Well, the foldable iPhone rumor mill is spinning fast again, and this latest batch of leaks has one detail that genuinely surprised me. According to Geeky-Gadgets, Apple is reportedly testing a creaseless inner display and a new A20 Pro chip for the rumored iPhone Ultra Fold, but the phone might ship without Face ID.

Let me sit with that for a second. Face ID, gone. After Apple spent nearly a decade convincing us facial recognition was the future, and after they removed the home button to prove it, the foldable might land without any facial recognition at all. The leaks don't say what would replace it, and that's the part I keep chewing on. If Apple drops Face ID, a fingerprint sensor is the obvious fallback, and my money would be on a side-mounted reader, since that's how Samsung has handled it on foldables since 2019. To be clear that's my speculation, not something in the leaks. My granddaughter Jess teases me that I complain about Touch ID being taken away more than anyone she knows, and she is not wrong. I still miss resting my thumb on that button.

The creaseless display claim I'd take with a grain of salt, or maybe the whole salt shaker. Every foldable on the market today has some visible crease, and Samsung has been refining its hinges for seven years now. If Apple has actually solved it, that's a genuinely big deal. But we heard similar whispers before other launches that didn't pan out, so I'll believe the crease is gone when I run my fingernail across it myself.

The A20 Pro chip is the least surprising part of all this. Apple was never going to drop last year's silicon into its first foldable, a device that will carry a premium price and, presumably, premium expectations. Foldables are hard on batteries, and a power-efficient chip matters more there than almost anywhere else.

My practical side kicks in here, the same voice I use when family members ask whether they should upgrade. A first-generation Apple foldable will be expensive, probably in the territory where you could buy a very nice laptop instead. And technology should work for you, not the other way around. If losing Face ID means fumbling for some new authentication method in an awkward spot, that's a real trade-off, not just a spec sheet footnote.

I keep thinking back to 1984, watching Steve Jobs pull that first Macintosh out of its bag. Apple has always been at its best when it waited until a category matured and then did it properly. They weren't first with MP3 players, smartphones, or watches, and it worked out. Foldables have been around long enough now that Apple's patience might actually pay off, crease or no crease.

For now, treat all of this as rumor-season reading. Nothing here is confirmed, no prices are set, and Apple will tell us on their schedule, not ours. But I'll be following this one closely, and if the Face ID rumor holds, somebody at Apple owes me an apology on behalf of my thumb.