Foldable Phones and Agentic AI: The Future of Adaptive Mobile App Development

Not that long ago, a mobile screen was just... a screen. One size, one orientation, one interaction model. You built your app to fit a rectangle, tested it on a few device sizes, and called it done. That approach worked fine when the hardware stayed the same.

But the hardware stopped staying the same.

Foldable smartphones have evolved from novelties into a growing category in the premium sector, with an estimated 20+ million units shipped in 2025, and projections indicating 30% yearly increase in 2026. But now, apart from the change in hardware, we see the emergence of another paradigm shift: agentic AI, which redefines what mobile apps should be capable of accomplishing for their users.

Both changes happen simultaneously, and together they make up a mobile reality that is even more difficult to implement in business and even more rewarding to do it right. But what does that mean in terms of app development and updates? Let us take a closer look.

What Is a Foldable Phone, and Why Should Developers Care?

What is a foldable phone, after all? The name itself is clear enough, an electronic gadget which features an adjustable screen. Specifically, there are two ways to go about it: book-style phones fold out from the phone into a small tablet (for example, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold), and clamshell or flip phones fold down vertically to a compact phone (such as Galaxy Z Flip series).

Why does this matter for app developers and business owners? Because the old model of creating a single static layout for the whole mobile application is not going to work anymore. A foldable phone allows two screen states to be used, different screen ratios, split view in two windows, and continuous use cases when an app needs to adjust between different screens seamlessly without losing the user's progress.

In fact, there is more than just consumers interested in the foldable gadgets now. According to reports, almost 27.5% of foldable phones' income in 2025 will come from enterprises, while pilot enterprise programs noted 22% gain in productivity.

So What Does Building for a Foldable Actually Involve?

Here is where it gets technically interesting. Developing for foldable devices is not just "make it responsive." There are specific challenges that do not exist with standard phones:

Screen continuity across states

When a user unfolds their phone mid-task, the app needs to pick up exactly where it left off, same content, same scroll position, same context. That requires deliberate state management. Without it, the user gets a jarring reset every time the form factor changes, which kills the experience quickly.

Layouts that actually use the space

A full-size tablet-style display is a different canvas. Simply stretching a phone layout across a larger screen produces something that looks unfinished and wastes the extra space. The apps that work well on book-style foldables are the ones that were designed to take advantage of the bigger display, showing more information, enabling side-by-side views, or reorganising navigation to suit two-handed use.

Multi-window and split-screen

Android provides multi-resume since Android 10, meaning that two applications can run at once and stay active as long as the user uses them both together. Thus, your application needs to handle that situation correctly, namely, to assume that it does not have access to the entire screen, it may be resized and run along with another application.

Reachability and interaction design

A folded phone is used one-handed. An unfolded book-style device is almost always two-handed. Controls that make sense in one state can be completely unreachable in the other. Good foldable app design supports both interaction modes, ensuring that important controls remain accessible whether the phone is folded or unfolded.

Where Does Agentic AI Come Into This?

That is the right question to ask, because "AI in apps" gets thrown around loosely. There is a big difference between an app that uses AI features (recommendations, auto-complete, voice input) and an app with an agentic AI layer. The distinction matters.

A standard AI feature responds to a prompt. You ask, it answers. The interaction starts and ends there.

The agentic AI aims to achieve the goal. It performs several actions, makes use of tools, verifies results, adjusts, and continues doing all this until the goal is achieved or the pre-specified limitations are encountered. The AI does something and not merely reacts to something.

For instance, an ordinary AI-assisted app informs the user that there is a better flight available. In contrast, the agentic travel app identifies that you may face difficulties with connecting flights and searches other options for you, calculates costs, and either books a new flight for you or provides a booking option in one click.

This very difference between apps that wait for users and apps that work for their users characterizes the agentic AI of mobile devices.

Why Foldables and Agentic AI Are a Natural Combination

What a book-style foldable provides is not only a larger screen but also multi-windows and ability to use multiple applications simultaneously. And what an agentic AI offers is operation across applications, context awareness, taking actions and presenting the results. Large screens and agent technology go hand-in-hand.

An agent can be responsible for monitoring incoming orders of a user while he/she runs a logistics application on the unfolded device, reroute the delivery route in the background, and surface only exceptional cases requiring user’s attention. This is not a new feature, but a whole different paradigm of mobile devices usage, which is achievable when the combination of hardware, software and AI components come into play.

