If rumor sites are to be believed, it sure seems like Apple will release a folding iPhone not that long from now. It’s safe to assume it will be Apple’s most luxurious, and most expensive, iPhone offering yet.
But what does this mean for traditional, non-folding smartphones?
Traditional smartphones will march on, improving year by year. Better cameras, better battery life, occasional new features. But have we seen the end of luxury, non-folding smartphones?
The Circle of Luxe
Since the introduction of the first commercially available cell phone, we’ve experienced just about two whole turns around the Circle of Luxe.
What the heck is that? So far it’s been about a twenty year cycle that goes like this:
- All phones are rare phones. A new paradigm in mobile communication hardware is released. The new phone type is expensive —mainly for business people, hobbyists, and trendsetters.
- New phone becomes normal phone. As the new phone style becomes more widely available and inexpensive, the market splits. Most phones do the normal stuff well enough for not that much money.
Meanwhile, lines of luxury phones are released to capture the high end of the market. Fancier materials, fancier features. Some of these fancy features turn out to be gimmicks, but some become the new normal. - Luxe phone becomes normal phone. As the phone type matures, the line between luxury features and baseline features gets thinner and thinner. Yesterday’s ultra-luxe camera is today’s normal camera.
- The slow goodbye. As a new phone paradigm is introduced, the old type fades slowly into the background. You can still get the old style, but attempts at selling luxury versions of the old thing do not land. The new thing is the new thing. The cycle starts again.
Let’s look at the history.
The cellphone cycle (1984 – 2007)
Credit: Avicente05, Wikimedia Commons
The first luxury cell phone was the first cell phone. The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X sold for $3,995 in 1984. That’s about $12,400 in today money. It weighed 1.74 pounds and could even make phone calls in about 50 cities around the country.
Over the next 20 years, cell phones became increasingly common and inexpensive. As the category lost its automatic luxury status, a niche opened for deliberately expensive phones. The Motorola Razr launched at $499 in 2004, or about $850 in today money, with a two-year contract. At the time you could get a phone with essentially the same capabilities for about $125. But the Razr was sleek and cool and metal and cool. Luxury!
Credit: VSchagow, Wikimedia Commons
But within a few years, Razrs too were the cheap, ubiquitous phone, and Razr features were everywhere.
Clinging to the old thing
In 2026, you can still get the SIGNATURE V ALLIGATOR SKIN 4G PHONE — handmade in England! — from Virtu for $23,800. It’s not a smartphone but it does have a keyboard made with solid rubies and a SIM tray made of solid gold.
The smartphone cycle (2007 – 2026?)
Credit: Rafael Fernandez, Wikimedia Commons
Just like the DynaTAC 8000X, the original iPhone was the luxury iPhone. $499 for the base model with a two year contract ($775 in today money) may not seem like much for a top-of-the-line phone, but at a time when phones were beginning to be free with contracts, and paired with two years of top-of-the-line data plans, the original iPhone was a premium device for people who could afford it.
As iPhones became more common, Apple began to make a distinction between luxury and ordinary models. The first attempt was with the iPhone 5c, released alongside the more expensive iPhone 5s. Instead of making the 5s more luxurious, the 5c was an attempt to offer a less expensive, less exclusive iPhone. The 5s featured a sapphire crystal home button and a polished aluminum bezel. The 5c was colorful, friendly plastic. We don’t know what the abbreviations stood for, but the 5s was meant to be special and the 5c was common.
The 5c was discontinued a year later and Apple hasn’t released another plastic iPhone since.
A few years later, Apple released the iPhone X for $999. A new, luxurious baseline. An edge-to-edge OLED screen. Instantly recognizable. Then, within a few years, that form factor became standard.
The iPhone X introduced a mini Circle of Luxe without the larger smartphone Circle of Luxe.
Pro = Luxury
From 2019 until 2025, luxury phones had a clear identifier: Pro. With the iPhone 11 Pro, Apple began a lineage of fancier, more expensive devices with better cameras, better screens, more luxurious materials and, for the first time, often better processors than their ordinary counterpart models.
If you wanted the most powerful phone, you went Pro. The most luxurious, Pro. The most expensive… etc.
Preparing for goodbye
The age of simplicity in expensive iPhones ended with the iPhone 17 Pro in 2025. No more titanium or polished stainless steel. No more gold and silver colorways. “Cosmic Orange.” A utilitarian, industrial color more at home on a workbench than a board room table.
It’s as if Apple is paving the way for the next thing.
Alongside the 17 Pro, Apple introduced the iPhone Air. An attempt at another iPhone X shift. “Pay more for the future, today.” Start the luxury cycle over again.
Except it didn’t work. The iPhone Air was evidently not the future customers were looking for.
The future is (almost) now
Folding smartphones have been available for many years, but Apple has a way of mainstreaming previously niche product types.
Will folding phones restart the Circle of Luxe? Will the next twenty years be the slow rise and fall of fold?
Or is this the end of the circle? Will smartphones continue, more or less in this format, forever? Or is something totally new and unimaginable on the horizon?
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