The ‘iPhone Fold’ Unboxing Video is a Masterclass in April Fool’s Fakes
Jojol / YouTube
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Every so often we see “leaks” that are so patently absurd we just can’t resist calling them out — and there’s even more incentive when they’re put together well enough to be plausible at first glance, but fly in the face of all logic.
Such was the case with the ‘Steve Jobs Heritage Edition’ Apple Glasses report in 2020, where leaker Jon Prosser told us — with a straight face, no less — that Apple was planning on releasing a special edition of its mythic augmented-reality glasses that would be designed to look like the round, frameless glasses of Apple’s legendary co-founder and long-time CEO — and they were slated to arrive in 2021.
This seemed ridiculous even before we learned that the best augmented reality device Apple could come up with was a 1.5-pound headset that didn’t launch until 2024. Unless Apple had been sending engineers to other planets through a Stargate buried in the bowels of Apple Park, there’s no way the technology was anywhere near ready to produce a set of frameless glasses with AR capabilities. It’s still nowhere near ready today, which is why the full AR glasses have been shelved by Apple in favor of a far less ambitious smart glasses project akin to Meta’s Ray-Bans.
This week, another “leak” appeared that purports to show an unboxing of the so-called “iPhone Fold” (or “iPhone Ultra” or whatever Apple eventually calls it). While some might buy it at first glance, there are so many reasons to call it out as fake that we don’t even know where to begin.
First on the list is the timing. The most optimistic launch date for Apple’s first foldable iPhone is this September, but the jury is out on when you’ll actually be able to get your hands on one. While it’s remotely possible that someone might have gotten their hands on a prototype, it’s unlikely Apple has even started designing the packaging for the device, much less producing actual boxes. That alone makes an “unboxing” video outlandish right from the start.
This is a far cry from the M5 iPad Pro unboxing videos that showed up last fall. These were for an imminent launch of a product that had already been mass-produced and staged into Apple’s warehouses — from which the iPads in question were likely stolen to produce this illegitimate sneak peek. The unboxing videos were published on September 30, 2025, barely two weeks before the iPad Pro showed up on October 15.
Meanwhile, the foldable iPhone is only just now going into manufacturing testing — the stage where Apple’s supply chain partners determine if they can even make the thing at scale. While that means there are certainly some prototypes floating around, they’ll be under extremely tight security right now. Nobody has reliably reported seeing an actual “iPhone Fold” yet; the closest we’ve come are dummy models created by and for case fabricators. These likely reflect the real design, but they’re created using leaked CAD specs and are not designed or even sanctioned by Apple.
If that’s not enough to question the authenticity of this video, there’s the fact that the device is never turned on. While what we’re seeing could be AI-generated, it’s also possible it was produced using 3D-printed dummy molds like the ones we saw earlier this week, or even drawn by a talented designer using 3D rendering software.
The cherry on top is the date it was posted — April 1 — and the fact that the original creator, Johan Lelievre, told AppleInsider he’d created it as an April Fool’s joke, but found it going viral beyond his control, with many folks reposting it as genuine. Lelievre originally created it for TikTok, but has since shared a full YouTube version.
There’s no doubt it’s a well-done video — and it’s a fun “what if” look at what the foldable iPhone will look like — but it’s most assuredly fake. The YouTube video description cheekily claims the creator “infiltrated a counterfeit factory,” but the video itself ends with a fun “disclaimer” twist where — after treating the whole thing as legit — the host suddenly looks more closely at the packaging and notices some fine print that says “Concept visuel réalisé par Jérémy pour la chaîne YouTube Jojol” (“Visual concept created by Jérémy for the Jojol YouTube channel”).
The fact that this went viral is a classic case of the Internet clipping the first 30 seconds of the video and running with it, despite the creator actually being quite transparent at the end.
Will we eventually see legitimate leaks of the foldable iPhone before its debut? We can’t rule that out, but it’s also fair to say that Apple is going to have much tighter security around this product launch than it does for something like an M5 iPad Pro, where the design was identical to the previous model. We wouldn’t count on any “iPhone Fold” products lying around in warehouses they can be stolen from until after Apple itself is ready to show it off on stage.
