The Chaser Report - Apple Finally Folds

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

A leak has revealed Apple's most expensive iPhone yet, with one major change that has Dom and Charles seriously considering not buying a new phone every year in protest. ---Listen AD-FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, have you got an iPhone? Yes, yes. Hold it up in our chat up. We're remote from each other. Now, that's an old iPhone.

That's a parseille iPhone, Charles. That's a lame iPhone. It's orange. It's orange. It means it's the latest one. It's literally... No. What?

Try and fold it in half. Okay. Will you pay me for any damage? You're not strong enough to break it in half. It's an old iPhone. You're loser. It's 11 and a half months old, Dom. I don't know what I was thinking.

It's so embarrassing. The iPhone Ultra is upon us. The details have been leaked. Leaked. By Vodafone Australia. Oops. Little Aussie battlers have put the information out of it. And also Vodafone, EG.

And Charles, there's going to be an iPhone that folds. This is going to change everything. Oh, look, I'm so glad they're working on that rather than solutions for climate change. That's all I can say. Yeah, just let's take some ads and then we're just going to, we're just going to draw all over this folding iPhone. So, I mean, there's been Android phones, Charles,

that fold for years now, many years and fold in different directions. Like, yeah, but they're a Samsung. They're sort of in the middle, folding sideways. Yep. There are Samsung. You can't, you don't want to own a Samsung. saying that would be embarrassing. You get the green messages.

That's right. This is an iPhone. This is all different. This has blue texts, Charles. Text messages that are blue in color. Yeah. You don't get that anywhere else. So should we talk about the color first or the price?

Let's talk about the color to get everyone salivating and excited. I wasn't expecting it. It is my favorite color. It's sort of engine red. But we should, when we do talk about the price, let's do a little trigger warning or something like that first. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh my God. I've just seen the price. This is the ultimate sort of clickbait, isn't it? I only saw the Egyptian price. It's, it's, uh, yeah, in Vodafone, you'll pay 12,979 EGP per month for 12 months. Yeah, and you could buy a pyramid for there. It is a pyramid scheme, I think. All right.

Oh, wow. Okay. All right, Charles. I think we should talk about the price first. How can we not? How can we not? Yeah, it is sort of. Yeah.

It's the main... Quite confronting. It's the main point. So for a 256 gig iPhone, it was according to iPhone Australia, the iPhone Ultra will, in their base configuration, 256 gig, which nowadays is not a lot. Yeah. That's just the standard, basically. Yeah.

$3,699, $3,700. That doesn't include a charger. What? That's just the phone. Do you get a cable at least? I think you get a cable. They're not, they're not, they're not, they're not stingy, Tom. It was stingy, no, no, oh, sorry, that's right.

They took the charges out as an environmental measure. Yeah, environment. So for $3,700. All right, so that's the base model. Yeah. But we know that, we know that memory is very expensive these days, unfortunately. Then if you want the sort of medium one, it's 2850, and then if you want the sort of maxed out one terabyte iPhone Ultra.

30. No, wait a minute. No, you've gone into the year's prices. Say it again with the Australian prices. If you want the medium 12 gig, which is the medium, 512 gig, what's that? Yeah, $4,200, right? The one terabyte version is $4,700.

For that, you could buy, I don't know, you could buy a nanny to look after your kids. You could buy five PlayStation 5. I'm just trying to put it into terms that sort of... Oh, yeah, that's true. Like, you could, you could use it to a thousand coffees. You could go away for a month and not have to talk to your kids with that sort of money. You could.

You could write, you could write Craig sucks made out of reusable coffee cups on a football field. Yes. With a thousand coffees. And still have changed leftover for a coffee. I mean, $4,700. Who's going to buy this? Is this? We should describe what it is.

Okay, so if you've seen an iPad Mini, it's quite similar that, maybe slightly smaller when it's open, and then you can fold it in half and it's a phone. So the genius or otherwise this is that it replaces both. I feel like you undersold. I don't think, like I think Steve Jobs would be, you know, turning in his grave if that was the explanation of the iPhone. The point is it costs more than an iPad Mini and an iPhone put together.

That's the thing I find so extraordinary about this. Yeah. So it's like one device for the price of three. Yes, that's right. So the external display, it's kind of passport shape. Like it's, the external display is very unlike any iPhone screen we've seen before. It's much wider. Yes.

And because there's a screen on the front. Yeah. And then if you want to open it up and, so what's the use case for opening it up? You want to watch YouTube? You want to, yeah. Or you want to do some work or something. I don't know. What would you use an iPad mini for, but with another screen on the back?

Well, the thing is I don't use. I don't use an iPhone mini because I think they're stupid machines. Because they're not laptops. They're basically laptops for people who can't type and don't want to have a convenient way to make their screen stand up. The thing is, like, when you're traveling, you don't actually want an iPad to watch videos, you know, to watch a movie, you know, in your hotel room.

