F1 24 players, look over here: Could a foldable-screen iPhone become the strongest companion for racing mobile games?

Foxconn has already begun trial production of a foldable iPhone, and Apple’s target for suppliers is to launch the first large foldable iPhone in the second half of 2026. For someone like me who spends all day on my phone grinding through F1 24 and Asphalt, this piece of supply-chain news hits harder than a DRS overtake down a straight. The foldable game has basically been figured out by the Android camp, while Apple has stayed on the sidelines. Now that it’s finally making a move, it’s going straight for a “large fold,” which instantly maxes out my imagination for what mobile gaming could be like over the next two years.

From a competitive experience standpoint, the most direct change a large foldable iPhone brings is that both “field of view” and “control area” can be spread out much more, which is practically tailor-made for racing and sports games. Imagine this: in the folded state you use the outer screen to browse info, tweak strategy, and check gear stats; when it’s time for the real race, you unfold it—let the upper big screen focus on the racing track visuals, while the lower half hosts the virtual steering wheel, throttle and brake zones, or even dedicated telemetry data. This kind of “driver’s view + engineer’s panel” division is very hard to implement elegantly on a normal candy-bar phone.

When it comes to race pace, Apple’s traditional advantages are also crucial. It has long been solid in touch latency, haptic feedback, and overall frame-rate stability. If this time it does system-level optimization for the large foldable form factor—like locking refresh rate, defining palm-rejection zones, and letting the UI avoid the crease area—it will be a huge boon for players who need pixel-perfect braking points and millimeter-precise overtakes. On the flip side, if these low-level details aren’t handled well, the foldable screen will instead become a “battle-damaged cockpit” that’s more prone to accidental touches and has your line of sight constantly interrupted by the crease.

By comparison, large foldables in the Android camp have already gone a few laps, and most player feedback centers on weight, battery life, and heat. If you bring those issues into high-intensity gaming scenarios, they’ll only get magnified. Racing fans usually spend at least ten-plus minutes on a single ranked match; a few back-to-back sessions easily turn into dozens of minutes of sustained high load. The folded form factor also resembles holding a steering wheel more, so if the center of gravity is off or the device is too heavy, you might end up in a situation where “all ten fingers are gripping the wheel but your wrists give out first.” Apple has always liked to show up in the second round; if this time it can balance weight control, hinge feel, and thermal performance, it really does have a shot at pulling off a “late-braking outside overtake” in the mobile gaming experience race.

In terms of buying advice, I’m more inclined to treat this generation of large foldable iPhone as a hybrid of “mobile esports terminal + light productivity device,” rather than a traditional pure smartphone. If you’re the kind of player who has to run a few F1 24 races during every commute, then lie in bed at night watching race highlights and casually grinding some sports or racing ranked matches, you can consider this foldable iPhone as a potential main device for the next two years. But on two conditions: first, wait and see how the initial batch of games is adapted, especially the UI tweaks from major sports, racing, and MOBA titles; second, don’t rush to buy it on day one—wait for real-world tests on hinge durability and gaming thermals for the launch models before deciding whether to “pit for fresh tires.”

From a trend perspective, Apple’s move basically announces that foldable screens are officially entering the “main grid,” which will be a clear turning point for the mobile esports and sports gaming ecosystem. If developers are willing to take foldable optimization seriously—say, splitting real-time data, lap rankings, tactics boards, and team voice into different panes, and even supporting steering-wheel-style custom layouts—then the foldable iPhone’s significance in the gaming scene will no longer just be “a new kind of phone,” but a genuine restructuring of the rules for “how you use a phone to compete.” For those of us who treat every ranked match like the final lap of a qualifying session, this level of format change is far more worth looking forward to than yet another small generational hardware bump.