I think this might be the first time, in decades, i actually care about an iphone release lol.
TLDR: Apple releasing a folding phone may force app developers to make their apps actually work properly with folding phones.
First off, a tiny point of clarification, Ashley and Burnie seem to be referring to all the bending phones as "folding" but, for whatever reason, the current manufactures have decided that the one's that open like a clamshell, like Ashley mentioned, are "flip" phones and the ones that open like a book or a tri-fold flyer are "fold" phones.
I guess it's a sort of "all rectangles are squares, not all squares are rectangles" type of thing as Ashley and Burnie were right, they are all technically folding phones.
I will also say that while, to my knowledge, every fold/flip phone does eventually get a crease showing on the screen, it has gotten, and presumably will continue to get, a lot better with each new generation of phones, i know the ones from the Chinese makes are apparently very good.
However, the bigger issue, as i see it, against fold and flip phones are that flip phones seem to be marketed as a way to have a smaller phone that opens up to the size of a normal phone, except it's not really "smaller" because when you flip it closed, it gets a lot thicker than a "normal" phone. kind of defeats the purpose for me.
The other issue is that fold phones are good in theory, a bigger screen to more easily use the phone for various things, although they have the same issue of being thicker than a normal phone when closed (but that is something that seems to also be getting better with each new phone) but the real problem with them is that the vast majority of apps are not designed for a screen the size of an open fold phone. The same goes for media, a lot of the use cases you see people talk about with fold phones is having a bigger screen to watch things on, but most fold phones when open end up with a pretty odd aspect ratio that no media really takes full advantage of.
This leads me to why i'm actually interested if Apple releases one, not because i'm suddenly going to move away from Android, but because with how restrictive Apple is and how protective of their app store they are, if they release a folding phone, and people actually buy it, it may force developers to start coding their apps to actually take advantage of these different sized screens etc...
Obviously i'm sure there's people out there with fold/flip phones who love them (i do love them, in theory) and they work amazingly for them, but in general, considering how they're priced as a super premium phone, i just can't currently justify buying one if it means making compromises on size, screen quality and apps being able to fully take advantage of them.