Because the screen doesn't stand up. You've got to hold it the whole time. It's much more convenient to just carry around a laptop and then open it up and it's got a hinge and it stays up. This has always been the debate with the iPad is that it's sort of in between a phone and a laptop, it is a master of none. You know what I know what you do. What you do is you buy an Apple MacBook to use as a hinge so you can rest your iPhone Ultra Fold on top of the laptop and it stands up. That's what you do.

That's a very good idea. You need a MacBook Pro for another $5,000. Yeah, which is a rounding error when it comes to how much this costs. To getting a hinge. Yeah. Yeah, so instead of travelling with a separate phone and a separate iPad for different use cases, you could have a device that does both things. I mean, how would you even get a case for this thing so that you wouldn't drop it?

Well, I'm sure case manufacturers are probably the most innovative people in tech, how does. They're going to, they'll do it. I promise they'll be. Now, the other thing to note, Charles, is that it's an. iPhone Ultra. So of course it does a lot of things that the current iPhone, presumably, it'd be far more high tech, except that it isn't. The cameras are clearly, well, certainly rumor has it, the camera is going to be much worse than on the current iPhone. They're getting rid of

the telephoto lens. So you're just going to have. There'll be no Zoom camera. And it won't have face ID. So you'll have to go back to validating your ID via the fingerprint. I feel like this is, this is the, this is a Trump phone. I'm sorry. And the weirdest thing about it. This is a stupid phone. It costs double and it's shit and it's worse. And there's a notch. If you mention an iPad with a notch sort of on the top about three quarters of the way

or maybe two thirds of the way along. Oh, yeah. A big kind of cutout. So anything you're watching, any movie you're watching or whatever will have this weird random notch that sort of, rather than being in the middle like the current one, it's about three quarters of the way across. Oh, I see. So I've completely misunderstood this.

thing. So does that mean the screen on the outside? So it folds open. I was imagining that the screen is, is on the inside. But how does it work? I don't understand how it works. Look, it's not clear. There's, there's all renders. There's a different render where it doesn't have that. So maybe it doesn't have a notch in the middle. I don't know which it is. But if you look at the supposed Yeah. I don't think they'll be a notch on the actual Vodafone Australia one, which is the actual phone, yeah, the notch. If there is a notch on the inside it will be a disaster. No one's going to buy that.

Anyway, the point being Charles, I think you're missing the point. It folds. Like, imagine, contrary to this, imagine being in a cafe, right? It's like Trump always jiggins out. The iPhone always folds. The same thing. Imagine the use case of this, right? Everyone's at a cafe just using their iPhone, the way they have been since 2000.

Yeah, yeah. Boring. Right. Right. It's just your iPhone out. Yeah. Blue texting. And you get your iPhone out.

And it's much stubbier and smaller. Yes. And you can't actually use the screen nearly as well as on your current. Yes. But then you unfolded. Yes. And everyone goes, whoa. Everyone gasped.

Whoa, is that an iPhone Ultra? Yes. And that's the main use case is having people say, you've just bought an iPhone Ultra. Yeah. And then they'll ask you to take a photo of them with it. And it will be a terrible photo. And I'll go, I don't want one of those.

But you haven't mentioned the most important thing, Dom. What's the most important thing? Well, when you're buying a new phone nowadays Apple always releases it with a distinctive colour that everyone buys, but you know therefore, oh, they've got the latest phone, right? Of course. And the colour that is clearly going to be the selling point is bright red. Yeah, and that's that I like. And I don't think there's been, I think the last bright red phone was the iPhone X was released in red.

I don't know what it is. It's the color I wanted from, if I was going to get an IMac, but then it turned out it was actually a very washed out pink, most of it. Yeah. Except the only problem, the only slight problem with this is that industry experts such as Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says, no, that's a total fake. There's no red. But that's from the, other than that. That's from the Vodafone website. Supposedly.

Anyway, who knows? I hope it's in red. It would be great if it was in red. I'd love that. That is. All the reporting is that it came from the iPhone. Well, I hope it is. I really hope it is.

That would be very good. If it's in red, I'll probably have to get one for $4,000. Oh, no, I'm definitely getting one. What are you talking about? Of course I'm getting one. $4,000? That's how it works. No, yeah, you complain about it.

You think everyone's going to be stupid, and then you fucking buy it. It's the whole scam. It's as much as two MacBook airs. It's like the way you go and you complain about Trump and then you fucking vote for him. I just think, I just think, we've got such a disposable phone culture.

Yes. You're like, it's this whole culture of buying a new phone every year. Yes. And, and I mean, I'm just completely part of that. Now, it's my one thing.

Like, you know, we're on waste, sure. But you can't tell me I can't have a new phone. How can I, how can I have a phone that doesn't fold? So where do you put the other phone? It does fold.

You have just a drawer of fairly recent phones. What do you do? What do you do? I trade them in. I sell them on eBay. I give them to... Oh, yeah, that's right. You've got that scam going where you tend to make...

You reckon you make money off buying iPhones, don't you? Because you always sell them at exactly the right price. I used to. Yeah. But they're so expensive now. You can't do that anymore. Oh, you can't. You used to be the case.

