Here is a fun one. Apple spent its whole WWDC 2026 keynote talking up Siri AI, Liquid Glass and speed improvements, and then quietly fumbled one of its biggest secrets in the small print. The first iOS 27 developer beta dropped today, and tucked inside the code are references that can only point to one thing: a foldable iPhone.
We already knew the foldable was coming. The long rumoured iPhone Ultra is expected to land this autumn alongside the full iOS 27 release, and it is shaping up to be Apple’s first ever folding phone. The expectation is that it will bring proper side by side app multitasking and iPad style app layouts, which makes total sense for a device with a bigger interior screen to play with. A folding iPhone that just shows you a stretched version of the normal interface would be a waste, so this is the right move.
iOS 27 framework references “foldState” and “angleDegrees” but I’m sure that’s nothing pic.twitter.com/PcYNVvymms
— sam henri gold (@samhenrigold) June 8, 2026
What makes today interesting is that Apple did not mean to show its hand quite so clearly. The iOS 27 beta and its developer frameworks contain leftover references that all but confirm the hardware. As spotted by Sam Henri Gold, the frameworks include mentions of “foldState” and “angleDegrees,” plus a check to count the total number of built-in displays.
Read those back for a second. “foldState” tells the software whether the device is open or shut. “angleDegrees” tracks exactly how far it is folded, which is the kind of thing you need if you want apps to react to the hinge position. And a count of built-in displays only matters if a device can have more than one screen. None of that makes any sense on a normal slab phone. It only makes sense on a foldable.
This is classic Apple. Lock the marketing down tight, then leave a trail of breadcrumbs in the beta code for developers and leakers to find within hours. It happens almost every cycle, and it is honestly one of the more fun parts of beta season.
So while the keynote was all about software, the real story hiding underneath is that the iPhone Ultra is very much real, very much foldable, and the groundwork for it is already baked into iOS 27. We will find out the full picture when Apple actually shows the thing off later this year.
