Vodafone’s vanished listing put a EGP 155,750 tag on Apple’s foldable

A Vodafone Egypt page briefly priced a device it called the iPhone Ultra at EGP 155,750 before someone pulled it. GSMArena’s Peter reported the spot and credited poster Yousif Ayman for finding it. It vanished fast. That single listing is the most solid hint yet for how Apple might position its first foldable. It suggests not a slightly bigger Pro, but a product in a different price universe.

And that Egyptian comparison is useful because it holds taxes and local pricing steady. According to both GSMArena and Ascendants, Vodafone Egypt currently lists the 256GB iPhone 17 Pro Max at EGP 94,400. Against that baseline the leaked Ultra price runs about 65 percent higher. You can see the ratio for yourself without converting currencies.

But extrapolating from Egypt to everywhere else is tricky. Both GSMArena and Ascendants warn you directly that currency conversion rarely tracks how Apple actually sets regional prices with taxes and strategy. Still, GSMArena did the math anyway. It applied that 65 percent premium to the launch prices it lists for the iPhone 17 Pro Max at $1,200 and £1,200 and €1,450. That produced a hypothetical Ultra around $1,980 and £1,980 and €2,395. Think of it like comparing apartment rents within the same building to avoid street-to-street noise, the inside ratio tells you more than the city-wide average.

So the same leap showed up somewhere else entirely. GSMArena cites a separate post from X user @ev_downunder. It points to a 256GB Ultra at AUD 3,700 versus AUD 2,200 for the 256GB iPhone 17 Pro Max in Australia. That is about 68 percent more. Ascendants points out that the Egyptian and Australian ratios look similar. Well, more precisely the outlets note the similarity but they emphasize neither figure is official Apple pricing, so don’t treat it as a price list.

The same leak contained smaller jumps for the regular Pros. That leak listed EGP 98,000 for the iPhone 18 Pro and EGP 105,000 for the iPhone 18 Pro Max. Vodafone Egypt currently asks EGP 88,800 for the 256GB iPhone 17 Pro and EGP 94,400 for the Pro Max. Ascendants calculated what that means, roughly a 10 percent lift for the Pro and about 11 percent for the Pro Max.

And if you carry those percentages abroad, the hike looks less dramatic than the Ultra math. GSMArena took that roughly 10 percent Vodafone uplift. It applied it to its figure for the iPhone 17 Pro launch at $1,100 and £1,100 and €1,300 and ₹135,000. That points to an iPhone 18 Pro around $1,210 and £1,210 and €1,430 and ₹148,500 and a Pro Max around $1,320. Moneycontrol offers a different India reference ahead of Apple’s confirmed September 9 event. It estimates leaks point to about Rs 1.34 lakh for the iPhone 18 Pro and between Rs 1.55 lakh and Rs 1.70 lakh for the Pro Max depending on storage. Apple hasn’t confirmed any prices, and that hasn’t changed.

Why would costs push at all? Multiple outlets point to research firm TrendForce on memory. WCCFTech reporter Omar Sohail writes that TrendForce estimated memory costs ballooned by a 400 percent year-over-year increase in the third quarter of 2026 on AI server demand. MacRumors notes Apple itself raised prices on Macs and iPads and other hardware in June and cited the same shortage.

Still, the bill-of-materials pressure doesn’t translate one for one at the register. iNews Zoombangla reporter Abul Kalam and GSMArena put TrendForce’s estimate for a 256GB iPhone 18 Pro about 38 percent to 40 percent higher than its predecessor to build. The firm expects Apple to eat part of that.

And here is where the analyst numbers diverge slightly, which matters if you track the gap. iNews Zoombangla, summarizing a MacRumors report from September 3, says TrendForce projects US starting prices of $1,249 to $1,299 for the iPhone 18 Pro and $1,349 to $1,399 for the Pro Max. That is $150 to $200 above the comparable iPhone 17 models that MacRumors puts at $1,099 and $1,199. WCCFTech reports a broader 10 to 20 percent hike range, and MacRumors separately cites other analyst chatter of $200 to $300 increases to as high as $1,399 and $1,499. Former CEO Tim Cook previously called such increases “unavoidable” due to what he called a “hundred-year flood” on memory pricing, according to MacRumors.