What Does Agentic AI Look Like in Practice for Mobile Apps?

The applications of these technologies are beginning to take shape across different industries:

• E-commerce/Retail: Agents that monitor customer activity, identify intent cues, make recommendations, and launch personalized offers, all without requiring the customer to look for anything first.
• Finance/Banking: Agents that monitor transactions, alert the bank of any abnormal activity and even write dispute notifications that the user can confirm with just one tap. Fraud signals detected locally, and resolved by agents on the server side.
• Field service/Logistics: Agents that monitor jobs, re-schedule technician activity based on schedule changes and automatically update relevant systems, rather than send the user a push notification saying that there was a change in their schedule.
• Healthcare: Analysing patients’ vitals locally along with an agent layer which sends notifications about potential care suggestions, alerts clinicians of any changes observed or updates the wellness program based on the patient data.
• Productivity/Enterprise: Agents that access internal systems, compose reports, schedule meetings, retrieve necessary data and perform other tasks behind the scenes while the user is busy with something else.

What Should Businesses Think About When Modernising or Building New?

These are two very distinct scenarios, each of which requires its own approach.

If you are updating an existing application: The point is not only "will this be usable on foldables?". The point is "what does this app offer to users and what modifications will be required to ensure it remains competitive on the market where users expect more capabilities?". It may include adding foldable-specific UI or completely changing the way of user interaction, depending on your app's functionality and the target audience.

If you are developing a new application: The design decisions you are making at the moment will define how difficult it will be to implement agentic capabilities later on. Those applications, which use rigid, monolithic architecture, which was not intended to interact with other tools, save states between the sessions and process asynchronous tasks, will require a lot of changes in order to be able to use agentic layer effectively.

Dotsquares provides businesses with a range of services related to both of these scenarios, from the adaptation of existing mobile app development projects to foldable devices to architectural design of new applications, including building an agentic AI layer in them.

A Word on Cost and Realistic Timelines

Development of foldables comes with an additional burden of testing. Development of agentic AI is a complicated architecture to implement. The combination of the two together is no justification for not doing it, but it definitely is an important reason why we need to have a controlled scope, start from the highest value use cases, and do it gradually.

An MVP with one or two agentic workflows along with the proper implementation of the foldable functionality is a much better option than a highly ambitious specification which would overrun the budget before reaching the end-users. Start with a basic implementation, analyze user engagement, and gradually scale. This approach always yields much better results than going all-in on the initial attempt.

Need help working out what the right scope looks like for your project? Dotsquares' AI and ML development team can work through the architecture, the use cases, and the build approach with you, whether you are starting fresh or updating something that already exists.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes developing apps for foldable phones different from standard mobile development?

Foldable phones introduce multiple screen states, varying aspect ratios, multi-window scenarios, and the need for seamless layout transitions when a device is folded or unfolded. Apps need deliberate state management, adaptive layouts, and multi-resume support, things that standard phone development does not require.

What is agentic AI and how is it different from standard AI features in apps?

Standard AI features respond to a prompt: you ask, they answer. Agentic AI pursues a goal across multiple steps: it picks tools, takes actions, checks results, and adjusts until the task is done. It works for the user rather than waiting to be asked, which is a fundamentally different interaction model.

Why are foldable phones and agentic AI particularly well matched?

Foldable devices provide a larger screen, multi-window capability, and richer interaction space, exactly the kind of environment where an AI agent working across multiple tasks and tools can surface its output usefully. Together, they enable a version of mobile that is significantly more capable than either hardware or software alone.

What do businesses need to consider before adding agentic AI to a mobile app?

Key considerations are durable state management, ability to restart agents after interruption, human oversight and audits, limitations on autonomy of actions and hybrid architecture that allows on-device processing of some tasks and cloud processing of others. Apps lacking these will require architectural modifications to support agentic features.

Should businesses update existing apps or build new ones for foldable and agentic AI support?

This will depend on the current architecture. Some applications can be adapted for foldable design and agentic capabilities without a complete rewrite, while some will have structural limitations requiring a ground-up rewrite. Honest assessment of technical aspects in advance will save considerable time and money compared to realization of limitations at the project mid-point.

How fast is the foldable phone market growing?

Foldable shipments hit over 20 million units in 2025, with revenue growing around 31% year on year. Analysts are forecasting 20–30% growth again in 2026, partly driven by Apple's expected entry into the foldable market. It is a small share of total smartphone volume but one of the fastest-growing segments in premium mobile.