iPhone Fold And iPhone 18 Tipped To Get Major Display Upgrade: What To Expect

Apple’s future iPhones might soon look and feel very different, at least from the front. New supply-chain reports suggest that Apple is preparing to adopt a new OLED display technology that could make upcoming iPhones thinner, brighter, and more power-efficient. And if things go as planned, this upgrade could first show up on Apple’s long-rumoured foldable iPhone, followed by the iPhone 18 series. Also Read: YouTube finally lands on Apple Vision Pro after long wait

At the centre of all this is something called CoE, short for Colour Filter on Encapsulation. What is it and how will it benefit?  Also Read: Apple low-cost MacBook price leak suggests it to be at iPhone 16e price

What Is CoE And Why Apple Wants It

Today’s OLED displays use a plastic polariser layer to reduce reflections and improve contrast. The problem is that this layer blocks a large amount of light, which means the display needs more power to stay bright. Also Read: Next-gen Siri faces delay ahead of iOS 26.4 release

CoE removes that polariser and replaces it with a colour filter inside the OLED structure itself. The result is a screen that lets more light pass through, which means:

• Higher brightness
• Lower power consumption
• Thinner display panels

Samsung Display calls its version of this tech On-Cell Film (OCF), and it has already started preparing its factories for wider production.

Where Apple plans to use it first

Reports suggest Apple will debut CoE on its first foldable iPhone, which is expected to arrive sometime in late 2026. Foldable devices benefit a lot from thinner panels, because every millimetre matters when you fold a phone in half.

After that, Apple is expected to bring the same display tech to a future iPhone Air model around 2027, which lines up with the 20th anniversary of the iPhone.

Interestingly, Apple is skipping the Air model in the upcoming iPhone 18 lineup, mainly because the first-generation Air did not sell as well as expected. But the concept itself is not dead, it is just being pushed to a later, more advanced version.

All of this is still based on supply-chain planning, which can change. But with Samsung Display and LG Display already investing in new production lines, the move to CoE looks more serious than just a lab experiment.

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If it goes through, the iPhone Fold and iPhone 18 could be the start of a thinner, brighter era for Apple’s displays.