What Apple will actually say on September 9 isn’t settled apart from the date itself, Moneycontrol reports. GSMArena and Ascendants report John Ternus is expected to host as CEO for the first time. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max and a foldable will be on the slate. The standard iPhone 18 might slip to next year. CNET, citing a report from ET News, says Apple could push the base iPhone 18 to spring 2027 to make room for the foldable. GSMArena mentions a September 11 pre-order date but describes it as unconfirmed.

Then again the foldable’s shape is still rumor territory. CNET, summarizing analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, describes a book-style device. It has a 7.8 inch inner display and a 5.5 inch outer screen. It is about 9 to 9.5mm thick when folded and 4.5 to 4.8mm unfolded, with a hinge that may use liquid metal under Apple’s long-standing exclusive contract with Liquidmetal Technologies. CNET also cites Chinese publication UDN for claims of little or no display crease.

So the same CNET roundup cites Weibo leaker Fixed Focus Digital for a 5,500 mAh battery. That’s Apple’s largest yet if it happens, above the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s 5,088 mAh cell, plus 12GB of RAM and a Touch ID side button instead of Face ID. Kuo, as reported by CNET, expects Apple to unveil the foldable alongside the iPhone 18 line but to sell it later. That follows a playbook like the iPhone X in 2017. He expects a first run around 10 million units and a three to five month ramp that runs 30 to 40 percent slower than the iPhone 17’s roughly 5 million units per month.

Several other expected Pro specs remain unverified and you shouldn’t buy on them yet. Moneycontrol lists talk of a 6.3 inch OLED at 120Hz for the Pro and 6.9 inch at 120Hz for the Pro Max. It also notes a smaller Dynamic Island that could place Face ID under the display and new colors like Sky Blue, Burgundy and Pure Black. Other talk includes three 48 megapixel rear cameras with a 24 megapixel front camera and a variable-aperture main lens that might stay exclusive to the Pro Max, plus an A20 Pro chip on a 2nm process with up to 12GB RAM and an in-house C2 modem. MacRumors, citing TrendForce, adds that base storage will stay at 256GB rather than increase further. Nothing in this paragraph has been confirmed by Apple, a detail every outlet stresses almost as an aside while still publishing the numbers, you know how this cycle works.

The signal beneath the sticker price

The leak matters less for a precise dollar figure than for the tier it signals. If the Vodafone ratio holds, Apple wouldn’t price a foldable as a Pro Max Plus, it would open a new Ultra tier nearly two thirds above the current flagship. GSMArena compares that to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 at $1,900 in the US. Its own math suggests paying more in the UK and Europe and India, where the translated premium looks a touch steeper.

And that tiering lines up with the cost story TrendForce is telling. You can’t pass a 400 percent memory chip rise straight to buyers without losing volume. So the reported thinking is that Apple absorbs margin on the high-volume Pros, holding hikes to that 10 to 20 percent zone, while the low-volume foldable carries a halo price. CNET cites Kuo’s range of $2,000 to $2,500 for that halo, the Ultra in other words funds the optics.

Still, the read depends on scale. A first run around 10 million units is small for iPhones, which lets Apple test a plus-$2,000 price without needing mass adoption. CNET cites IDC analysts who predict foldables would still jump 19 percent globally if Apple enters. Apple would take about 24 percent share. Even so, CNET’s own survey found 64 percent of people saying they don’t want a foldable.

What that implies if you are buying

For shoppers the practical split is fairly clear, though uncomfortable. If Pro and Pro Max prices land closer to TrendForce’s $1,249 to $1,399 corridor than the steeper $1,980 translation, many buyers will still shift to financing or pick a lower storage tier or hold onto an older phone, a response iNews Zoombangla flags. The Ultra would then sit as a statement device in tight supply for months after its reveal. And none of those figures can be called retail until Apple posts official regional pricing. The only date Moneycontrol calls confirmed remains September 9, and September 11 for pre-orders stays unconfirmed in GSMArena.

Sources