Apple has just rolled out the fourth developer beta of iOS 27, and buried inside the Battery Health section is the clearest software evidence yet of the foldable iPhone everyone is expecting Apple to call the iPhone Ultra.
Macworld found the strings first, and MacRumors has since confirmed they are really in the beta. Where every current iPhone’s settings talk about “the battery,” singular, the new code is suddenly speaking in plurals. “The batteries in this iPhone are performing as expected,” reads one string. Another warns that “the health of the batteries in this iPhone has significantly degraded.” A third goes further and flags when “one of the batteries” cannot be verified as a genuine Apple part.
Now understand why this matters. Apple has never shipped an iPhone with more than one battery. Not once in eighteen years. Software strings do not get written for hardware that does not exist, so the plural wording is pointing somewhere, and everything else we know is pointing at the same place.
Foldables split their battery across the hinge, one cell on each side, the way Samsung and Google have been doing for years. Earlier this month the Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station said Apple’s foldable would carry two separate cells, and a regulatory filing has already put numbers on them: 1,921mAh and 2,962mAh, a combined 4,883mAh. That is slightly more than the 4,800mAh expected in the Galaxy Z Fold 8, which will surely not be an accident.
This is not even the first iPhone Ultra fingerprint in iOS 27. The very first developer beta carried foldable display references, and later builds mentioned a device with multiple screens. The trail keeps getting longer with each beta.
One honest caution before anyone pre-spends their money. AppleInsider is arguing the plural wording could have a duller explanation, something like an external battery accessory. Possible, yes. But these new strings sit alongside the existing single battery ones rather than replacing them, which reads much more like Apple preparing software for a second internal architecture than tidying up accessory text.
The interesting detail hiding in the strings is repairability. The wording suggests iOS may track the health and authenticity of each cell separately, but when it comes to fixing, it only ever says an Apple Authorized Service Provider “can replace the batteries.” Both of them, apparently, even if only one has degraded. Worth remembering when the repair bills arrive.
Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone Ultra alongside the iPhone 18 Pro lineup in early September. The code is ready. The batteries, plural, are ready. Now we wait for the phone.
