It took them six months, but these Chinese hackers successfully made a folding iPhone

The prospect of an Apple-made folding iPhone has been around ever since their main rival Samsung launched the Galaxy Z Fold back in 2019. However, it’s now 2022 and there’s still no sight of any foldable from Cupertino just yet. That hasn’t stopped these guys from hacking through a pair of Motorola Razrs, 37 iPhone X displays and roughly 200 days to finally create this monstrosity: the iPhone V 0.1.

The group known as The Aesthetics of Science and Technology have created this Frankenstein of a folding iPhone and even had to 3D-print parts that, simply put, don’t exist yet. The result is a device that looks like it would be called an iPhone 12 Flip. These guys made it by harvesting parts from two Motorola Razrs, specifically the hinge mechanism. They then had to get an iPhone display that can fold—you know, something that hasn’t been made yet. To do so, they would use an iPhone X and separate the glass panel away from the 3D touch layer under it. This is no mean feat; the group ended up hacking through 37 iPhone X displays before eventually getting it right.

We don’t think you’d actually want to use it as a daily driver though. Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly a cool concept and all, but not only does it just look extremely janky with this huge gap when folded, but there’s also a lot of hardware sacrifices made to get it to work. This includes losing MagSafe wireless charging, having just a single speaker left, a smaller battery, no more water resistance and at times the display looks like it’s about to pop off from the hinge section too if you’re not careful. Furthermore, The Aesthetics of Science and Technology also had to jailbreak the software to get the device to run properly while also adding functions like splitscreen mode.

In fact, we’re not even sure if this is real or just a very, very elaborate prank. But if it is real, then it’s a phenomenal piece of engineering for a couple of YouTubers. You can watch the full 17-minute video by them to see more about how it works, but do note that it is in Chinese though English subtitles are available.