Is iPad mini Apple’s Secret Weapon in The Foldables Arms Race?

Following the promising but perhaps premature previews of the presumably still-to-released Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X, many were wondering how long before Apple might make a foldable iPhone. Given the myriad problems surrounding Samsung’s offering you would think the answer to that seems to a fair way off, and yet it’s worth thinking about what they might bring to the table once the technology is fully baked.

While the the iPad mini has gone through long periods of neglect, I think one reason Apple may have chosen to keep it alive in 2019 is to ensure app developers continue to keep usability on small tablets in mind (albeit pretty far down the priority list). Despite the Galaxy Fold’s issues it’s hard to deny there’s certainly a “cool factor” around a single device that can both serve as your daily pocket companion and a decent sized tablet for when you just need more screen real estate.

Once the hardware is back on track I think the main hurdle folding smartphone vendors might fall short on is that apps on Android are — generally speaking — terrible. It is hard to blame developers too much for this, however, as Android tablets never gained a significant traction even back in their heyday and in the last couple years things have been grim. Google seems to given up on their larger Android-based systems (the popular Nexus 7 among them) instead choosing to use Chrome OS on their more recent Pixel tablet products. With essentially no market share it’s an uphill battle to convincing third party developers to spend time on delivering a truly excellent tablet experience.

This brings me back to the iPad mini, and while it’s hard to argue a truly excellent user experience is a given when assessing the available apps in the Apps Store there are at least certainly some out there and — perhaps most importantly — the majority of popular ones are at least somewhat tailored to the bigger screen (other than perhaps Instagram, which still boggles my mind!).

Can you imagine an iPhone that folds out into an iPad mini? Wouldn’t that be amazing!? Perhaps it will be a reality in the not-too-distant future, with the well-established iOS ecosystem making it a far more attractive prospect.