Foldables were only about 1.6% of global smartphone shipments last year, which reads like a rounding error until you look at China. That market bought more than 10 million of them, over half the world's total, and it is the market the foldable iPhone has to win. Which brings us to its cameras.
Two findings that are really one problem
Bloomberg's lead Apple reporter Mark Gurman shared both in his latest Power On newsletter. He has been told the foldable is exceptional as a camera viewfinder, which makes sense once you picture a display that size showing you the frame. He also reports it lacks a telephoto camera, on a phone that will cost more than $2,000, and he does not expect Apple to close that gap for a couple of years at least.
China alone bought more foldables than the rest of the world combined
Mark Gurman, Bloomberg's lead Apple reporter, Power On newsletter, August 23, 2026
Those two things get reported as separate items, but they meet in the same place. Chinese premium buyers tend to want visible hardware and the status that comes with it, and camera specs are how that gets measured there.
Apple's foldable will sell or stall on one market. What decides it for you?
The zoom gap costs the most in the one market that counts
Our own hub has the foldable at a 48MP main and a 48MP ultra-wide, which is a two-camera setup on a phone priced above every Pro model Apple sells. In the US that reads as a first-generation compromise people will forgive. In China it reads as a spec sheet, and spec sheets are the argument there, which is why the same omission carries very different weight depending on which store it is sitting in.
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The Mate X7's camera module is the pitch Huawei has been making in China for years. | Image by Huawei
Huawei has been running that argument for years and winning it. The Mate X7 we covered in December pairs a 50MP main with a variable aperture, an ultra-wide, and a 50MP periscope telephoto reaching 3.5x optical zoom. That is four lenses against two, on a foldable that already exists.
Huawei was also the world's number one foldable vendor in the second quarter of this year, ahead of Samsung, and most of that comes from home. So if you own a Mate X7, Apple's arrival does not touch your zoom, though it does put real pressure on Huawei's software. Galaxy Z Fold 8 owners are further from this fight than the headlines suggest.
It should be noted that Apple has been climbing back in China lately, which is what raises the stakes. In the June quarter, Greater China revenue went from $15.4 billion to $18.8 billion year over year, a 22.4% jump and one of Apple's better runs there in a while. Every one of Apple's five geographic segments grew that quarter, but China was the one that had been sliding for years, so the recovery there is the one Apple is watching. A $2,000 foldable is supposed to extend it, which turns a missing lens into a revenue question rather than a spec-sheet gripe.
If you were planning to buy one in the US, the zoom gap is an annoyance you will work around. If you are Apple, it is the difference between a status object that sells itself in Shanghai and one that gets compared, lens for lens, against a Huawei sitting on the next shelf.
The viewfinder is the part I want to see
The viewfinder is the part Apple can genuinely sell, and I hope it does. Framing a photo on a screen that size is a real advantage, and anyone who has used a foldable in the wide passport shape knows how much easier it is to see what you are doing. It will not replace a zoom lens, so Apple has to say that plainly rather than talk around it. I'd rather Apple own that trade-off out loud, because a great viewfinder with two lenses is still a very good camera phone, and pretending otherwise is what would actually cost it trust.
Johanna Romero is a Senior News Writer at PhoneArena, covering mobile technology news across Android, iOS, wearables, and the Google ecosystem she knows best. Drawing on 15 years in IT and tech support from 2007 to 2022, she brings a user-friendly eye for the practical features and lesser-known tricks readers care about. Google named her an official #TeamPixel member in 2022, and she also reviews the latest devices on her YouTube channel, JoJo the Techie.
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