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Every so often, a television series comes around that captures America's hearts. These shows typically feature a family that makes us feel like we'd love to be part of the gang. Whether it's a lovable sitcom family like The Brady Bunch or Modern Family , or a more dysfunctional bunch like All in the Family or The Simpsons , these families help to represent our own shared commonalities up on the screen. When This Is Us premiered on NBC in 2016, we quickly found a new family to be obsessed with. With the series available to stream for free on Tubi, you can either catch this heartwarming drama for the first time or do a re-watch of this fantastic six-season comfort show .

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Patent images depict a Mazda sports car with a longitudinal four-cylinder.

Mazda’s recent Iconic SP Concept premiered with dramatic butterfly doors.

It’s possible the production Iconic SP could ditch the concept’s range-extender.

A pair of patents recently filed by Mazda have surfaced online, and neither one names the car they describe. What they do show is a small front-engined, rear-wheel drive convertible with butterfly doors, which narrows the field to two candidates.

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Also: Mazda Faces One Final Hurdle Before Building A New RX-7

Mazda has made no secret that an all-new MX-5 is in the works, set to retain the same lightweight, gas-powered philosophy that has helped make the current model an all-time great. The company has also said it wants to build the Iconic SP concept . Either way, these filings make it clear that driver-focused Mazdas aren’t going anywhere.

Mazda/USPTO

The sketches, first spotted by Carbuzz, show a drop-top with a four-cylinder engine mounted longitudinally. The first filing focuses on the hinge pillar of an unspecified vehicle, illustrating how a front-engined, rear-wheel-drive car can use butterfly doors.

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Read: Mazda Boss Confirms Next Gen MX-5, Says Will Continue With The Same Recipe

It outlines how Mazda engineers could bring the A-pillars closer to the shock towers to maximize chassis rigidity. The Japanese firm has never put butterfly doors on a production car, but it looks serious about making it happen. The document describes the arrangement as a flip-up side door, where the rear section swings outward and upward like a scissor or butterfly unit.

The same filing highlights ‘bracing reins’ that could be added to the car, helping to transfer load from the suspension mountings into that reinforced pillar, perhaps so hinges like these could work on a car with a convertible roof. It also describes an “apron frame,” a stamped-metal brace that links the front corners of the chassis to the firewall to further improve stiffness without adding significant weight.

Mazda/USPTO

The second patent covers the car’s crash structure and how external forces could act on it, channeling collision loads through the firewall, side sills, and toward the back of the vehicle to better protect occupants. Of greatest interest is that the drawings depict what appears to be a longitudinal four-cylinder engine and a traditional transmission tunnel, neither of which the stunning Iconic SP had, since it was previewed as a rotary range-extender.

What Is Mazda Planning?

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Mazda Iconic SP Concept

All of this has led to speculation that Mazda may make radical changes to the next-gen MX-5 , or perhaps put the Iconic SP into production with a four-cylinder engine. Since the MX-5 has always been about staying light and affordable, we’d be surprised if Mazda went to the trouble of engineering fancy new doors for it, and suspect they’re destined for the Iconic SP instead.

There’s also an outside chance Mazda is engineering one architecture to serve both cars, and that what these filings preview is the common platform underneath them rather than any single model.

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Source: Carbuzz , US Patent& Trademark Office

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Foldable phones are no longer a novelty, but what is novel this year is that Apple is almost certainly joining Samsung and Google in releasing a phone in a foldable form factor — and the launch is significant enough that it's led to a change in strategy from Samsung, now in its eighth year of launching Galaxy Z Fold models.

If you've been keeping up with the rumors, you'll know that Samsung is widely expected to reveal both a standard Galaxy Z Fold 8 and a 'wide' version of the phone when the next Unpacked rolls around on Wednesday, July 22 .

That's very likely because the iPhone Ultra (or iPhone Fold if you prefer) is being tipped to adopt the wide form factor itself. By wide, we mean the phone is shorter and wider than previous book-style foldables, whether it's open or closed.

So why the shift in design this year? Is it likely to drive more foldable phone sales? And should you be looking at picking up either a Galaxy Z Fold 8, an iPhone Ultra, or a Google Pixel Fold 11 over the coming months? As a tech journalist whose used foldable phones for years now, I can lay out what's going on for you.

The rumors so far

Rumors around a foldable iPhone are nothing new, but for months now it's been clear that this is the year that the speculation finally turns into an actual device: there have been so many rumors, from so many well-placed sources , that it would now be a huge surprise if the iPhone Ultra didn't show up around September time.

As the rumors have started gaining momentum, we've seen a running theme: the iPhone Ultra's screens are going to be shorter and wider than is typical for a device like this. A 5.5-inch cover screen and a 7.8-inch main display are what we're expecting, which would make it smaller overall than the foldables Samsung and Google have been producing.

Through leaks such as this 3D CAD mockup , we've got a pretty good idea of what the Apple phone will look like, and it might be the most interesting design choice on this device (though I'm also looking forward to seeing just how 'invisible' Apple has been able to make that crease, which will go a long way to determining how appealing the phone is).

Samsung's Unpacked invite hints at a change in form factor (Image credit: Samsung) Over to the Samsung camp then, and around the same time that it emerged that Apple was taking the shorter and wider form factor approach with its foldable, we got news that Samsung was bringing out its own version — presumably to appeal to those who would otherwise go with Apple for their next folding phone.

Originally known as the Galaxy Z Fold Wide, it now appears that this handset will get the standard Galaxy Z Fold 8 moniker, while the 'normal' foldable will become the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra (try and keep up at the back). You'll get a direct choice between Samsung and Apple when it comes to this more 'squat' approach to foldable design.

Google, meanwhile, doesn't appear to be changing its approach for the Pixel 11 Pro Fold (due on Wednesday, August 12 ): that means this phone will be more of a regular handset size when it's closed, and have a squarer screen when opened, and that brings us to the reason why these wide foldables are appearing.

The foldable phone experience

For as long as foldables have been around, manufacturers have had to balance two experiences: what the phone is like to use when it's closed, and what it's like to use when it's opened. A foldable handset needs to score highly on both counts to get consumers to consider spending money on, but to date there's been almost too much of a compromise.

As a tech journalist, I've had the privilege of using multiple foldable phones, including many months with a Pixel 9 Pro Fold that Google loaned to me. Here's the thing though: most of the time I used that phone, I kept it closed. I didn't really have any need to switch to the bigger display, even though it's an impressive feat of engineering to have the two screens in one device.

Now part of the appeal of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold — as mentioned prominently in our review — is that it looks like a 'normal' phone when it's closed. But if that's one of the main selling points, it begs the question of why you wouldn't just buy a normal PIxel, which is going to be significantly cheaper and much thinner.

An opened Pixel 10 Pro Fold (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future) The trade-off from sticking to a standard display aspect ratio when a foldable is closed is that the larger display is more or less square. That means big black letterboxing when you're watching videos and playing a lot of games, and when I've used foldables in the past, I've usually ended up watching movies and shows with the phones closed and in landscape orientation.

That brings us back to what Apple and Samsung are doing this year. A square display is still useful for some tasks — like web browsing, and getting two apps up side-by-side — but these new foldables will have a more tablet-like 4:3 aspect ratio when opened up. That will make them much better for watching video content and for gaming (and much more iPad-like, in Apple's case).

The whole point of a book-style foldable, after all, is that larger display — and in 2026 that's the screen that Samsung and Apple are going to be focusing on, even if it does mean the handsets will look rather odd when they're closed. The passport-style foldable is the future, and I think it'll be a successful switch.