It used to be the case that after a year, if you got it on a two-year plan and he paid it off over a year. year, it was worth about two-thirds of the purchase price. So you actually made some of your money back 12 months in. But now, they're so expensive now that doesn't work anymore. Oh, okay. Do you think this is the next big investment, though? If they keep going up in price, maybe, you know, buy and hold with an iPhone.

Could be. Actually, Charles, it's quite curious that for years we've been saying young people waste all their money on smashed avocado on toast. Yeah. Like, surely it's on fucking iPhones that they're actually wasting. No, I'll tell you why. That's not the case because they can't afford them. That's why they buy avocado.

They can't afford things like. Like houses cost less than, Sydney houses cost less than iPhone altrues. You could buy a five-bedroom. Nearly $5,000 for a phone. Imagine if you dropped it. Point Piper Mansion for this. And it's got so many screens to smash. People are going to smash this thing on the way home from the Apple store.

I wonder what the price of Apple care on this thing is. It'll be $5,000. Everything. $5,000. Surely. Yeah. Oh my God. The Chaser report.

Less news. More often. I mean, I just think people, won't people think I'm cool if I have one of these? Yes, Dom. You can believe that. They'll gasp. Oh, no. And the gasping is about how cool you are.

I promise. Oh, man. This is really testing my love of new devices, I must say. Do you actually think it would be good? I just don't see. Like, the actual thing. actual phone use, I can completely get the idea of a folding iPad being useful. But your phone being the size of a passport.

But do you use an iPhone? Do you use an iPad? Yeah. Oh, and do you use it all the time? I've never seen you with an iPad? Quite often. No, quite often. Yeah, I find it quite useful. Oh, okay. To do what? To veg. Oh, right. As an entertainment, like consumption.

Yeah, yeah. To watch shows to. And do you, like, how big is your iPad? Is it like a non-examination? normal size or mini? 11 inch. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I kind of feel like, yeah, it's good. Like the mini,

but my eyesight's so bad nowadays. No, yeah. Wouldn't even work. What I actually need, Charles, is an iPhone that folds four ways into a proper sized iPad. Yes. Ah, God,

Apple just doesn't innovate anymore, do you? They're just chasing Samsung. They're just chasing Samsung. They need to release. What would that be? How much would that cost? They'd be like 20, 20 grand 10 grand 20 20 grand oh bargain because it'd be four times more definitely but the other thing

is charles and this is a serious question what are we going to do about the memory thing because it's the the skyrocketing cost of memory because of AI yes is making it very hard for for people to justify stupid technology purchases because that's the main reason why the iPhone ultra is so expensive because everything with memory in it it's just very expensive isn't it nothing to do with oh sorry because of the apple logo profit seeking yeah yeah and and and And brand premium. Yeah. Okay.

So, well, I don't know what we do. Like, I think, surely we just wait for the bubble to burst. Surely it's going to burst any day now. Like, it should. And then we'll all be able to buy tons of memory. I'm going to say. Actually, they're just about to release Apple intelligence, right? Like, in the new version of iOS that comes out in a few weeks,

Apple's version of AI is finally going to come out. I'm sure that'll be great. Yeah. It's called Siri, isn't it? It's called Siri. That's what I'm saying. It will probably. it will probably burst their AI bubble.

Don't you think? Oh, that's so lame. I don't want any sort of AI. We thought it's all around a good thing, but no. Yeah. Yeah. No, this sucks. This is awful.

There you go. Thank you for your service. Apple. John Turner's the new CEO. Yes. This is his first flight. Tim Cook's gotten out in time. He's abandoning ship.

He saw that and went out of here. Apple intelligence launches. Yeah. All right. Look, I'm looking forward to checking it out. But I honestly think that if I go and get, if I go and get one of these phones in the next few months, people will think I'm even more of an idiot than I already do. Well, yeah, that's, like I never thought the iPhone could get more expensive and that

happened. So yes, that is true. I didn't think it would get this much more expensive. Yeah, I didn't think you could be this much more of an idiot, but here we are. Four credit to Apple, we're finding a way to make the iPhone like twice as. Like, what is that, what is an iPad, what does an iPhone cost now? We just said. It's a $4,600. But the current model, right? If you go, if you buy, let's say,

256 gigs, the same bottom memory. Oh, I see what you're saying. You just go out and quickly buy an old one at the old price. And dot dot dot dot. So the non-max iPhone, it's 20, so it literally is 50% more. So how much is the regular iPhone? Pro. The current iPhone Pro 26 is 21999.

Oh, bargain. And the pro, it's still quite low. Just buy two. And the pro max is going to be that much more again. It's probably what, 2,500 or something. Yeah. No, the iPhone pro max in Australia, 256 starts at 2199. Wow.

Okay, 50% more. Very impressive. I'm buying cheese and apple. Yeah. You can't afford them. Yeah, I'm going to short them. All right. We're part of the iconic class network.

We'll have a proper topic tomorrow. Do you think we should? to cut the podcast in half. I think it should fold, frankly.