The iPhone Fold Doesn’t Need iPadOS to Be a Great “Tablet”

By Federico Viticci

I meant to link this at the beginning of the year, then I forgot, but I guess the story is still as timely as ever given the state of the latest rumors. A few months back, Jason Snell 3D-printed a mockup of the upcoming iPhone Fold (which I still think should be called iPhone Duo), which revealed a surprising design decision:

If these mock-ups are real, this folding iPhone is not going to be what you may have pictured in your head: a modern iPhone, roughly the shape of an iPhone Pro, that folds open to reveal a larger screen inside.

Instead, Apple may be making a device that’s much wider and squatter than existing iPhones when it’s folded up. The mock-ups people are printing show a phone that’s squatter than an iPhone mini and wider than an iPhone Pro Max! If that shape is right, the iPhone Fold will look a bit more like a mini notebook when it’s folded, unlike any iPhone that has ever existed.

And:

The shape makes sense, however, when you imagine what that phone looks like when it’s unfolded: a screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio, the shape of an old-school television and—more importantly—an old-school iPad. In fact, this rumored design would make the unfolded iPhone the shape of an iPad, just slightly smaller than the iPad mini. (The iPad mini’s screen is 8.3 inches when measured diagonally, while this screen is rumored to be 7.76 inches.)

Folio: A Promising Read-Later App with a Strong Foundation

By John Voorhees

I’ve been using read-it-later apps since before I had an iPhone. For those of us who were Wi-Fi-only iPod touch users before owning iPhones, apps like Instapaper were great for reading on the go.

Like in those early days, the read-later universe is once again hyper-competitive, with a lot of relatively new entrants such as Matter and Readwise Reader. That’s led to other apps shutting down. ElevenLabs bought and closed Omnivore, and most recently, Pocket, which debuted ages ago as Read It Later and was eventually acquired by Mozilla, shuttered.

In the wake of Pocket’s demise, Nick Chapman, who used to work on Pocket, and the team at Less is Better debuted Folio, a new read-later app for the iPhone, the iPad, Android, and the web that they say is designed to capture the essence of Pocket. I used Pocket on and off over the years but always considered it a step behind alternatives, so my expectations for Folio weren’t high.

Still, I was curious to see what Folio had to offer, especially because it must have been put together very quickly in order to be launched as Pocket shut down. Despite my initial reservations and some gaps in the app’s functionality, the Folio team has laid a great foundation with an excellent reading experience that’s worth keeping an eye on.

Apple’s TV App Launches on the Google Play Store for Android Users

By John Voorhees

Apple has released its TV app on the Google Play Store for Android users. In a press release, Apple stated:

Available around the world, the Apple TV app for Android was built from the ground up to deliver Android users a familiar and intuitive interface. Android users can subscribe to Apple TV+ and MLS Season Pass using their Google Play account on Android mobile and Google TV devices. Apple TV+ also offers a seven-day free trial.

With Major League Soccer beginning on February 22nd and Friday Night Baseball just around the corner, it makes a lot of sense for Apple to expand the TV app’s availability. Android users will have all the same options Apple’s users do including subscribing to Apple TV+, which comes with a seven-day free trial, and MLS Season Pass.

As for the design, the Android version of the TV app looks as expected. It’s an Android-ified version of the iOS and iPadOS version of TV, with a similar layout and functionality controlled with standared Android UI elements.

The TV app can be downloaded for free from the Google Play Store.

For more examples of the TV app on Android, here are shots of it running on Federico’s Lenovo Legion Y700 (2024), which we recently covered on NPC: Next Portable Console: