The bifurcated iPhone’s body was created through a combination of custom 3D-printed components and parts salvaged from a pair of folding Motorola Razr smartphones whose hinge mechanism leaves about seven millimeters of space inside.
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That was important because instead of designing and engineering a custom OLED screen for their folding iPhone, which is what companies like Samsung do for improved durability, these hardware hackers repurposed the static screen from an iPhone X. Making it flexible enough to fold in half required the various layers of the screen to be separated, allowing the rigid glass panel in the front, and the 3D touch layer below, to be completely removed. That step sounds simple enough, but it was actually the hardest part of this hack, requiring 37 original iPhone X screens before they successfully got all the layers separated without causing any damage.
The final device, which the hackers call the iPhone V 0.1 because of how sketchy it turned out, works, but required the use of a much smaller battery, just a single speaker, and both MagSafe and wireless charging to be sacrificed. Its screen, and some of the custom wiring inside needed to accommodate the hinge, is extremely fragile, and this first attempt is more or less a display piece, as it probably wouldn’t survive a regular day’s use.
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Through an iOS jailbreak, they did customize the iPhone’s operating system so that it was more compatible with a folding screen, including splitscreen capabilities, but don’t expect this team to go into business making folding iPhones. If the hack wasn’t already expensive enough, the response from Apple’s legal team would be.