot of it won't.

“Engineering a hinge that survives hundreds of thousands of folds without a visible crease is genuinely hard. We're watching Apple work through it in public via leaks, not behind closed doors.”

Our advice: treat every iPhone Fold claim between now and September as provisional, including this one. The only fully reliable information arrives the day Apple actually announces the thing.

Bottom Line

The iPhone Fold's hinge problems appear to be largely behind it, mass production is reportedly starting within weeks, and September remains the target launch window. That's the most stable this story has looked in months — which, given how this particular rumour cycle has gone, is exactly the moment to stay a little sceptical rather than fully relax.